Making Time for Play......

When I went to put a post on the blog today I found the whole thing upside down and I think the host of my previous background has gone offline explaining the disappearance of it. It took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on.....So our blog got a new template again today :) Hopefully this one won't disappear in the middle of the night lol!
Here are some thoughts on play that we have found helpful and so encouraging within our home and our homeschool. I have wonderful childhood memories of the great imaginative play that my brother and I embarked on when we were young. We have also tried to keep the tradition of a simple uncomplicated childhood alive and well in our home with our children in hopes they to will have some wonderful memories and have learned much in there time of play together. For we all know how quickly childhood slips by.



Charlotte Mason ~ Home Education
There is little danger in these days of much educational effort that children's play should be crowded out, or, what is from our present point of view the same thing, should be prescribed for and arranged until there is no more freedom of choice about play than about work. We do not say a word against the educational value of games....But organized games are not play in the sense we have in view. Boys and Girls must have time to invent episodes, carry on adventures, live heroic lives, lay sieges and carry forts, even if the fortress be an old arm chair; and in these affairs the elders must neither meddle or make.

Susan Macaulay ~For The Children's Sake
Certain Factors encourage play. It is often easier home based than institution based. There should be space, and lots of free time. Children need to be outside for hours. They need to make noise, mess and to have access to raw materials (old clothes for costumes, hat, tables to turn into camps etc. etc....) They need privacy from intruding adults but they need interested support for quarrels, thinking of another way around a problem, providing food, and at the end, bringing the child tactfully back into the world where supper is ready for the soothing routine of evening stories.


A Poem Of Childhood we like....


The Land of Counterpane

~Robert Louis Stevenson
When I was sick and lay a-bed,
I had two pillows at my head,
And all my toys beside me lay
To keep me happy all the day.

And sometimes for an hour or so
I watched my leaden soldiers go,
With different uniforms and drills,
Among the bedclothes, through the hills;

And sometimes sent my ships in fleets
All up and down among the sheets;
Or brought my trees and houses out,
And planted cities all about.

I was the giant great and still
That sits upon the pillow-hill,
And sees before him, dale and plain,
The pleasant land of counterpane.

Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life -- in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor for nothing.
Philippians 2:14-16