The Genius of Play

Some of you know me on here (Founding member of the TNRC etc) and some of you don't (my name is Tim, I'm 48 years old and I like to ride bikes). Its time to call on you all for a little bit of help.
I work in Early Years Education with 2-5 yr olds and specialise somewhat in 'play'. I am currently embarking on a business project of which more will be revealed. For the purposes of this thread I don't want to give too much away, not because I think anybody will take my idea but I don't want to influence what I want you to contribute to this thread as it will act as research. Essentially I am looking for forum members to write about your earliest or most significant memories of play. Please feel free to write as much or as little as possible. It will be very beneficial if you could include details of time and place, for example 'building sites in the 1970's. It's an absolute passion of mine and love how play is fundamental to human development and appreciate just how heart warming and interesting each individual's memories of play can be. Those of you with children of your own (you have a wonderful few years ahead of you now Mr Cornelius) will be well aware ( or perhaps not) of the genius of play. To start this off I will post my significant memories of play.

The place is Banbury a small market town in North Oxfordshire. The time ranges from the late 1970's to the mid 1980's. I lived on a new housing estate on the very edge of town. Our back garden literally backed onto farmers fields and the open countryside. I moved to this particular estate when I was six and so did many other families with children ranging from 0-16. for the next ten years the estate I lived on was in close proximity to a new building site with other houses and estates being added to ours. Back in those days building sites were never fenced off at all. First the big earth movers came and scraped the land leaving enormous mounds of earth and rock on the fields. Local children would wait for the builders to leave and then we would take over. When the landscape was mounds of earth that usually entailed climbing steep mud banks, throwing stones down at others and skidding down. Games of 'war' would inevitably be arranged with Germans defending the mound from the Allies. We got to crawl under, climb over and sit on the JCB's and the 'digger dumpers' and pretend to drive them. Soon after the builders would dig the trenches for the foundations and we would take over this new landscape with our choppers and try leaping them by building makeshift ramps. Then as the houses started to take shape the building materials were ours to use withing reason. Bricks, wooden boards, scaffolding boards, plastic sheeting, pallets, nails etc would be used to build dens. Often carted off to nearby fields and woodland for den building also. As the house took shape and became two story affairs wrapped in scaffolding with roofs but no windows or doors, we would chase around inside or high up on the planks, leaping into piles of sand below. We got dirty, we often hurt ourselves but we never wanted to go home in case mum pulled out the TCP.

Ok. Your turn.
None of your anecdotes will be used in presentations or training etc without your permission

we used to have a small gang of kids ranging from 6 to 16 big brothers with little anoying brothers.
I was an anoying little one tagging along.
crab apple wars is one I remember, there were loads if crab apple trees in the village and when they dropped it was amunition for throwing stuff, teams were made up and the day was spent each team stalking the other if caught there was no mercy. I rember getting caught under pallet made table top BMX ramp and getting peppered. there were tears but the next day i wanted to play it even more.

the home made table top was fun too, as soon as you could ride with out stabilizers we could cruise the village under no supervision it was freedom, and home made ramps were soon made jumping over stuff was boring so we graduated to people. I was v proud of my older brother getting the record one day.
my 1st ramp jump ended in nose first crash lots of cuts bruses but lots if fun.

This stuff can be really interesting, I did 3/4 of an nvq in playwork before the people hosting the course went bust, gave me a great insight into using structured play as a learning tool and support for other learning. People have a much higher rate of participation in an activity they perceive as fun and are far more responsive and engaged when that delicate balance of strucutred learning and fun is achived.

I have just started a job teaching kids 2 to 6 sports and seeing how they pick up stuff through games is interesting, I had done football training to older kids but the younger kids is far more interesting esp seeing how they rember certain things.

I've done the same with balance bikes at that age, a 1hr "lesson" that is a 2min talk on the most basic of ground rules followed by a series of races/challenges that each encourage a skill to develop and then a 2min talk at the end to ask what they found fun and just remind/tell them what they have learned by rewording how we describe the games.

1 - "long jump" balance over bike, run upto a line and see who goes the furthest, developes balance
2 - "grandmothers footsteps" that game where you turn around they need to sneak up behind you then you turn back and they freeze/stop, practice braking.
3 - "stop on the line" ride along then using the brake try and stop with the front wheel on a line, teaches about improves accuracy when braking
4 - "relay races" mix it up a bit ride across playground stop+dismount, hop/skip/run/jump/whatever back, encourages them to ride more and improve mounting/dismounting
5 - "assault course" a small circuit usually with some cones to slalom around and a little down hill, improves control

A million and one ways to cheat the games and ensure everyone feels they are winning for maximum participation, do the races as teams so even the slowest gets to be on the winning team or just judge on "style" and award to whoever.

