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Posts Tagged ‘play’

A Parent-Child Library Design

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 8, 2022| 7 Comments »

Art: Mary Cassatt.
One of these young women is supposedly the grandmother!

Today I thought I’d post this story on a very nice way for a mother to spend a few hours. It’s about a library specially designed for parents.

Casey Parks writes at the Washington Post, “Janelle Witcher thinks of the library as her second home. She’s a single mom who lives in Richmond [Virginia], and a few times a week, she drives her four children to Henrico County’s Fairfield branch. It’s a place where her children can learn and she can use a computer or socialize with other parents. Plus, she said, the books calm her children down.

“ ‘I go there just to let them see a different view, a peaceful view,’ she said.

“When Witcher’s oldest children were younger, they used to visit a different branch on the other side of town. She’d sign up for one of the computers in the lab, and she’d hold one baby or two as she tried to answer emails or look for job opportunities. Using the computers always felt difficult, though. As soon as Witcher started to type, one of the babies would reach over and mash the keys.

“Eventually, multitasking wore Witcher down. She cut back on her visits, but she missed the calming stacks, and her oldest children needed a place to do their virtual schooling. She started going to the new Fairfield branch last year, and the first time she visited, she noticed that someone had fixed her most vexing library problem. They’d installed a second computer lab in the children’s section, and this one had adult desks with a playpen attached.

They’d installed a second computer lab in the children’s section, and this one had adult desks with a playpen attached. …

“The Henrico County Public Library system installed the workstations as part of a $29 million rebuild of the Fairfield branch. Voters overwhelmingly supported a bond to pay for the facility, and as library administrators began designing it, they asked families what they wanted to see in the new 44,800-square-foot space.

“Immediately, said Barbara Weedman, the library director, one trend emerged: People no longer viewed the library as just a place to pick up a book. The branches were places to gather, and families needed them to be more kid-friendly.

“Weedman worked with architects at Quinn Evans, which has offices in D.C., Baltimore, Detroit, Ann Arbor, Mich., and Richmond. Together, they designed a children’s section with arts-and-crafts rooms, collaboration spaces and furniture short enough to allow parents to see their children across the room. They added rocking chairs and a lactation room, and then, as the architects finalized their plans, they asked Weedman whether community members needed anything else.

“Weedman was also once a single mom, and she and other library staff had long noticed mothers like Witcher trying to work on the computers while holding a child. …

“The old computer lab model didn’t work for those parents, Weedman told Shannon Wray, a senior interior designer at Quinn Evans. And it didn’t work for other patrons, either, who needed a quiet place to work or apply for jobs. …

“Wray searched, but she couldn’t find any ready-made furniture that addressed the need, so she asked a small company in Ann Arbor to build something new.

“Blake Ratcliffe and his wife, Sherri, have been designing children’s furniture for 25 years. They work with education experts from New York University and Montessori groups to create pieces that facilitate early learning. When Wray called, the Ratcliffes knew they wanted to come up with a new kind of work carrel — one that suited parents, but was also safe and educational for babies and toddlers up to 2 years old.

“The result is something they now call the Fairfield Parent+Child Carrel. It has a maple veneer plywood desk with privacy panels on one side and a crib on the other. They built the carrels from nontoxic materials durable enough to sustain the kind of frequent cleanings library workers do now, and in the crib, they installed a soft, vinyl mat made of health-care-grade materials. The inside play space has a mirror and interactive panels that librarians can switch out when babies need new distractions. …

“When the library opened in October 2019, mothers ‘made a beeline’ for the four carrels, Weedman said.”

More at the Post, here.

Photo: Chris Cunningham via Curbed
The Fairfield carrel was designed by Sherri Moore and Blake Ratcliffe to help caregivers with young kids in tow better access their local library.

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Learning From Play

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on April 11, 2022| 8 Comments »

Photo: Carlos Magno/Unsplash.
Remember when we weren’t so hyper about Covid germs? My kids loved this.

I tend to pounce on articles about the importance of creative play for children (in this 2020 post, for example). I have seen the value of play in my own life and in the lives of my former students, my children, and my grandchildren.

Also, I read Dickens, who was a leader in encouraging imagination and who wrote about its value often — not just in his education novel Hard Times, where he calls for “Queen Mab’s chariot among the steam engines.”

Jackie Mader writes at the Hechinger Report about a study on “guided” play, which has the advantages of free play and a bit more.

“What happens when you stop teaching young children via direct instruction and instead set up purposeful opportunities to play? They could learn just as much — or more — when it comes to literacy, numeracy and executive function skills critical to early academic success, according to a new review of 17 studies of play.

“Researchers looked at 39 studies of play and included 17 in a meta-analysis that found when children ages three to eight engage in guided play, they can learn just as much in some domains of literacy and executive function as children who receive direct instruction from a teacher or adult. …

“Guided play [means] there is a learning goal set by an adult and children are ‘gently steered’ to explore. The study found children also learned slightly more in some areas of numeracy, like knowledge of shapes, and showed a greater mastery of some behavioral skills, like being able to switch tasks.

