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May 6, 2008
"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." --George Bernard Shaw
The Power of Play
Over the last two decades, more than 30,000 schools in the United States have eliminated recess to make more time for academics. From 1997 to 2003, children's time spent outdoors fell 50 percent, according to a study by Sandra Hofferth. Hofferth also found that the amount of time children spend in organized sports has doubled, and the number of minutes children devote each week to passive leisure, not including watching television, has increased from 30 minutes to more than three hours. On the flip side, decades of research has shown that play is crucial to physical, intellectual, and social-emotional development at all ages. This is especially true of the purest form of play: the self-motivated, imaginative, independent kind, where we create our own games. Tufts University psychologist David Elkind explores how we can build a new culture of play.
BE THE CHANGE
Regardless of your age, engage in a self-motivated, imaginative, independent play activity today.
