Tuesday, November 18, 2008

The Importance of Play

I read this interesting article this morning about the negative effects of school age kids not having enough time to play anymore. If your kids are in school, I highly recommend you read it! One thing it mentions is that the experts feel a lack of play contributes to diminished innovation and creative skills. Let me say that Singapore is evidence of the truth of this article! The kids in school here are pushed SO hard. All free time is wrapped up in "tuitions" (extra classes) with no time to be kids. The result is a society that is intellectually solid, but lacking in creative and initiative taking skills.

I am more and more convinced these days that homeschooling is a great thing. Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn't do more work, since homeschool usually only takes up half the day. Reading this article reminded me that all that play time is a necessary part of their development.

2 comments:

Angie @ Many Little Blessings said...

I know what you mean -- sometimes I worry when we are done after just half a day's worth of work. But, then I try to remember how much time of the eight hours my kids used to be gone was taken up with other things (one hour of bus time round trip, transitions, taking the whole class to the bathroom, interuptions, saying what page to turn to about 10 times, lunch, blah blah blah). We just get to work and get to business.

Thanks for the reminder that play is important. :)

Christin said...

Thank you so much for posting this...I am going to pass on the story. So important to let our children be creative in their own way!