How is play "school"?

Welcome! I am so happy to have you here with me while I go on this little walk down memory lane. My name is Moira, and this is an event that I did for 3 years in Albany. It was a wonderful, very successful event that happened in Washington Park, and I had a lot of fun doing it. I was very blessed by having a photojournalist offer to donate her time to come capture what was happening. It was one of those situations if you weren't there, it's kind of hard to understand how incredible, you know, it really was. It started with a handful of people, you know, around a tree in a park to by the end there were about 250 people that were showing up. And I would see the same kids' faces You know, month after month. I did it, I did it once a month during the summer months, and it was really beautiful. So this just, this shows what kind of learning happens in play, and I'm excited to go back over it. So a woman, Katie Lovering, is who did all of this photography, and I highly recommend her. She's local here in Rensselaer County. So what I was doing was basically bringing a whole bunch of loose parts to a place. So this is where creativity really happens. A lot of things that don't have a singular purpose, and we're just around them with time to just be and let the creativity happen. So when you teach a child something, you take away forever his chance of discovering it for himself. So I wanted to have, you know, no teaching in the sense of, you know, someone telling you what to do, telling the kids what to do with the things. I just wanted to see what played out. So this is an idea from post-World War II where they would take these old bombed-out sites and let the kids play in them. So, you know, these kids had you know, lived through the war, and they just needed a space to call their own to be creative and to, to do what kids do best. So this is a group of kids that had moved around several different places using this in different ways. This is the side of a crib, a crib that someone gave me when my son was born and I never used. Not even once. So they were carrying it around, you know, doing different things with it. And then, you know, it was great the photographer was there and she followed them around and she happened upon this. So allow them to explore their ideas. Nobody knows what's happening at this point. The kids probably, you know, they have some ideas, but they don't necessarily know, you know, what they're doing or what they're going to do. So one thing that I think is very cool about this is we see the different ages together. One of the main things that I see in, in this day and age is that we want to segregate kids. So we've got a little 3-year-old there in the back. These boys in the front are 7, I think, 6 or 7, and they are— they're all working together fine. So, you know, kids grow up. If you've got siblings, you've got kids of different ages. But other than that, outside of our family, we segregate kids. So, you know, on one hand we know that segregation is bad, but it's bad everywhere in my opinion, not just, you know, in, in different specific situations. So we need to see more kids being able to play together. The little ones learn from the older ones. The older, the older ones, you know, can teach, can share what they're doing. So that was one of the best parts of this pop-up is I said it was From 0 to 11-year-olds, come, you know, join. And it really made it, made it extra special. Let them create their own plan. Again, it's not super clear what's happening, but they've got some ideas of what they want to do. And we're just the, you know, you don't see parents up there getting involved. It's giving space, letting it just play out how it needs to play out. Encourage them to be curious. Again, you'll see the parents, they're there, but they're not, you know, involving themselves in the process. Allow them to take risks. Risk is— the word risk and children is a scary word for a lot of people. We want to prevent them from You know, getting hurt. We want to protect them. There's a difference between a risk and a hazard. Now, I'm never saying drop a 2-year-old into a room with razor blades. That's a hazard. I'm not encouraging that. But risk is very important. And risk assessment— kids develop risk assessment as they grow. And when they're prevented from having those experiences, that's when there's going to be a problem. If they haven't had a chance to really understand their body and how they are in space, you know, when they get older, they can get into situations they can't get themselves out of. It's like climbing up on something, you know, climbing a tree. If you climb up it, you can climb down it. And being okay with stepping back and letting them figure that out. Risk assessment is a lifelong skill. We really need to have it. Many times in our life. So this is where they're practicing it. This is where they're learning it. They need a chance to be able to try, and if they fall, it's okay. We're not talking broken bones. This, you know, a few feet up in the air is ultimately not going to be a problem. Give them time to work on their ideas. So kids, kids now just really have a very scheduled life. It's event to event to event. You know, kind of private tutor, private tutor, private tutor kind of a thing. You know, when we go from sporting events to, you know, class, classes all the time, there's just not a chance to just be free, head out in the backyard anymore. You know, come back at dinnertime, which again, you know, if you're over 30, you had an experience of, you know, come back before it gets dark. Come back for dinner. But other than that, you were out playing with your friends. And kids just don't get that experience anymore, for the most part. There's definitely exceptions to that rule, but for the most part, they don't. Give them freedom to test their ability. We as adults a lot of times have ideas about what's going to work and what's not going to work, and we want to, you know, I think save them time. It's very, very well intended. We want to save them time. We want to help them see how that's not going to work. But that's not really how the learning will really stick and happen. You know, you've got to try it. We all have. You've got to try something and screw it up big time. You have to try something and get hurt. That's where you really learn. You're not, you're not going to learn if you're just waiting for somebody to tell you how to do the next thing. And also, you know, we don't have that as adults. We don't have somebody saying, oh, go, you know, do it this way, or go over that direction to do it. So again, these— this is when these skills are being built. If we don't have— if we can't build them now, when are we going to build them? Allow space for them to communicate and work together. Again, 2 incredibly valuable skills as adults. This is the perfect opportunity. We're looking at it as