“These findings, which were published in the journal Child Development, add to a growing body of research that has found play is not simply a carefree tangent to learning, but rather an effective way to teach important early skills.

“ ‘Children often struggle with mathematical concepts because they are abstract,’ said Elizabeth Byrne, a co-author of the study and a research associate at the University of Cambridge, in a statement. That’s why the hands-on nature of play may be helpful. Those concepts ‘become easier to understand if you are actually using them in an imaginary game or playful context.’ …

“Last year, a report by the LEGO Foundation that looked at 26 studies of play from 18 countries found play is so powerful it can reduce inequality and close achievement gaps between children ages 3 to 6. Those studies, which also looked at free play in addition to guided play, found children progressed in several domains of learning, including language and literacy, math and social-emotional skills.

“While direct instruction gets information across quickly and is effective for certain skills or lessons in a classroom, ‘real learning’ occurs when children are active and engaged, said Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a professor of psychology at Temple University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. That’s why play can be so effective. … ‘What it’s really about here is can we teach human brains in the way human brains learn,’ Hirsh-Pasek said.

“An added benefit is kids enjoy play more than sitting and listening to an adult talk at them. ‘The kids are happier, the teachers are happier. It’s teaching them more about how to collaborate and communicate,’ she added.

“In the years prior to the pandemic, some states and districts were bringing more play into schools by creating play-based kindergarten classrooms. It was an attempt to move away from the rigorous, academic-focused kindergarten classrooms that emerged in a nation concerned about low reading scores and meeting the Common Core standards.

One top pre-K researcher recently called for more play in pre-K amidst concerns that state-funded pre-K programs involve too much direct instruction and not enough time spent outside. …

“Ideally, guided play involves forethought in setting up play opportunities based on a learning goal, but it doesn’t necessarily require extensive adult interaction. For example, if a climbing structure is painted to show units of measurement, children may take notice and talk about how high they’re climbing. Or if kids are trying to learn addition and subtraction during lesson, throwing a giant number line on the ground and letting children jump forward or backward becomes a guided play activity.

“Teachers or parents ‘become guides on the side,’ Hirsh-Pasek said. ‘When we interact too much and become helicopter parents, the kids check out,’ she added.”

More at the Hechinger Report, here.

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The Importance of Dolls

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 12, 2022| 8 Comments »

Photo: Suzanne’s Mom.

Dolls were an important part of my childhood, figuring prominently in what I called My Little House, a neglected corner of our third floor, and later in My Little School. So I was interested in recent research my husband saw about a role dolls can play in any child’s life.

Hannah Devlin reported at the Guardian, “Playing with dolls encourages children to talk more about others’ thoughts and emotions, a study has found.

“The research suggests that playing imaginary games with dolls could help children develop social skills … and empathy. The neuroscientist who led the work said that the educational value of playing with Lego and construction toys was widely accepted, but the benefits of playing with dolls sometimes appeared to have been overlooked.

“ ‘When children create imaginary worlds and role play with dolls, they communicate at first out loud and then internalise the message about others’ thoughts, emotions and feelings,’ said Dr Sarah Gerson, a neuroscientist at Cardiff University and the lead author.

‘This can have positive long-lasting effects on children, such as driving higher rates of social and emotional processing and building social skills like empathy that can become internalised to build and form lifelong habits.’

“The study, funded by the manufacturers of Barbie and published in the journal Developmental Science, involved 33 boys and girls, aged between four and eight who were given a collection of Barbie dolls and accessories such as an ambulance or horse to play with.

“They were left to play spontaneously, but their speech was monitored and they were also fitted with a specialized cap containing a form of brain imaging technology called functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). The technique measures changes in blood oxygenation by shining light through the skull, which makes it possible to track brain activity while the subject is freely moving around.

“The study found that the children talked more about others’ thoughts and emotions, a concept known as internal state language, when playing with the dolls, compared with playing creative games on a computer tablet, such as a hairdressing game or a city-building game with characters.

“They were also more likely to address the dolls in the second person, talking to them directly, whereas the characters on the computer screen they tended to refer to in the third person. No difference was observed between boys and girls. …

“Benjamin Mardell, who researches the pedagogy of play at Harvard Graduate School of Education and who was not involved in the work, said: ‘The hypothesis that playing with dolls provides a scaffolding for young children to take the perspective of another, even if that other is inanimate, seems very reasonable.’ …

“Mardell added that the findings ought to apply to any kind of role-play toy, rather than being specific to Barbies. ‘I’d take a broader view of what a doll is,’ he said. ‘[It could be] any object that the child can invest a sense of other into – a stuffed animal, an oven mitt that talks to them, or even an imaginary friend.’

“Children typically start to show signs of internal state language around the age of four. At this age, they begin to voice their thoughts aloud, indicating that they are considering the thoughts, feelings and desires of themselves and others.

