What Experts Say
We want to know what the children think, feel, and wonder. We believe that the children will have things to tell each other and us that we have never heard before. We are always listening for a surprise and the birth of a new idea. This practice supports a mutual quest for understanding. It is a practice of searching together for new meaning. Together we become a community of seekers.
~Louise Boyd Cadwell, Bringing Learning to Life
Play allows children to use their creativity while developing their imagination, dexterity, and physical, cognitive, and emotional strength. Play is important to healthy brain development.
~PEDIATRICS Vol. 119 No. 1 January 2007, pp. 182-191
Play is thinking time for young children. It is language time. Problem- solving time. It is memory time, planning time, investigating time. It is organization-of- ideas time, when the young child uses his mind and body and his social skills and all his powers in response to the stimuli he has met.
~James L. Hymes, Jr., child development specialist, author
It is becoming increasingly clear through research on the brain as well as in other areas of study, that childhood needs play. Play acts as a forward feed mechanism into courageous, creative, rigorous thinking in adulthood.
~Tina Bruce, Professor, London Metropolitan University
When schools and families work together, children have a much better chance for success, not just in school, but throughout life.
(Henderson & Berla, 1996, p. 1)
Play is the highest expression of human development in childhood, for it alone is the free expression of what is in a child's soul."
~Friedrich Froebel
"You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation."
~Plato
Play is the highest form of research.
~Albert Einstein
Wisdom begins in wonder.
~Socrates
You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.
~Clay P. Bedford
"Experience isn't the best teacher. It is the only teacher."
~Bev Boss
Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury. Play is a necessity.
~Kay Redfield Jamison, Contemporary American professor of psychiatry