As I sit here on the beach holding on to the last moments of summer, off in the distance I see a group of kids playing in the sand. Have you watched kids play in the sand? They don’t need adult guidance. They don’t need ideas for how to be creative. Even the most tech addicted child doesn’t get bored.
They play.
They build sand castles with the highest work ethic, braving the waves and the distance to get that best scoop of wet sand. The child building the structure out of drift wood has a purpose. He sees a potential fort in his future. He doesn’t need a lesson on architecture to realize that there is a certain angle the wood needs to lay so it doesn’t fall. He discovered it through exploration.
In the start of the year, I challenge you- don’t overplan every second of the day. Build in some room to let students play- at all ages.
I always wait til the first rainy day recess to pull out the games, and each year I wonder- Why didn’t I do this sooner? When the games come out and students have choice and freedom, little micro cultures build in the classroom. You get the group that wants a challenge that will wait 15 minutes in line just for their turn at a round of Connect 4. You have the doodlers in the back discovering what they can make with form, shape, and color. You get the persistent student who will spend the whole break setting up Keva Planks or Dominoes only to knock them down 5 seconds before the bell rings. You may even get the students like I did last year, who built a fake town on our carpet solely out of privacy folders typically used for testing. When they honored new members to the town and offered them roles such as mayor, I was shocked when the next student came around collecting property taxes. I couldn’t come up with something this entertaining if I tried!
And remember, not everyone will be so willing. You may even find that student who is uncomfortable with unstructured time and instead asks for advice about what she should play, and when you encourage her to just give something a try and join a friend, she ends up bouncing around from activity to activity because she’s been trained to only do things with directions.
Watching rainy day recess is more informative to me than some of my best assessments. From those 20 minutes, I can gain insight on personality traits, strengths, motivators, and friendships.
So this year I make a challenge to all who will take it- let “rainy day recess” come early, with or without the rain. Let your students have choice time, but not in the sense of you being tired and wanting them to stay busy so you can get a break. Be intentional. Observe, play, and take note of the interactions and ways your students spend their time. That is more of a window into their natural motivations and tendencies than any beginning of the year survey you can give them. It gives you light into what students would want to do if they aren’t thinking they’re “playing school”.
Unstructured play is something lacking in today’s youth, that has been a pivotal part of childhood for generations. “Learning is what we do best. We learn through our lives by wondering and exploring, experiencing and playing,” says Wendy Ostroff, child development professor and author of Cultivating Curiosity in K-12 Classrooms and Understanding How Young Children Learn. When we over-standardize education during the school day, and students then go home to their structured tutoring sessions, sports practices, and after school classes, they can go a whole day with their only time to “play” at recess or lunch, should they actually get up and not just sit the whole time eating.
Some of my favorite childhood memories were from unstructured play. I remember finishing my homework quickly so all the neighbor kids could meet behind our houses in “the ditch”, or when my brother and I created our new favorite sport- roller blade basketball! Or the time a classmate and I went house to house advertising our “business” by selling marigold seeds to neighbors (sorry Mom, I didn’t realize I’d de-flowered your front garden!) I bet you have your own list of play memories that defined not only your childhood but helped positively develop you into the person you are today.
I am going to challenge myself this year to let kids play more.
Are you up to take the challenge?
Let children play.
They are only kids once.