“ ‘These skills are really important for interacting with other people, learning from other people, and navigating a variety of social situations,’ Gerson said. ‘It becomes important for making and sustaining friendships, and how they learn from their teachers, and parents.’ ” More at the Guardian, here.

I’ll just add that dolls or “role-play toys” can be important to a child for other reasons, too. When I was a teacher, a mother told me about my student’s hostility to the family’s new baby. The girl was acting out (calling for help) when she kept throwing a baby doll off the dollhouse roof. I myself probably cherished dolls as substitutes for the baby that left our home when I was four. Long story. The point is that dolls become real little people to a child, and the thoughts and feelings experienced with the little people are important.

You might also like this NPR story on the importance of free play in preschool, here.

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The Importance of Play

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 19, 2020| 8 Comments »

Playing in the snow, Rhode Island, December 2020.

One of the many downsides of this dratted pandemic is that, for some schools, snow days are a thing of the past. My Massachusetts grandchildren had school online after the blizzard. The Rhode Island ones were told to go out and play. Play matters.

Andreas Wagner writes at Nautilus, “Because thinking minds are different from evolving organisms and self-assembling molecules, we cannot expect them to use the same means … to overcome deep valleys in the landscapes they explore. But they must have some way [and] one of the most important is play.

“I don’t mean the rule-based play of a board game or the competitive play of a soccer match, but rather the kind of freewheeling, unstructured play that children perform with a pile of LEGO blocks or with toy shovels and buckets in a sandbox. I mean playful behavior without immediate goals and benefits, without even the possibility of failure.

“Play is so important that nature invented it long before it invented us. Almost all young mammals play, as do birds like parrots and crows. … The world champion of animal play may be the bottlenose dolphin, with 37 different reported types of play. Captive dolphins will play untiringly with balls and other toys, and wild dolphins play with objects like feathers, sponges, and ‘smoke rings’ of air bubbles that they extrude from their blowholes. …

“Where the benefits of play have been measured, they can make the difference between life and death. The more feral horses from New Zealand play, for example, the better they survive their first year. Likewise, Alaskan brown bear cubs that played more during their first summer not only survived the first winter better, but also had a better chance to survive subsequent winters.

“Some purposes of such play have nothing to do with mental problem solving. When horses play, they strengthen their muscles, and that very strength can help them survive. When lion cubs play-fight, they prepare for the real fights. … In mammals, play goes beyond mere practice of a stereotypical behavior, like that of a pianist rehearsing the same passage over and over again. When mammals stalk, hunt, and escape, they find themselves in ever-new situations and environments. …

Play creates diverse behaviors, regardless of whether that diversity is immediately useful. It prepares the player for the unexpected in an unpredictable world.

“That very flexibility can also help the smartest animals solve difficult problems. A 1978 experiment demonstrated its value for young rats. In this experiment, some rats were separated from their peers for 20 days by a mesh in their cage, which prevented them from playing. After the period of isolation, the researchers taught all the rats to get a food reward by pulling a rubber ball out of the way. They then changed the task to a new one where the ball had to be pushed instead of pulled. Compared to their freely playing peers, the play-deprived rats took much longer to try new ways of getting at the food and solving this problem. …

“One hallmark of play is that it suspends judgment so that we are no longer focused on selecting good ideas and discarding bad ones. That’s what allows us to descend into the valleys of imperfection to later climb the peaks of perfection. But play is only one means to get there.”

Read more, including ideas on the role of dreams and mind-wandering (sometimes called incubation), at Nautilus, here.

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To Applaud, Please Honk

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 15, 2020| 2 Comments »

Photos: Luna & Stella
Drive-in version of the dramatic production Constellations in Providence.

A few nights ago, Suzanne attended a drive-in theatrical performance in Providence and posted photos to her Luna & Stella account on Instagram. She went “with” a friend. That is, Suzanne was in her car, and her friend was in another car. The husbands were at home babysitting.

Suzanne’s understanding from the article she had read was that the play had something to do with an illness, maybe not too far from what we are all dealing with now. She had no idea that the illness in question was the one my sister died of a year ago. All illnesses are metaphors these days.

From Susan McDonald’s special report to the Providence Journal: “Two years ago, when Josh Short assumed a role in ‘Constellations,’ it was in the black-box space of Wilbury Theatre Group, where he is artistic director, framed by walls and a ceiling, the audience an arm’s length away.

“When he next slips into the persona of Roland, half of a romantic duo grappling with love and pain against the shifting backdrop of the cosmos, there will be a limitless feeling to the stage and, hopefully, a twinkling drape of actual stars overhead.

“Wilbury and Short teamed with WaterFire Providence to bend the constraints of traditional theater environs and follow the governor’s COVID-safety directive in taking the show outdoors.

“Fueled by a grant from the state’s Take it Outside initiative, the groups offer a new take on Nick Payne’s play ‘Constellations’ through Dec. 19 [in Spanish on Dec. 18, thewilburygroup.org]. Audiences will stay in their vehicles and listen through their radios while a production crew streams multiple angles of the performance on a 40-by-30-foot screen.