play, but they're learning and practicing how to communicate and work together. You know, everybody's going to have a different opinion, and they're going to have to figure that out. Perfect, perfect place for learning here. Support them by stepping back. Just, you know, give them space, give them the ability to you know, try to figure it out on their own. Be an example by observing. You know, again, I've said this before, but having the different ages together is incredibly valuable because kids can learn certain things from adults, of course, but they learn so much from kids that are just a bit older than them. So of course we want to have kids in their life that are not, you know, setting a bad example Um, but that's, you know, that's such a great way to foster, you know, figure— figuring things out when you're watching, when you're watching somebody else do it. And it feels more attainable when it's, you know, a year older, 2 years older, 3 years older than you versus an adult. Enjoy their brilliance and let them inspire you. So they created a swing here. And then they changed the swing, and it was great for this. This is when I walked over and I saw this happening, and I tended to roam around during these to kind of observe a lot, as many things as I could, and to talk to parents. But they changed it, and then the younger kids would climb up and test out what the older kids did. I think that the best thing we can do for our children is to allow them to do things for themselves, allow them to be strong Allow them to experience life on their own terms. Very important. Play is often talked about as if it really— it were relief from serious learning, but for children, play is serious learning. Okay, so this is a few other things that were happening during that same pop-up. This is the same boy that we saw before. I really love this one. It kind of freaks out a lot of people, but he said when he did this, he goes, look, I made a catapult, and I love it. I think it's fantastic. Nobody's losing an eye. It's fine. We all talked about how cardboard boxes— the kid likes the cardboard box more than the toy. But we still buy the toy. The cardboard box is like the perfect toy, really. You can get a refrigerator box and turn it into a house. You can get, you know, a box this side, and it's so many different things. I love this one. She's using a bike tire as a hula hoop pretty successfully. So now there's a few pictures here that are not from Katie, and I would like to be very clear, these are my Or other parents' photo skills at other pop-ups. But I wanted to include them because I think— include them because they think that they really capture something. But this, this was at every single pop-up. It was the playground guidelines for parents: let children play freely without direction, let them— give them space for creativity to happen, and allow them the opportunity to get dirty. By the end of the Second summer, parents were bringing changes of clothes because when paint was involved, they were getting it. They were getting covered. It was great. This is actually a form for pouring concrete. I don't remember how I came across this, but I was always out looking for different things, and this was a hit. I think it lasted 2 pop-ups. which is pretty impressive actually with as much play as it got. One of my pet peeves is stuffed animals, like plush hammers and screwdrivers for any age. I don't care what age. I don't like it. I like this. I like this real hammer, figuring it out. This is actually a piece of Styrofoam from a friend's electric bike that they got, and it was the perfect density. It was a perfect density to hold the nail and give it some resistance but not be too hard, so he could really figure out how that hammer worked. And nobody helped him get there. He, you know, he put the pieces together. I think I ended up pulling like 50 nails out of this piece of Styrofoam by the end of this day. Um, but it was dense enough that they didn't— it was still structurally strong enough. It lasted a couple more pop-ups. And then this one, I just, oh, I love this one. This was an example of the older boys creating something and the younger kids, you know, came and explored it afterwards. There was an Infinity Stone somewhere on it. But this, I, oh, if I could have picked the whole thing up and put it into the storage unit just like that, I would have. I couldn't, but I would have. I loved it. I love the fact that the steering wheel is suspended. Everything about it I love. And he's just so happy. There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about. So this is an image from that pop-up that Katie was at, you know. And so what we saw play out with the swing was happening in many different ways. Here. It's 3 hours, you know. I— 9 o'clock, I think it started at 10 AM. 10 AM would hit and you'd see the people coming from all directions. It was amazing. And a lot of people stayed through the whole thing. And, uh, it was just— it was just a really beautiful experience. So this is Katie again, an amazing, amazing photographer. So that Is an example of how much learning can happen in play. So I think a lot of times play is, is made into this kind of frivolous thing that we fit in in the after hours. And play is really— it's a, it's a major, it's a major piece of childhood. And really, how much happier would adults be if we all felt like we were playing when we were doing work? And we were really doing something that we loved and were passionate about. And this is an opportunity to observe our kids and to see what they're interested in. Some kids, if they're wanting to build something, um, you know, maybe it helps us see who is this child in front of me and what are they interested in and how can we foster more of those things in their life. So that's really Also what unschooling is. So that's a different conversation, but it's really that we all inherently have things that we're interested in, and we're all designed to want to learn things. So if given the opportunity, we can, we can, we can build that. And it's not about testing it. It's not about textbooks. It's not about all of these things that I think we've been told Or what an education is. It really comes from the inside of who we are, and it's looking at children as being— it's a couple different ways of thinking about it. One is, is that a child is this empty computer that must be downloaded with all the hardware and software to perform. And the other, and in my opinion much more favorable view, is that each child is like a seed. So a seed doesn't need to be told what to do. It needs healthy soil, it needs nutrition, it needs sunlight, you know, it needs love, and it can blossom into what it is meant to be. So thank you very much for taking the time. Hope you have a wonderful— I'm gonna say wonderful evening, but you could be watching this in the morning. So thank you very much. I will talk to you later.