Take More Time To Play

 

I was thirty years old when this photograph was taken. We had returned to the United States so that I could work on the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory National Ignition Facility project, and my daughter was learning English.

The room tells most of the story. There are alphabet cards, pictures, books, a chalkboard, a globe, I’m wearing steel-toed boots 🥾 and my daughter smiling from behind a small desk with a FedEx packaged neatly tucked between building blocks and building minds. I am standing across the room, also smiling, which suggests that whatever lesson I had planned had already become something else.

That happened often. It still happens. 

Children learn through repetition, but they also learn through movement, surprise, imitation, exaggeration, sound, and play. A word becomes easier to remember when it belongs to a story. A sentence becomes less intimidating when it is spoken by a puppet. A mistake becomes part of the game and therefore something we can examine, repeat, and laugh about together.

The play did more than make the lesson enjoyable. It gave her mind room to work out basic algebra equations using a scale, dice 🎲 and toys 🧸. Writing ✍️ equations came naturally, after we balanced the amount of cookies 🍪 each got. 

That is the part I want to explore next.

Play creates a temporary space in which the ordinary rules can be loosened. A cup can contain imaginary tea. A stuffed animal can answer a question. A familiar word can be stretched, repeated, mispronounced, and turned around until its shape becomes clear. The mind is still learning, but it is learning through possibilities rather than through a single required path.

That freedom is closely related to creativity.

A novel thought originates in a first draft. It begins as a connection between things that had previously remained separate. One idea brushes against another. Whoops! Excuse me 😉 

A memory enters from somewhere else. A word suggests an image. An image changes the question. The mind follows the association for a while and discovers that it has arrived somewhere new.

Play gives that process time. 🎢 

Moral of this post: Take more time to play.