“While ‘Constellations’ is staged simply without set or props, Short says the challenge in restaging it has been to maintain the intimate feel of romance. …

‘We stylized it to combine original elements because the intimacy is important. This is a love story about connections and missed connections.’

“Compelling outdoor performances are the bailiwick of Barnaby Evans, WaterFire’s artistic director, who long wanted a towering screen for outdoor movies and artistic performances. The social distancing guidelines in place during the COVID-19 pandemic provided even more impetus. …

“The screen worked well for smaller productions, but he says ‘Constellations’ called for more advanced planning and elaborate production elements, such as four cameras. …

“The story’s health crisis — the female character Marianne, played by Rachel Dulude, grapples with serious illness — also parallels COVID.

“ ‘With COVID, we really understand connections versus distance and random versus determined,’ Evans adds. ‘The context makes the play much, much richer. … Artists thrive on creative challenges, and we just make the safety of the audiences and production team front and center.’ …

“Being safe means tapping CVS for twice-weekly COVID-19 tests for the cast and production crew and working with an epidemiologist on a plan to minimize risk, Short says. The actors union demanded proof of their efforts before granting project approval.

“ ‘It took months to get their approval, and there were hoops to jump through, but you’ve got to drive forward,’ Short says.”

Driving forward. That’s another metaphor for our times.

More here.

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After Cleaning Out the Closet

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 9, 2020| 4 Comments »

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Photo: Tiny Theatre
Rachel Burttram Powers and Brendan Powers, actors married to each other, created a theater in their closet for these self-distancing times.

Sandra’s dear departed mother had the best recipe for boredom: Go clean out a closet. Sandra cleaned out a lot of closets as a kid, and now as an adult, she is never bored because she knows how to find something more interesting to do.

When I was a kid, I was one to play in the closet rather than clean it and had many tea parties with Carole, accompanied by flashlights, cinnamon toast, and dolls.

Today’s story is about two actors, married and stuck at home in the pandemic, who did both: They cleaned out a closet and then played in it.

Sarah Tietje-Mietz reports at American Theatre, “The stage lights glow like dozens of small stars while the countdown to curtain plays over the intercom. … The actors come together, separated by mere inches, so close that their knees bump and their shoulders touch, so close that they have to lean back to even look at each other.

“The stage is a 4-by-4 closet, lit by a string of Christmas lights. … The audience is all online. Welcome to Tiny_Theatre.

‘I think there’s a need for humans to connect, maybe more than ever,’ said actor and Tiny_Theatre co-founder Rachel Burttram Powers. ‘Toni Morrison says that it’s the artist’s job to create in a time of crisis, you know? We created this out of necessity.’

“Tiny_Theatre is the passion project of Rachel and her husband/co-founder, Brendan Powers, as a response to the shuttering of all theatres in the wake of COVID-19. The couple perform from the guest room of their Fort Myers, Fla., home three times a week — Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays — on Facebook Live. …

“Rachel and Brendan have established a network of playwrights to tap into for their newest project. Some writers have even reached out directly with suggestions of work. Rights for the plays have all been granted gratis to the couple. …

“In early March, Rachel and Brendan were in the final dress rehearsal for Florida Rep’s production of Lucas Hnath’s A Doll’s House, Part 2. The theatre closed its door the next day. Though the couple’s turn as Nora and Torvald was recorded and streamed online, the two found themselves suddenly faced with an abundance of time and artistic energy.

“ ‘We were sort of in that mindset as performers,’ Rachel said. ‘We were ready to go eight shows a week. Suddenly it was like a needle pulled off the record.’

“Added Brendan, ‘A couple days in, once we knew we were canceling the show, I could see Rachel — I can tell when she’s thinking of something.’ …

“Back to Rachel: ‘I started cleaning out a back closet because I thought, “What would happen if you made a theatre at home?” We knew everyone was self-isolating. We both have a passion for new plays, and we have a lot of playwright friends who are very well established, and I just thought, “Let me just send an email to see if people would be game to play with us.” ‘ …

“There is evident respect in the way they communicate, not just as a married couple but as professionals in their field. Playwright Arlene Hutton acknowledges this interplay as creating an environment akin to a mini-repertory company in Tiny_Theatre. Hutton was already familiar with the couple, having worked with Brendan when he starred in her work, Running, and seen Rachel in Florida Rep’s production of Audrey Cefaly’s Alabaster. … ‘They’re not trying to make it more than it is, you know?’ …

“On March 21, Tiny_Theatre debuted with scenes from Cefaly’s Maytag Virgin. This inaugural performance was also the couple’s first Facebook Live experience. (Brendan did not even have a Facebook account at the time.) Their setup was a smartphone, a broken tripod, and a paint stirrer, all literally held together with duct tape. …

“The technical system has since been upgraded, which they credit to the community that has bloomed around Tiny_Theatre. Friends, family, followers, and even strangers have sent gift cards (resulting in a new iPad) as well as printer paper and toner (for printing and notating scripts). …

“There’s a goofiness and levity to these two, a palpable happiness for the work they are doing. Silliness aside, the two have dedicated years to honing their craft onstage. In such close proximity, their acting is distilled to their voices, the acuity in their facial expressions, the gentle placement of a hand, through which they transport their viewers beyond the confines of their closet.

