Snow Days are an excellent antidote to play deprivation.
It's another Snow Day for our local schools today. A day of universal rejoicing around here. Of course, unexpected Snow Days add inconvenience for adults. For me, that means scurrying to reschedule interviews and arrange last minute sitters, but most of all I feel relief. My kids now have the Gift of Time.
Time to pursue their own ideas. Time to follow passions and whatever's most fascinating to them right now. Time to be themselves. Time to Play. And for me, a Snow Day is also an emotional day off. It means I can give the kids what they most need without bucking the system.
I'm a proponent of short school days. I believe some school is good, just not too much. Kids have so much learning to do that is truly self-directed. What they most desperately need from us adults is TIME. Time without schedules, time constraints, demands and commands. Time guided only by daily cycles of sleeping, waking, eating and family chores.
I know short school days work. My high school had only 4 regular school days. Wednesdays were internships and time off. My elementary school had 3 recesses. Morning recess, afternoon recess plus an hour at lunch. With a six hour school day, that meant class time was only four hours.
Do you know the work of Peter Gray? He beautifully explains the benefits of children's play. How telling, as he says, that people cry cruelty when we do experiments on animals to deprive them of play, yet for the last 50 years we've been doing a massive experiment of systematically depriving our children of play. It makes me shudder.
Standing up for the right to play takes courage. It means skipping team sports. It means adjusting adult work schedules and income. It means purposefully taking children out of school some days and saying no to homework. It means partnering with teachers and having those difficult conversations. It means letting your child go to the park alone.
As Mark Twain said: "Never let formal education get in the way of your learning."
For us, it also means celebrating Snow Days.
Read more about the social, emotional and moral value of play in Peter Gray's work. Find more of play's benefits and ways to preserve play in "Don't Steal Play" the opening chapter of It's OK Not to Share or read reviews.
So glad you shared this with your readers Heather. It is a fantastic article that I wish was required reading for every educator and policy maker.
Thanks for sending it on, Elizabeth!
Perhaps the policy makers need it most. So many teachers understand play's value but have a lot of requirements to follow.
So true. And not to mention the absurd amounts of homework children have to do. How are children supposed to find themselves or explore what they want if they have no private time or ME time? It blows my mind that more people don't think about how their own children spend the majority of their time. The excuse that all that time is required to learn is refuted when one realized it only takes about 100 hrs to learn to read, write, and do basic math. My children unschool.. and it's the most wonderful gift I could have possibly given them. We don't have to make jokes about going someplace we dislike every single day until the age of 18.
This is really meaning of life, isn't it? How we spend our time, both as children and adults. Life is the gift of time and we have to decide what to do with it.
Glad the unschooling works for your family. Good for you! Though I know school can be marvelous - I loved my elementary school so much that I was sad about weekends - so school can be done right.
I agree but in Calif. Even in the suburbs I would never let them go alone to the park. Sad sign of the times out here.
I hear you. Every neighborhood has its own situation and I know you'll find another spot for your kids to gain that independence.
Hooray for snow days, free time, play, and homeschooling! We cherish our "open space" time around here too and consider it the very best gift. When I was in college I took a wonderful class team taught by three professors from different disciplines. They included "open space" in our schedule — a classroom period for which nothing was planned. Those "open space" days resulted in some of the most memorable and through-provoking conversations I remember. It was a lesson well taken!
Love your story of open space days. What wonderful professors to recognize the value of open space time and the life long lessons you obviously absorbed so well.
I agree. Letting a child use their brains and bodies for what they want to do, instead of following the exact instructions on a page, will hopefully encourage creative thinking. Even in my little 15 month old babe, I find that she is learning more new things just by entertaining herself, rather than by me sitting down with her and trying to have her put the puzzle pieces in the correct spot.
Good to learn this early on! So glad you are giving your daughter space and time.
We were remembering you fondly this evening Heather and your fantastic presentation you gave us! Tomorrow we are hosting Peter Gray for our conference. Another wonderful learning opportunity supporting the importance of play! Stay warm!
Enjoy every minute of your time with Peter Gray. Thanks for your fond remembrances. Keep opening doors in Iowa!
Thanks again for spreading the renegade word to the world, Heather. The US education system needs a massive overhaul and you have many of the answers to the questions that everyone doesn't quite know how to ask because they don't understand one of the root problems with regard to education--the inability of a rigid system to cater to millions of individuals.
Yes, if we weren't such darn individuals...
I loved snow days as a child. I wish I could stay home on snow days with my child. I work and it would mean using up one of my precious vacation days that I like to save for summer vacation, time off at the holidays, school field trips, etc. I am a big proponent of less school, more play and the like. But these snow days are so hard on working parents. It is easier for us to buck the system and take a sick day if we need a day off.