The Rookery

My home read aloud right now is The Summer Book by Tove Jannson.  It's a slow and lyrical book with no plot to speak of but it's also profound (and funny) in its way. It follows the everyday lives of a girl, Sophia, and Grandmother on a small island in the Bay of Finland (which is surprisingly similar to Northern Minnesota.)  This passage struck me:

But Grandmother sat in the magic forest and carved outlandish animals.  She cut them from branches and driftwood and gave them paws and faces, but she only hinted at what they looked like and never made them too distinct…Her carvings became more and more numerous.  They clung to trees or sat astride the branches, they rested against the trunks or settled into the ground.

"What is it you're doing?" Sophia asked.

"I'm playing," Grandmother said.

Sophia crawled into the magic forest and saw everything her grandmother had done.

How often do we take the lead in playing with our children?  How often do they get to see us do something just for the doing and not because it has to be done?  At Prairie Creek, we often talk about the importance of play in the students' learning, but I've never really thought about the importance of play in my "work" as a parent and teacher.  "Play" in our culture belongs almost exclusively in the world of children.

And so, inspired by Grandmother, I spent today playing.  I'm very lucky, we're on vacation and my children were very willing to entertain themselves as I made a fairy house in the crook of a tree, searched for the roundest rock I could find and sketched the leaves of pearly everlasting in my journal.  (At least I tried to sketch them…they were so much more complex than I initially thought.)

It wasn't easy.  I know that sounds ridiculous…stay with me.  It was aimless.  I had to decide everything.  There was no "to do" list.  And my fairy house roof kept falling in.  My play required a lot of trial and error.  It required self determination.  I had to not only find my own path, I had to figure out the destination.

It was wonderful.  I don't think that, as adults, we do many things that don't have a pre-ordained outcome.  We get very good at figuring out the fasted way from Point A to Point B but rarely think of meandering to Point K.  I think that for us to understand the amazing value of play for our children, we have to play, too.  Self determination, working through failure – these are the skills our children will need to succeed in today's world.

So, as summer wanes, I hope that you find an hour…even a half hour…to set aside and play.  Start speaking to your child in a made up language, get out the saw and nails make something that you're not trying to make, grab some sidewalk chalk and doodle.  Maybe you'll play with your child, but don't make it about them, make it about you.   Take the lead.  Wrap them in a world you're creating.  Have fun.  And, like Grandmother, learn how to play again.