“ ‘That’s been tricky,’ Brendan said of the lack of mobility. ‘As we read a scene — you’re an actor, you start to feel it, and then you get put in that situation where you can’t storytell physically or only very, very minimally.’ …

“It was this challenge that attracted Nathan Christopher, who found out about Tiny_Theatre through the Playwright Submission Binge online community and became enamored with the project after just one viewing. The Powerses accepted Christopher’s submission of his recent play A Man Walks Into a Bar, performing it on April 6, as well as Clairvoyant, which came from an open call they put out that asked writers to create short works inspired by a single photo they provided as a prompt.”

Read more here.

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Riding Hobbyhorses in Finland

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on July 6, 2019| 16 Comments »

hobbyhorse-dispatch-slide-w7o4-jumbo

Photo: Dmitry Kostyukov for the New York Times
A girl performing during a hobbyhorse competition in Helsinki in March 2019.

Now here’s an unusual pastime: hobbyhorse competitions. Who knows how these things get started with kids? They make up their own fun. It starts out as private play, under the radar, and before you know it, it’s on TV.

Ellen Barry reported from Finland for the New York Times. “A dozen girls waited in line in a Helsinki arena for the dressage competition, ready to show off their riding skills, their faces masks of concentration.

“The judge put them through their paces — walk, trot, canter — and then asked them for a three-step rein-back, that classic test of a dressage horse’s training and obedience. The judge looked on gravely, occasionally taking notes.

“If anyone thought it strange that the girls were riding sticks, no one let on. The make-believe world of the hobbyhorse girls extended as far as the eye could see.

“A veterinarian lectured girls on hobbyhorse vaccination schedules, saying ‘check that the eyes are clear and there is no nasal discharge.’ The girls discussed hobbyhorse bloodlines and hobbyhorse temperaments, hobbyhorse training routines and hobbyhorse diets. There were rhinestone-studded bridles for sale. …

“ ‘The normal things, that normal girls like, they don’t feel like my things,’ [Fanny Oikarinen, 11,] said. But she is at home in the world of hobbyhorses, where boys and grown-ups have no place.

“Fanny and her friend, Maisa Wallius, are training for summertime competitions. They have choreographed a two-part dressage routine to a song by Nelly, the rapper. Asked which types of girls are drawn to hobbyhorses, Maisa thinks for a while before answering.

“ ‘Some are sports girls,’ she said. ‘Some are really lonely girls. And some can be the coolest girl at school.’

“It is impossible to say exactly when the Finnish hobbyhorse craze began, because it spread for years under the radar before adults became aware of it.

“In 2012, a filmmaker, Selma Vilhunen, stumbled across internet discussion boards used by hobbyhorse enthusiasts and was enraptured.

“Teenage girls had invented a form of hobbyhorse dressage, in which the rider’s lower body pranced and galloped like a horse, while her upper body remained erect and motionless like a rider. This evolved into an elaborate network of coaches and students and competitions, but it was discussed only online, for the most part.

“ ‘It was like a secret society,’ Ms. Vilhunen said.

“One of the girls she sought out as a guide to the hobbyhorse scene was Alisa Aarniomaki, a teenager from a city on Finland’s west coast.

“Leather-jacketed and fuchsia-haired, Ms. Aarniomaki was a celebrity in the online world for her hand-sewn hobbyhorses and riding videos, but she was apprehensive about letting her classmates know about it. When she was 12, some friends happened to spot her practicing in the woods near her school, and teased her for playing a child’s game. …

“When Ms. Vilhunen’s documentary film, ‘Hobbyhorse Revolution,’ was released in 2017, it captured its subjects in long spells of raucous joy. This was important to the filmmaker, who has made adolescent girls the focus of much of her work.

“ ‘Little girls are allowed to be strong and wild,’ she said. ‘I think the society starts to shape them into a certain kind of quietness when they reach puberty.’ …

“Within the rapidly expanding community of enthusiasts, the problem of ridicule really doesn’t come up. ‘I haven’t run into that sort of situation in a long time,’ [Ms. Aarniomaki] said. ‘I live in a bubble that is filled with hobbyhorses.’ ”

More here.

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My Retro Thoughts on Toys

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 25, 2018| 8 Comments »

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Dolls that used to attend my “school.” I’m sorry to say that the book We Grow Up was pilfered from my second grade classroom.

On the third floor landing in the house where I spent most of my childhood, there was an alcove with a window and a couch. On nice days, the sun streamed in and revealed the perfect spot to set up a space of my own. I called it “The Little House” and hung signs around to indicate it was off-limits to everyone else.

