BellaOnline Forums Health and Fitness Pediatrics Is play important?

This year there have been many reports and studies on the need and importance for more playtime in kids. For those of you with school age kids, how have you juggled signing your kids up for extracurriculars while preserving time for family and unstructured play?

A side question would be: is play and unstructured time really important?

There will be some interesting reports on this topic in the next 2 weeks and I'll post them once they are published.

Best,
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Of course it's important, and I think it's kid of scary that more parents and teachers don't get this.

I have a master's degree in elementary education and I believe children learn best through play and real-life activities. One of the reasons I was so glad to be out of the public school system was that any sort of play time was pretty much nonexistent thanks to high stakes testing. Then the children had homework as well which interfered with playtime at home.

Children need completely unstructured down-time just as much as adults; and focused play is the best way to learn--especially for the early childhood set.

THere's nothing quite as frightening as seeing 8-10 (or even older) year olds with stress headaches, chronic stomach complaints, and other stress related items.

I had one student recently who was 15 and had already been treated by his physician several times for ulcers.

Its unreal the pressure they face!

Lynn,

When I was teaching 3rd grade, I had one student vomit on the day of standardized testing. This was a huge wake-up call for me, and I started working for FCAT reform the next week.

I totally agree with you.