Bing Nursery School Play Symposium
By Betsy Koning, Teacher
Four hundred teachers and parents learned about the value of play at Bing Nursery School’s first symposium on the subject. The event, held July 12, 2014, included lectures on why play is important, opportunities for discussion and, of course, time for play.
The school staff had spent time brainstorming ways to get this information to a wide and diverse audience. One popular idea was to offer a play symposium with expert speakers explaining how and why play is important, chances to experience learning through play and opportunities for parents and educators to discuss the topic of play and share ideas. This idea came to fruition as a daylong event.
The day began with a presentation by Stuart Brown, MD, author and founder of the National Institute for Play. His session, held in Cemex Auditorium, started with video clips of a variety of animals at play, which supported his message: Play is natural and crucial for all living creatures. He further defined play as something not constrained by time that produces a sense of bliss, is done for its own sake, is important to the essence of being, damps down or deters violence and is a state in which the right sides of the participants’ brains get in sync with one another, thereby promoting harmony and bonding. He went on to discuss different types of play in which humans engage—physical, social, celebratory (e.g., giving high fives), ritual (e.g., enacting wedding), aesthetic (e.g., dancing) and narrative (e.g., storytelling)—and the developmental value of these different varieties. Brown concluded by explaining the consequences of play deprivation and noted, “The opposite of play is depression.”
Before the next talk, symposium participants had a chance to go outside and play in the grassy area in front of the auditorium. The activities included projects such as making straw and paper rockets described by Tinkerlab, a blog and book by Bing parent Rachelle Doorley. Participants could also use hula hoops (made by the Bing staff) and balls for open-ended activities like twirling, rolling and throwing.
The group returned to the auditorium to hear Stanford neurosurgeon Jamshid Ghajar, MD, PhD, president of the Brain Trauma Foundation, speak about the need for play in healthy brain development. “Play is an adaptive neurobiological drive to establish predictive timing in interactions that will serve as the timing construct in learning,” Ghajar said. In other words, play gives the brain practice anticipating what information is coming in and what information is most important, and therefore, needs to be attended to first—a skill necessary for survival. Ghajar maintains that this skill is developed and practiced through play.
More opportunities for creative play were in store for participants. Activity leaders gave everyone three minutes to construct an “invention” out of common objects—like bottle lids, plastic boxes, pipe cleaners and paper clips—they pulled out of paper bags. The “inventors” then shared their creations and insights about the process with one another. As the inventors worked, members of the Bing staff provided inspiration and entertainment by taking the stage and performing an improvisational skit about the passage of time and feeling rushed.
The final speaker of the day was Joan Almon, a veteran kindergarten teacher and the founding director of Alliance For Childhood, which promotes policies and practices that support children’s healthy development, love of learning and joy in living. Her presentation detailed how play is integral to children’s physical, social, emotional and cognitive development. She equated a child’s play to a scientist’s experimentation in a lab and said that even failed play experiments are valuable because they offer just as much opportunity to learn as successes. Almon challenged the audience to advocate for play in our nation’s schools.
Next on the schedule was a panel discussion. Almon, Brown and Ghajar answered audience questions, elaborated on the value of play and explored how best to disseminate the message that time to play is a necessity in children’s lives. This was followed by a video illustrating a day at Bing Nursery School, and then by an invitation to an open house to see the school itself.
Once at Bing, guests got a closer look at the environment and materials used in the school’s play-based program. Participants and staff shared ideas about how to provide children with open-ended play activities and where to find economical and effective materials to do so. Also open to visitors were two art installations by Bing parent and artist Jung Eun Lee. The works were inspired by children’s play and storythelling. (See photos below for more information.)
Upon a Time…,” top, and “How Far…(3469),” above, by Bing parent and artist Jung Eun Lee. The first installation features children’s stories; the second is a wound-up rag ball of 3,469 inches of recycled strips of Lee’s daughters’ outgrown clothes, the distance Lee’s daughter walked in one afternoon at Bing.