Friday Free Play : Yay Or Nay?
A question that has come up a few times over the last 12 months is over the concept of “Friday Free Play” sessions for children in school settings. This concept is often layered with prefixes ranging the titled “Free Play Fridays” to “Loose Parts Play Fridays”, “Risky Play Fridays” and “Nature Play Fridays”… The questions I receive are often predicated on the idea of the viability and success of this as an initiative to support more and better play in schools. Despite the almost always good intent behind such programs there are a few hiccups that can occur I thought sharing in an effort to foster some critical reflection on the topic. The anecdotes and examples are those shared from actual settings for consideration…
The Build Up: Often when play of a novel type is withheld, and then offered in short bursts it can cause heightened engagement with said play. Consider a child at their infrequent trip to an amusement park. This is no different from having the proverbial carrot of something fun waved at you all week. The irregular and build up offering of play on a Friday can lead a mad rush and heightened engagement. This is exacerbated further when these play sessions are relatively short further demanding to the child’s psyche to get stuff done and fast!
Hoarding & Competition: The build up can result hoarding and fierce competition over loose parts or other play resources. Competition and hoarding are a natural part of the play process. However, in natural play environments that are regularly visited children have time to develop patience, time to develop empathy, time to start considering things like sharing, compromise and so forth. The likelihood of these benefits occurring in a once a week scenario is dramatically reduced. Sadly, in pilot and new loose parts spaces this often even causes negative perception towards the resource itself as “not working” in the way the adults had desired.
Rewards & Punishments: Not a common one but far from the realm of nonexistence either is using end of week play as a reward system, or the other side of the coin, the lack of acces a punishment for other actions during the week. This approach is a slippery slope as play itself offers so much therapeutic and psychological outlet for children that denying it to a child based on misadventure or undesired behaviour becomes quite counter intuitive.
Children’s Rights: Further to the last, our own UN charter for the rights of the child demand play as a right. Not when your good, or when time allows, but as a basic and necessary human right. A right, cannot and should be used as a reward, or a punishment.
Revisiting Play Frames & Narratives: Friday provision almost always comes hand in hand with pack up scenarios. While this may be the present feasibility in a lot of settings, rich narratives and depth of play can simply take time, even beyond one play session. This is a huge piece of advocacy for leave out situations that children can evolve, grow into and refine.
Overall, hand on heart, a huge salute to any school setting currently experimenting with adding more play into the repertoire. Please just consider that finite offerings can cause more problems than they solve and spaces that are readily available and resourced on a daily basis (while coming with some initial perspective challenges), offer far more for the children, their experiences, and in the end the appreciation for the spaces by the adults that must manage and supervise them.
Angus Gorrie