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Play is for life

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Shall we try to walk through the ‘ish’? It suggests being immature, not fully developed where developed means working towards fulfilment. But, looking at it with a tilt, let us see it as an improving quality, refining actions which become more complex, intricate, and elaborate quite naturally. You cannot weave a tapestry quickly. Many threads are needed to create it, setting the warp and weft of learning and knowledge.

Is it how we measure time and set the wrong expectations that gives a negative meaning to the word child-ish? What if we dispel the time connotation and think of it as meaning ‘young’ and ‘curious’?

Ish means ‘to some extent’ , ‘having the qualities or characteristics of’, ‘belonging to’  not only for children but for us all.

According to the Oxford Dictionary ‘child-like’ implies having having positive qualities such as the innocence associated with a child. What a different picture. Its synonyms are ‘genuine’, ‘true’, ‘real’ and ‘natural’. Is the ‘like’ part of the word making the difference? Yes. ‘Like’ is a likeable word. It gives us the possibility of choice and freewill.

Play with this word.

Move around it, tip it, rearrange it, practice it.

What does play mean to you? How do you engage with it? How would you like to use it further? Is it helpful? Would you like to rewrite it?

When you play, do you choose something or are you attracted to it? Choice and attraction are very different.

We play every day and very often during the day. We play ‘with’, ‘along’, ‘around’, ‘at’, ‘back’, ‘down’, ‘off’  and ‘up’ . . .

Play has its own innate rules that come with the action of play as the participants design it. Here we learn to take turns from ideation to performance and roles. It is regarded as free but freedom within the game is plotted and measured. There are infinite connections with life and school. Can you see them? It might take some thinking, pondering and research.



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