Thought Leadership: The Power of Play

I am not the person who most people would identify as a camper. However, my husband is an avid outdoorsman, and over the years, I’ve become a convert to the benefits of sustained time in nature. When our children were four and seven, we impulsively bought an RV and began visiting state parks for weekend camping trips. This quickly became a core of who we are as a family. At the state parks, my children played imaginatively in the woods, explored hiking trails, and experienced some much-needed time away from their electronic devices. Now they are teenagers, and the time we are able to spend together in nature feels even more precious.

As I write this, I’m sitting outside my RV on the first crisp fall morning of the season. At a campsite across from mine, two boys emerge from their tent. They’ve pulled out a dump truck, several plastic shovels, and a small collection of balls. While I can’t hear their conversations, it’s clear that they’ve created an imaginative world and are breathing in the benefits of a quiet bit of time outdoors.

Free play in nature is crucial to children's developing physical skills and has a direct positive impact on their overall development. Educators, doctors, occupational therapists, and parents have noticed a sharp decrease in free play over the past several decades. It appears that children’s abilities to engage in tasks that require them to sustain attention over time, to play in unstructured settings without an adult to guide the activity, and to skillfully navigate risk in physical activities are markedly different than they were 30 years ago.

The idea of free play may seem out of step in a world increasingly filled with academic demands. But it’s in those unstructured times that children develop the very skills that lead to high achievement in the classroom. Giving children unstructured time outdoors isn’t a break from learning — it’s a necessary component of it. Studies consistently show that when children are in natural spaces, their attention span and focus are replenished. Playtime is when children actually build neural connections necessary for academic growth. Imagine a six-year-old who has just learned a new math concept. They go outside to run around, seemingly forgetting about the lesson that just occurred; however, what’s happening behind the scenes is that their brain is building new pathways to incorporate those new concepts. 

Beyond academics, free play in nature provides opportunities for social-emotional and gross motor growth. Unlike in structured sports or supervised activities, in free play, children must learn to navigate the “grey areas” — how to negotiate with one another, how to regulate their emotions when something goes astray, and how to reimagine an activity when the answers aren’t immediately provided for them. Additionally, the gross motor skills inherent in nature play build core strength, which has a direct impact on reading and writing development. 

As a faculty, we are building space within our programming for nature play and other activities that build students’ gross motor and self-regulatory skills. Last spring, Lower School teachers gathered for professional development with Preston Blackburn (Pivot to Play), whose work centers around creating opportunities for children to engage in “big body play.” Ms. Blackburn will engage again with our faculty on the afternoon of November 7 for a lengthier professional development. Her research shows that developing gross motor skills through big-body physical play aids children’s development of self-regulatory skills. Additionally, as a Lower School faculty, our summer professional reading was “Balanced and Barefoot: How Unrestricted Outdoor Play Makes for Strong, Confident, and Capable Children” by Angela J. Hanscom, a pediatric occupational therapist. We are excited to share that Ms. Hanscom will visit campus in February to provide professional development for faculty and staff in all three divisions, with a parent workshop scheduled as well. We encourage families to share this experience by reading and learning along with us!

Our schoolwide theme of nature this year is a perfect tie-in for the work already being done in Lower School. This fall, we encourage families to build in time for your children (of all ages!) to spend unrestricted time outdoors — getting dirty, scraping knees, climbing trees, building fantasy worlds, and creating their own stories. The less structured by adults, the better. Please join us as we engage in a year of continued discovery of the benefits of nature play for all of us.