In my space, which eventually evolved into “The Little School,” I set out all the toys related to keeping house or teaching school. The two pupils above I had received earlier. Susie, on the right, is still my favorite. She came into my life when I was 5. The cape is the original, but I don’t know what happened to the blue- and white-striped dress Susie arrived with, or her black shoes and white knee socks.

On the left is Toni, who when I was 7 brought along her hair curlers and styling lotion, courtesy of the Toni hair-perm company. I was an easy grader as a teacher but firm about hard work.

I suppose that whatever children most like to play with reflects their interests and is a way of practicing something grown-ups do that looks like it might be fun. I myself moved on from teaching dolls to using teaching as a camp counselor, a parent, an editor — and an actual teacher.

Nowadays, girls don’t seem to spend as much time with dolls, but nurturing remains a life skill worthy of being practiced by any child. When today’s small daughters enter the workforce (let’s say daughters for the sake of argument), will those engineering and truck driving jobs be the ones that are available? Young adults will probably invent new kinds of jobs, and who knows? Maybe nurturing will be useful in those fields, too. Certainly, there will always be a need for nurturing parents, caregivers, and teachers.

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Kids Putting On Shakespeare

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on November 27, 2016| 2 Comments »

Actor Finn Wittrock wrote recently at the New York Times about helping to start a mini Shakespeare company in the 1990s to entertain his parents and other theater professionals. He recalls with wonder his young self’s confidence of success.

“I was born in the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts. I lived there until I was 6, then moved to Evanston, Ill., and later to Los Angeles. But every summer for most of my youth, I would go back East with my brother, my mom and my dad, who most summers was acting or teaching for Shakespeare & Company. I would often be cast as a page or an altar boy in one of the professional productions.

“I went in lieu of a summer camp; I went to romp in the Berkshires, see old friends, get out of the city. But mostly I went for the Very Young Company.

“Starting at the age of 8 and until I was 16, my oldest friends and I would get together every summer: Rory, Reilly, Wolfe, and later my brother, Dylan, and Wolfe’s brother, Tiger (yes, their real names) would arrange five or six scenes from Shakespeare, rehearse them on our own time in the sun-drenched Berkshire afternoons and perform them for the adult company after one of their Mainstage shows. We began the company ourselves and it ended when we were no longer ‘very young.’

“For a kid, it was an epic undertaking; an outlet for pre- and post-adolescent energies. We were totally self-motivated; nobody told us to do it, which was in itself an incentive. We’d choose a scene based on our own criteria: Had the company done it before? Could we make fun of them for it? Could we put Reilly in a wig and have him play a girl? And, most important: Did it end in a sword fight? …

Sometimes I yearn to have the boldness of one who knows nothing, who jumps onstage for no other reason than because he is young and has a loud voice.”

Later in his essay, Wittrock recalls something the celebrated director Mike Nichols once said about his own early years: ” ‘Why was I so confident back then? I had no business being that confident.’ And yet he attributed most of his early success to that unreasonable confidence. …

“No one gave us permission to do the Very Young Company; no one ordered us to do it, and no one had to boost our confidence to do it. We just did it. We were just kids howling Shakespeare to the Berkshire trees, and our readiness was all.” More at the New York Times, here.

At one point in my  childhood, I, too, was confident. I thought, if my parents would only call the movie theater and set it up, four of us kids — the Gordons, one of my brothers, and I — would be a smashing success performing our version of “Snow White and Rose Red” before the feature. The grownups didn’t quite believe in it.

Some neighbors and I did perform an original play about a snowman for family members. One of the actors returned a copy of the pencil-scrawled script to me at my aunt’s funeral in 2002, decades later.

Photo: Lauren Lancaster for the NY Times
Finn Wittrock, right, and Rory Hammond, enacting the killing of Lady Macduff and her son in a mini-“Macbeth.” The young actors formed their own company more than 20 years ago to entertain their parents and other professionals at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass.

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Avant-Garde Grandparent Script

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on August 29, 2015| 4 Comments »

An experimental theater piece to test the Theory of Purposefully Divided Attention to Fend Off Meltdowns.
Cast: Grandma (G), Adult One (1), Adult Two (2), Adult Three (3), Small Child (Small)
Setting: Dinner table

G: Why is your hairdresser your hero?

1: She’s a real bootstrap entrepreneur. She’ll try anything.

G: Is that a blackberry in your popsicle?

Small: No, a blueberry.

2: Well, when you have kids, you can’t participate in every charity event or random partnership.

3: You have to prioritize, be strategic. Know when to say no.

1: But she has a great community reputation. She’s so upbeat.

G: I really think that’s a blackberry. Like Mrs. Rabbit’s in Peter Rabbit. Supporting everything in the community can add up.

1: It rolls up.

3: But you can waste a lot of time.

2: And energy.

G: People are grateful, though. If you’re strategic, you miss the kind of opportunities that you have no idea where they will lead. I like the way that popsicle drips right into the holder. It’s less messy.

Small: Do you want one?

G: I don’t want to take your last popsicle.

