When I was a child I used to play on my mum and dad’s bed with my sister. The bed was a boat and we were stuck out in the middle of the ocean. We had all the supplies we needed to survive. Every so often a storm would brew and we would need to build a sturdy shelter to withstand it. Once that was done we would then set up our supplies readily accessible for when we needed them in our newly built shelter. And then the game was over. We had survived.
Cut to now as an adult. Although I can recollect the game vividly, it is the feeling of playing that game that has stayed with me the most. The security I felt under that shelter, the certainty of having enough supplies and someone else there to go through it with. I find myself drawing on these memories today as we navigate this current storm of uncertainty and I am realising the significance of my play as a child- having already played out these familiar feelings of isolation and survival. As adults we could look at that play frame as being trivial with little or no consequences. As educators though, we are taught to extract outcomes. Lets ask ourselves what outcomes we could extract from watching children play the above game? Effective communicators? (agreeing on and sourcing supplies) Gross motor? (building a shelter) In fact the “outcome” was so profound and so intangible that no adult could have guessed that what it really gave me was a strength and a controlled measure when faced with a future pandemic! The truth is we as adults can never ever fully determine what each child ‘gets’ out of their play or how they will draw on it in their future. And instead of trying to over intellectualise play by assuming outcomes (because we so often miss the mark) we should be respecting it more deeply and endeavouring to understand the immense amount of power it holds in each of our lives.
Having the ability to tap into our childhood memories of play is extremely powerful and one that us as educators must be doing on a regular basis in order to better respond to and create play affordances for the children we are working with.
