Children’s Play Becoming Restricted
It’s the same old refrain - Kids aren’t allowed to be kids anymore. Karen Uhlenhuth of The Kansas City Star has more on the crisis of children’s play.
Playing up playtime: It’s kids’ learning gift
These are hard times for child’s play:
Testing pressures have squeezed much of the play out of kindergarten, according to many activists and researchers. And those pressures are even trickling down to preschools.
Parents worried about their children’s safety — and maybe hankering for some time to themselves — keep them indoors, often tethered to a television, a computer or a video game.
And children’s toys — and their fantasy lives — run heavily toward licensed characters derived from videos and television programs created in someone else’s imagination.
All of which is to say: Whatever happened to making mud pies?
I don’t know about mud pies but my son’s digging around in our garden right now having a jolly time. Guess I’m doing something right. ;)
Tags: children, kids, mud-pies, parenting, play, Playgrounds, playing, toysRelated Stories
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8 opinions for Children’s Play Becoming Restricted
Deb L
Sep 6, 2006 at 9:05 am
LOL! I had to clean mud pies off our front steps this past weekend. While I’m a fan of people learning throughout their lifetime, I’m not such a fan of “education” when it takes the form of ‘parrot answering questions on a test’. I’ve been following some of the articles in the Times on the subject. Scary to think of kindergartners and first graders being subjected to routine standardized testing!!
SP
Sep 6, 2006 at 10:28 am
Oh, I remember mud pies and that lead to memories of baking them on the seats of our swings. And I remember actually having fun at school. I have great memories of being a kid. We were allowed to go exploring for hours. No one thought anything of it then!
And the whole homework issue… that’s gotten really out of hand!
Kerri Aldrich
Sep 6, 2006 at 11:34 am
Makes me glad that we took the afternoon off from schooling so she could play with her brothers. Alright, alright, truth be told, they’re watching a video together. But that’s because one has been sick, so we all have to stay in together! (And mommy wants to check her e-mail.) :D
Hsien-Hsien Lei
Sep 7, 2006 at 12:26 pm
Deb: Only mud pies? I had to clean cat poop one morning and we don’t even have cats! YUCK!
SP: Parents are seriously over the top nowadays.
Kerri: Ack. I hope those sicky bugs have flown away.
Mike
Sep 11, 2006 at 7:31 am
Losing playtime for kids early in school is really starting to frustrate me. How do they think Kindergarteners learn stuff? Everything to them is a game. Plus, the second they try to make my son sit for a full day without letting him run around in the middle of it is the day they will regret cutting play time. Even making my daughter sit still all day will be virtually impossible without her starting to bounce off the walls.
Pass the Torch
Sep 11, 2006 at 8:31 am
This is very true. I try to keep a lot of things unstructured at home so our kids just play then. I think we’re missing the boat on some things. But when education is bound by test scores, teachers have little choice.
Kelly
Home of Pass the Torch Tuesday
Hsien-Hsien Lei
Sep 11, 2006 at 12:25 pm
Mike: That’s one thing my son’s school here in London is good about. They seem to spend an inordinate amount of time outside in the playground. Antithetical to most Asian educational methods. lol
Pass the Torch: Yeah, testing is a scary beast, isn’t it? I also hope I can let my son have lots of free time even as he gets older. Hope I don’t succumb to peer pressure - cram schools and all that. ;)
Kailani
Sep 11, 2006 at 1:37 pm
So true. My Mother keeps talking about a doll she made herself when she was little. It was her favorite toy.
My kids will not play with anything that they haven’t seen on tv or saw in an ad. I think I may have to do something about that soon!
Here via Carnival of Family Life.
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