Small: We can make more.

G: Maybe after dinner.

Small: Let’s do it!

G: Careful — the juice is spilling. One and one and 50 make a million. It’s good to be open to serendipity if you possibly can.

2: There are only so many hours in the day.

3: Numerous small investments can’t get what one big investment would.

G: Do you want a napkin?

Small: I got a green popsicle at Whole Foods, but it dripped all over my dragon shirt. It was green.

G: There is nothing like a reputation for being upbeat and cooperative. I know where we can pick blackberries for the next batch of popsicles.

Small: But you have to add juice so it sticks together.

1: We now trade services. She does that with almost everyone. I feel like she could teach a class in entrepreneurship.

G: Teach one together, how about?

Small: Do you want a popsicle? Do you want one now?

G: Maybe after dinner. Look, that’s a raspberry. Or do you think it’s a strawberry?

Small: Do you want a popsicle now? I can go get it. We can make more later. Yes or no?

G: OK. Yes.

Small: Say, Please.

G: Yes, please.

Photo: Matthew Klein

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Actor Will Wash Your Dishes

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on August 25, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Maura Judkis of the Washington Post blogged recently about an actor who wants the opportunity to perform in your home and will throw in a surprising service.

Judkis writes, “Fringe Festival audiences have opened their homes to Brian Feldman. He has met their families and friends, admired their art, eaten their food, handled their precious china. …

“The premise for Feldman’s show, ‘Dishwasher,’ is this: He will come to a person’s house, wash all of the dirty dishes, perform a monologue of the audience’s choosing and then conclude with a single question: ‘Am I a better actor or dishwasher?’ The answer can depend on the monologue that he cold-reads — and on how crusty that casserole dish in the sink has become. The show — the first Fringe show to take place in private homes — has sold out its entire run. …

“His [work] follows in the tradition of great performance artists such as Tehching Hsieh and Marina Abramovic, but it’s more playful — and in his opinion, more theatrical.

“ ‘It’s hard to define — I’m straddling the middle, and I’m always pitching it as theater,’ he said. ‘I was always more interested in theater that had a concept that was hard to define, or things that didn’t have an ending, and didn’t necessarily have a beginning.’ …

“In the week of performing the show so far, he’s dealt with messes big and small. There was the Cleveland Park home with the too-small sink.

“ ‘It was hard to wash anything,’ he said. ‘They had a door that you could enclose yourself in the kitchen. I used it to comic effect, it was almost like “Noises Off.” ‘ …

“So far, five of his hosts have told him he’s better at acting, one has said he’s better at dishwashing, and two couldn’t decide.

“ ‘I’m trying to do as good a job dishwashing as I am acting,’ he said. ‘It’s subjective, just like art.’ ”

Read how Judkis and her friends got him to read “the character of Mrs. Pringle, who is fretting about a disappointing party, from the play ‘Fourteen’ by Alice Gerstenberg. ‘This is my last dinner party — my very last — a fiasco — an utter fiasco!’ ” here.

Photo: Maura Judkis/The Washington Post
Brian Feldman performs a monologue in the writer’s home.

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Kindergartens Revisit Playtime

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 17, 2015| Leave a Comment »

I read this NY Times article with relief. It seems that educators are returning to (or perhaps being heard about) the importance of play in learning.

Reporter Motoko Rich says, “Call it Kindergarten 2.0. Concerned that kindergarten has become overly academic in recent years, this suburban school district south of Baltimore is introducing a new curriculum in the fall for 5-year-olds. Chief among its features is a most old-fashioned concept: play.

“ ‘I feel like we have been driving the car in the wrong direction for a long time,’ said Carolyn Pillow, who has taught kindergarten for 15 years and attended a training session here on the new curriculum last month. ‘We can’t forget about the basics of what these kids need, which is movement and opportunities to play and explore.’

“As American classrooms have focused on raising test scores in math and reading … even the youngest students have been affected, with more formal lessons and less time in sandboxes. But these days, states like Vermont, Minnesota and Washington are again embracing play as a bedrock of kindergarten. …

“Still, teachers like Therese Iwancio, who works at Cecil Elementary School in Baltimore’s Greenmount neighborhood, where the vast majority of children come from low-income families, say their students benefit from explicit academic instruction. She does not have a sand table, play kitchen or easel in the room. …

“Traci Burns, who has taught kindergarten for the last five years at Annapolis Elementary School, said she was looking forward to retrieving previously banished easels.

“ ‘With the Common Core, this has been pushed and pushed and pushed that kids should be reading, sitting and listening,’ she said. ‘Five-year-olds need to play and color. They need to go out and sing songs.’

“At Hilltop Elementary, a racially and economically diverse school in Glen Burnie, Melissa Maenner said she had found that teaching kindergartners too many straightforward academic lessons tended to flop.

“ ‘They are 5,’ Ms. Maenner said. ‘Their attention span is about five minutes.’ ”

Read more here.

