Why Play-Making?
Play-Making is
The interaction between play and making that fuels joyful relationship building, exploration, experimentation, discovery, and creation of new ideas.
Play-Makers are
Change-makers. They are highly engaged people who feel connected to others and use the power of their creativity and imagination to make a more inclusive and just world.
Play-Making is
Freedom
From misguided ideas about how children learn and grow. Freedom to develop into whole, unique beings from the inside, out. Play-Making is every child’s right, not a privilege.
Play-Making is Power
When children are free to engage with the world as Play-Makers, they are free to develop the skills, mindsets and dispositions needed to feel whole; to experience themselves as integrated social, emotional, physical and intellectual beings capable of contributing to their world. Valuing children’s Play-Making means valuing ALL aspects of who our children are. It gives them a chance grow into their own power as original thinkers, creators, and empathetic, joy-filled collaborators.
Shifting our behavior
Children already know how to be Play-Makers when given the opportunity. It is us, the adults in their lives, who need to our shift our perspectives about the value of play and making in our children’s lives. Are we willing to pay attention to the indisputable scientific evidence that a lack of play harms children’s ability to feel whole and creates debilitaing anxiety, even depression? Are we ready to shift our behavior, step out of children’s way, and allow more room for Play-Making in their lives?
Here’s how we start
Putting Mary Oliver’s poem, “Instructions For Living a Life” into action
Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
Give it a try!
Pay Attention
Slow down and quietly observe your children’s Play-Making in small, everyday moments. What do you notice about their social, emotional, physical, and intellectual engagement?
Be Astonished
Take time to appreciate the sublime wonder of childhood. Allow yourself to be called back into the joy of your own play and making as a child
Tell About It
Take a moment to share what you noticed, appreciate, value, and wonder about your child’s Play-Making. Share a story about your own play-making in the world. What we notice and name creates more of the same.
Our Book Helps!
A Play-Makers’ Play-Book provides specific language designed to support meaningful conversations with your child centered on Play-Making. It uses an A – Z structure to help you notice and name Play-Making in action, evoke stories, and engage in “do now” power moves that encourage your child’s natural way of being in the world and wakes up the Play-Maker living in you!
You have power
Parents/Caregivers – you are your children’s first teachers and have the power to allow them to freely explore, experiment, and discover the world around them in their own way.
Teachers – you are designers of learning opportunities, and have the power to incorporate Play-Making into their instruction in a manner that honors all children’s voices.
Community members – you have the freedom to engage children as Play-Makers outside the standardized systems of schooling.
LET’S BE PLAY-MAKING ADVOCATES TOGETHER, NOW!
We can free ourselves and our children from misguided ideas about how children learn and grow so they can develop into whole, unique beings from the inside, out. Play-Making is every child’s right. It is not a privilege.
Who we are
Diane and Katrin have a combined six decades in education as teachers and instructional designers serving kindergarten through college-age students. As educators, parents, and community members they understand that engaging in many forms of Play-Making are vital to the development of healthy children who feel confident, whole, understood, and capable of having an impact in their world.
Diane and Katrin believe the opportunity to critically and compassionately engage in their world through Play-Making is a right, not a privilege, that belongs to every child.
Katrin and Diane are deeply concerned about educational systems impacting schools that severely limits Play-Making in children’s lives, and determines their capabilities and potential through high-stakes, narrow, and often unjust measures.
Mounting scientific evidence indicates that lack of play directly correlates to rising anxiety and depression in children, which disables their learning and sense of agency. Diane and Katrin believe that parents, teachers, and community members can work together as Play-Making advocates to contribute to a more humane and just education for children. They have a right to understand and develop their potential, and fully participate in creating a more beautiful world.