From a child's play, we can gain understanding of how he sees and construes the world--what he would like it to be, what his conce...rns are, what problems are besetting him.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The playing adult steps sideward into another reality; the playing child advances forward to new stages of mastery....Child's play... is the infantile form of the human ability to deal with experience by creating model situations and to master reality by experiment and planning.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Pessimism ... is, in brief, playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only view of life in which you c...an never be disappointed. Having reckoned what to do in the worst possible circumstances, when better arise, as they may, life becomes child's play.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... for the modern soul, for which it is mere child's play to bridge oceans and continents, there is nothing so impossible as to f...ind the contact with the souls dwelling just around the corner.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
PLAYING SHOULD BE FUN! In our great eagerness to teach our children we studiously look for "educational" toys, games with built-in... lessons, books with a "message." Often these "tools" are less interesting and stimulating than the child's natural curiosity and playfulness. Play is by its very nature educational. And it should be pleasurable. When the fun goes out of play, most often so does the learning.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A child is born with the potential ability to learn Chinese or Swahili, play a kazoo, climb a tree, make a strudel or a birdhouse,... take pleasure in finding the coordinates of a star. Genetic inheritance determines a child's abilities and weaknesses. But those who raise a child call forth from that matrix the traits and talents they consider important.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They [parents] can help the children work out schedules for homework, play, and television that minimize the conflicts involved in... what to do first. They can offer moral support and encouragement to persist, to try again, to struggle for understanding and mastery. And they can share a child's pleasure in mastery and accomplishment. But they must not do the job for the children.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A new world of complex relationships and feelings opens up when the peer group takes its place alongside the family as the emotion...al focus of the child's life. Early peer relationships contribute significantly to the child's ability to participate in a group (and in that sense, society), deal with competition and disappointment, enjoy the intimacy of friendships, and intuitively understand social relationships as they play out at school, in the neighborhood, and later in the workplace and adult family.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Quintilian [educational writer in Rome around A.D. 100] thought that the earliest years of the child's life were crucial. Educatio...n should start earlier than age seven, within the family. It should not be so hard as to give the child an aversion to learning. Rather, these early lessons would take the form of play--that embryonic notion of kindergarten.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »