Why Less School is Good

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.

Squeezing Play

Kids need large BLOCKS of time to create meaningful play.

We know kids need time to play, but how much time? As much as possible. But what's key when we talk about play time is protecting BLOCKS of time.

When I visit many "play-based" programs to observe, I see actual play - free, unstructured, child-initiated play - squeezed in between multiple structured activities. Sometimes play is only given 15 minutes. A sort of "in between" time while the adult sets up the next structured activity.

Other programs, especially ones based in elementary schools, are chock full of transitions. Children may get play time, but it's constantly interrupted by scheduled appointments such as gym, art, music, snack, language study, circle of friends, etc. These special classes may be worthy, but they also break up the young child's day.

Children need blocks of time to play. Researchers have found that blocks of 1-2 hours or more are ideal. Studies by Dr. James Christie and Dr. Franics Wardle show that shorter play periods (less than 30 minutes) reduce the complexity and maturity of kids' play. Kids will still play in short, squeezed bits, but they drop sophisticated play. Short play is still good, but when the sophistication level drops play loses many of its benefits.

Teachers at the School for Young Children have found that preschool kids need at least 45 minutes to get into really good play. And once deep play has started, kids need more time, well beyond that 45 minutes, to expand and develop that play. The game needs time to play out.

I recently visited a cooperative preschool in Ann Arbor. Their daily schedule included a set snack time in the middle of the morning. After hearing about the benefits of blocks of play, the school switched to an open snack. Kids could eat if they were hungry, but playtime wasn't stopped. What an amazing difference! Suddenly the morning play time transformed. Children got deeply involved with play. Ideas and language skills blossomed. "Thank God we got rid of snack time," one parent said. "So this is what uninterrupted play looks like."

We can do this in our homes, too. Be aware of how many outings and transitions you place in the day. It's fine to go out, but strive to preserve blocks of time in the day.

We all need this. Adults, too. Open time to develop our own ideas.

Do you have big blocks of time? How can you create 1-2 hour blocks so kids can develop sophisticated play?

Interested? Learn more about the values of free play in It's OK Not to Share...And Other Renegade Rules.

Who are you?

Every day is Halloween for young kids - dressing up is essential identity play.

One of the most bothersome questions I heard when I was young was: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" It's an age-old question, but not that useful. When you're 3 or 6 or 10, the vague, faraway, grown-up future is too remote. What's more relevant is: Who are you now?

That's why I love the holiday of Halloween. It may have its origins in spooks and spirits, but for young kids it's about dressing up. Costumes are key to a child's heart because costumes are about identity. Current identity.

A costume lets kids become their dream now. Not some far off day in the future, but today. The world of dress-up lets children explore roles they admire, identities they want to try on, action figures that are exciting or powerful. A child may not want to grow up to become a skeleton or Darth Vader, but she wants to experience the power of being that figure. Kids may seek glamour by being a sparkly princess or become something that's impossible in real life - a kitten or a dragon.

What does it feel like to have wings? To be magic? To be able to scare adults? To dress like a real fire fighter?

For some young kids, Halloween takes place every day of the year. My five-year-old changes dress-up clothes often three times a day. One moment he's a pirate, the next a soldier or a mermaid. Dressing up is essential play for exploring interests and identity.

Every preschool classroom and childcare program needs dress-up clothes on hand. Every home with young kids needs a stock of dress-up props, even old shirts and hats. These are props for exploring self.

As Bev Bos says, "Kids never fail because of a lack of intelligence. Kids fail -- human beings fail -- because they don't develop a sense of self."

We need to make room for the costume part of Halloween all year.

As you prepare for Halloween, remember how much costumes reflect identity. Take time to ask children about their costumes and marvel about who they are. Who they are today, and every day, one at a time.

You can read more about children's need for power, props and imaginative play in chapters "Give Kids Power" and "Boys can wear Tutus" in It's OK Not To Share...And Other Renegade Rules.

What were some of your favorite costumes? Did your parents ever disapprove of a character you wanted to be? What do you think of your own child's dress-up choices?