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Woodsy Nursery School in London

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 3, 2014| 2 Comments »

As a kid of 10 or so, I played in the woods, frequently all alone. It was magical.

As an adult, I wonder if it’s no longer considered safe. I don’t ever hear of children playing in the woods. That’s why I was interested to read about a growing movement called Forest Schools.

Siobhan Starrs writes for the Associated Press, “In the heart of north London lies the ancient Queens Wood, a green forest hidden away in a metropolis of more than 8 million residents. The sounds of the city seem to fade away as a group of children plays in a mud kitchen, pretending to prepare food and saw wood.

“These aren’t toddlers on a play date — it’s an unusual outdoor nursery school, the first of its kind in London, following a trend in Scandinavia, Germany and Scotland. It allows local children to learn, and let their imagination run free, completely surrounded by nature. …

“Each morning a group of children gather at the Queens Wood camp, which the nursery team prepares each morning before the children arrive. A circle of logs provides a place to gather for snacks, stories and songs. The mud kitchen provides an opportunity to make a proper mess and have a sensory experience, a rope swing provides some excitement and a challenge, and several tents are set up for naps and washing up.

“In a clearing in the woods, a fallen tree trunk can be transformed by imagination into a rocket train, calling at the beach and the moon, with leaves for tickets.

“A 2-year-old, Matilda, finds a stick — but in her mind it’s not a stick. It’s a wand. She says she is a magic fairy who can fly. Then suddenly the stick has become a drum stick, and a gnarled tree stump her drum. She taps away contentedly, the rhythm all her own.” Read more here.

Speaking of fallen tree trunks, I particularly remember a big tree that fell in the forest after a storm and the fun a friend and I had making up stories on it.

Photo: Matt Dunham/AP
Forest schools are increasing in popularity in the United Kingdom.

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The Importance of Playtime

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on August 11, 2014| Leave a Comment »

serious-truck-driver

 

Play is important for all kinds of reasons in childhood, including testing out skills and experiencing the satisfaction of creativity.

John Poole at National Public Radio focused on the socialization aspects of play in a recent report.

He began, “Why do we humans like to play so much? Play sports, play tag, play the stock market, play duck, duck, goose? We love it all. And we’re not the only ones. Dogs, cats, bears, even birds seem to like to play. …

“The scientist who has perhaps done more research on brains at play than any other is a man named Jaak Panksepp. And he has developed a pretty good hypothesis.

“In a nutshell, he, and many others, think play is how we social animals learn the rules of being social.  …

“Play seems so deeply wired by evolution into the brains of highly social animals that it might not be a stretch to say that play is crucial to how we and they learn much of what we know that isn’t instinct. …

“Not surprisingly, Panksepp and others think the lack of play is a serious problem. Especially at younger ages. And particularly in school settings. …

” ‘It’s not just superfluous,’ says Panksepp. ‘It’s a very valuable thing for childhood development. And we as a culture have to learn to use it properly and have to make sure our kids get plenty of it.’ ” More here.

More still from Jon Hamilton, another reporter in the NPR series on play, here.

Photo: David Gilkey/NPR
Deion Jefferson, 10, and Samuel Jefferson, 7, take turns climbing and jumping off a stack of old tires at the Berkeley Adventure Playground in California. The playground is a half-acre park with a junkyard feel where kids are encouraged to “play wild.” 

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Meadowscaping for Biodiversity

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 11, 2014| 2 Comments »

My friend Jean Devine is always up to something interesting. A Brown U grad, with an MBA from Simmons, she used to work in investor relations but in recent years has been testing the waters of social entrepreneurship.

Her latest initiative, with Barbara Passero of Sandpiper Creative, is called meadowscaping and is intriguing on many levels.

With access to a Waltham church lawn for a summer youth program, Jean and Barbara will work with kids to convert the yard into a meadow that uses native species from Garden in the Woods and provides a habitat to the bugs and other small creatures that make a healthy environment.

From the Meadowscaping for Biodiversity website: Meadowscaping “is an outdoor, project-based, environmental education program that provides middle school youth with real-world experiences in STEAM learning (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math), while inspiring and empowering them to address challenges to the environment and our society.

“Today, few children spend time experiencing Nature and the benefits of outdoor recreation, education, and contemplation. Founder and former Director of the Children and Nature Network (C& NN) Richard Louv coined the phrase nature-deficit disorder to describe the negative effects of reduced outdoor time on children’s development. …

“Children who spend little time outdoors may value nature less than children who spend time outdoors in free play. Similarly, children who feel part of something bigger than themselves may … understand their dependence on a clean environment and know that they are responsible for caring for the Earth as their home.” More here.

The idea behind the meadowscaping summer program is that children, both at a young age and as they become adults, can actually do something about the environment.

Remember our post “The Doctor Is In” about the woman who sets up in a Providence park to listen to your worries about global warming (here)? Stop worrying and do something, say the meadowscape entrepreneurs. Give up lawn chemicals, plant a meadow, provide a home for tiny necessary critters, and work to make change.

white-iris-in-morning

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