Didn't "teach" them anything, just playing games, have had that as both a compliment and then as a criticism from bemused teachers who quietly said sorry when they understood the planning behind the games.

yes! the grandmother's footsteps is something we use also the kids love it. and can be used for quite a few sports football is a good one to get them to keep the ball close and freeze as we turn round.
from my short time doing this I've found kids love to run, freeze, Chuck stuff, be silly and give them a goal / hoop they instincivly want to put the ball in or through. oh yeah they love to tidy up the cones and stuff too.
the amount of almost upsets we get because they all want to put the cones away is crazy so you have to be on hand to share out the tidying !

Love the crap apple memories @Rich_G

Cowboys and Indians, War as previously mentioned and Doctors and Nurses. Climbing trees and falling out of them. Scouring the rough and o-o-b areas of the golf course to find balls to sell to the club shop. Then we could buy lemonade and fags and have a picnic in the park.

It's not my earliest memory, but when I think of playing. I think of the time in the early 2000's when I was around 8-12 years old.
A friend of mine and I used to go to the woods near our houses and build dams in the streams.
We called it "environmental work" but it was really just sealing off the stream to create a reservoir and the letting it loose again just before the water rose above the dam.

reading this triggered memories that we used to do that too, alao our village used to flood a lot, I rember acquiring a pics of thin ply and skim boarding the flooded roads before I knew what skim boarding was. the basic game of who can go the furthest

edit. also early 2000's when I was 8 ~12!!!
...now I feel old.

I grew up in late 70's early 80's in the countryside with no immediate neighbours, so no other children to play with apart from my younger sister who had a fascination with Cindy, and I'd have rather eaten dog poo that play with that dizzie blond (the Cindy not my sister before I get kneecapped if she sees this!).

I remember getting really irate as I would often find my sister had high-jacked one of my Action Men and he would be sat down at tea party with Cindy, vom, instead of his normal action activities of being thrown out of trees, off barns, into streams and fighting the enemy. Cindy did however have a cool red Range Rover which Action Man occasionally commandeered for missions, but Cindy was never invited.

Another abiding childhood memory was playing for hours in a hay barn, making endless forts and dens, secret tunnels and hidden rooms, and recreating endless siege scenarios with an entirely make believe cast.

But I think where I spent most of my time was in the old shed. We lived on a farm and there were lots of old sheds and buildings, but this one was clearly the oldest, it wasn't actually used for any farming purposes anymore just for storing junk. One of the side walls had crumbled down and the tin roof was loose all over and rattled in the wind, the whole building was dark, damp, creaky and spider ridden, but crucially it also had the broken up remains of about 5 cars, and various bits of old and broken farming equipment. I spent many, many, many hours just rearranging all the cars parts on the shed floor into my own new creations, sports cars, spaceships, Mad Max type battle vehicles, never actually attaching the parts but placing them in endless configurations with various seating configurations into vague shapes. When my folks ever wondered where I was, this shed would be the first place they'd look.

I did not have well off parents and did not have many toys, and didn't have many other children to play with. Obviously I had mates from school and stuff but these were all a drive away so no impromptu play. But this didn't seem to matter, I absolutely loved my childhood, I think it was idyllic. Great play can be had with something as simple as a stick, just add some imagination.

Good luck Tim, whatever it is you are doing, anyone involved in working with children is underpaid and chronically undervalued but totally awesome in my book.

Some might think that lots of the play we've described above could be seen perceived as being 'unsafe'. I guess we may have thought that was part of the appeal, but more likely we didn't really think of the consequences at all. Falling over and getting hurt is part of the learning curve isn't it?

Which just reminded me of being back in shires during the recent beast from the east winter storms. My old school friends now have their own kids, some of which are going to our old high school. I was mortified to discover recently, like properly outraged wanting to write a letter to the school and the EU outraged, that during the lunch breaks the children were not allowed outside to play in the snow. WHAT!!! Health and Safety stopped play. The reason given was that not all of the paths had been gritted, there were numerous playing fields and acres of space to run around, but all the kids were kept inside for fear they may slip over on a few tiny side paths. Bearing in mind there was shit loads of snow all around before they even got to school that day, if such an sterilised approach was taken by the kids and parents, none of them would even have got to school that day. I really felt sad for them, we don't get snow very often, is there not an inalienable right to play in the snow? There fucking should be.

Great post 75204. Thanks for that.
Most schools shout H&S without really finding out if there is a rule prohibiting whatever it is they think they aren’t allowed to do. Schools are decidedly risk averse in all aspects when there really isn’t a need to be