School culture becomes more supportive and inclusive when you let students interact with each other and solve their own challenges without adult intervention.
Mixed-age play benefits all kids. Older students develop responsibility, leadership and empathy. Younger kids learn executive function by trying to be like the big kids.
Whether before or after school, kids in the club have fun and make new friends. Educators report reduced behavior problems and a sunnier school climate.
By organizing their own games and learning to solve the inevitable spats, kids learn real-world social skills. You can’t solve problems if there’s always an adult right there at recess or in a play group, solving them first!
Read the story here of a 4th grade teacher at a Title 1 (high poverty) school who started a Play Club and watched behavior problems, including bullying, go down!
Students with the time and space to create and collaborate on their own end up “a head taller.”
Students at Discovery Ridge Elementary in O’Fallon, Missouri, were tattling and fighting more than they did before COVID and expecting the adults to soothe them. P.E. Teacher Chris Sevier thought free play might help kids become more mature and self regulating. In Play Club students organize their own fun and solve their own conflicts. An adult is present, but only as a “lifeguard.” Chris started a before-school Let Grow Play Club two mornings a week open to all the kids. He had 72 participate, with the K – 2nd graders one morning and the 3rd – 5th graders another.
Play has existed for as long as humans have been on Earth, and it’s not just us that play. Baby animals play…hence hours of videos on the internet of cute panda bears, rhinos, puppies, and almost every animal you can imagine. That play is critical to learning the skills to be a grown-up. So when did being a kids become a full-time job, with little time for “real” play? Our co-founder and play expert, Peter Gray, explains in this video produced by Stand Together.