My Connections to Play

The world is your playground.  Why aren't you playing?       -Ellie Katz

 “As astronauts and space travelers children puzzle over the future; as dinosaurs and princesses they unearth the past. As weather reporters and restaurant workers they make sense of reality; as monsters and gremlins they make sense of the unreal.” ~ Gretchen Owocki (childhood educator)

Stuffed animals in general were always a must

Barbie dolls went everywhere with me!

I loved to color and draw

I will never forget this toy

Great pass time for my brother and I

The original Little People

While growing up, play was something that my parents supported whole-heartedly. Our basement was full of toys that used our imaginations and our backyard was always filled with friends. We built sandcastles in our turtle sandbox and pretended to fly to space on our swing set. My mother would even take time out of her day and come downstairs and play games with my brother and me. She would be the student when I wanted to be the teacher and she would build pirate ships with my brother and me when we were dreaming of the ocean.

Play today is so much different than it was when I was a child. Now children are sitting at computers or in front of the television with video games. When I was young, that time was limited and then we were told to go outside and play. Now it seems that there are barely any kids playing outside. You have children talking about playing Halo and Call of Duty when the games I played were Sesame Street and a Barbie game on the computer. Walking around a store, you can see the toy section getting smaller and smaller and the video game section getting bigger and bigger.

Play made me realize who I wanted to be when I grew up. I was always playing school and as I was teaching my younger cousins, my parents would tell me how great of a teacher I would be. Even at a young age, I would come up with fun ways to teach the concepts that I already knew. I would get such enjoyment from teaching that for birthdays I would ask for chalk and workbooks so that I could be a more realistic teacher. Play also gave me a chance to get away from the world. We didn’t always live in the best of areas and playing was the chance to get away from it all. As I grew older, play started to change. It turned into sporting events and playing games on the computer (still in limited amounts). As an adult play time is limited, but I still take the time to go swimming, play with my little cousins, and play computer games. Play for me now, is the time I take to relax. I don’t think about anything else and just enjoy what I am doing.