I am in my backyard with my 3 sisters, a cousin and our neighbor. We are pretending to have a cook-out. My youngest sister is cooking at the stove because she is not “old enough” to help “pat out” the food. My cousin and I are making pies, and my other two sisters are making hamburgers and hotdogs (everything is made out of mud by the way)! And our friend is picking flowers out of the yard and setting up the picnic table. She also has to go to the outside water hose to fill all the cups up with water (real water, pretend kool-aid) to go with our food.
The one adult that would be invited would be my mom. She would be there to tell us how much of what ingredients we needed to make our pies. She would also be there to make just pretend with us and set up our radio to play music.
The play that children experience today is very different than my play in the 80’s. Children almost don’t know how to play; like it’s a pastime or something. They are more concerned with game systems, Facebook, Twitter and Keeping up with the Kardashians. They don’t know what it’s like to collect lightning bugs in a jar or play tag or have a water balloon fight. I think it’s very sad, especially when “School administrators, many parents, and most politicians believe play is a waste of time, off task behavior, needless coddling of young children, messy and noisy, unstructured and uneducational – an unaffordable luxury in an ever-more competitive world” (Wardle, 1987); when play for me was just as crucial as me sitting behind a desk listening to a teacher. It gave me an out! It helped me to take those math equations that the teacher just told me about and implement them in making my mud pies. I learned my fractions by making mud pies with my sisters at home!!! According to Wardle, “Children do not play for a reward-praise, money, or food. They play because they like it"(p. 28). Its funny Mr. Wardle, we played for food…even if it was muddy!
As Walt Streightiff once said “There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million."
References
1. Wardle, F. (1987). Getting back to the basics of children's play. Child Care Information Exchange, Sept., 27-30.
2. Wardle, F. (n.d.). Play as curriculum. Retrieved August 1, 2010, from http://www.earlychildhoodnews.com/earlychildhood/article_view.aspx?ArticleID=127
Greatly said. I agree totally play is no longer the same as it used to be. With electronics and reality television children do not begin to understand what it means to play. Equally, I forgot how fun it used to be to make mud pies. Being an only child I made them with my cousins. I instead used to be a factory leader and they made the pies on the front porch. Brings a grind to my face just to think about it. I believe it is our duty in the Early Education field to ensure that authentic play dose not die.
ReplyDeleteHi Lelabug,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post. It was very nice to see that I was not the only one trying to create an outdoor restaurant. When I think of some of the things we did I remember how exciting it was for me. I am making plans for when I visit my mom in the summer to introduce my children to some of the things I did. Play today is different from back then. Today there are so many toys and gadgets to play with that you don’t really need to use your imagination and be creative as much as you did before. As a child I noticed that many adults that I was around separated themselves from children. Their interactions were limited with pretend play. If it was sports the men may get involved to teach you how to play the game. I had maybe one person who would entertain in our child’s play. It is sad that many think that play is a waste of time. Without play we will have a world filled with uptight and grumpy individuals.