Teaching Outdoors

The Vital Role of Play

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Why is it so important that we give our children opportunity for free play? How could sending my child to an enrichment activity possibly harm their development? Joan Almon explores the rational behind the “play principle”… “creative play is a central activity in the lives of healthy young children. It helps children weave together all … Read more

Raising Kids Who Care

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Young children are increasingly engaged in structured activities such as dance, music, soccer and while these are good they are losing the opportunity for unstructured play and it’s hurting their development.

Playing in a playground where every tree is carefully planted has a different quality than play that takes place in a natural environment. Think back to a camping trip where your children played for hours barely supervised and imagine spending even an hour at the park that way.

10 Reasons To Ban Handheld Devices for Children under 12

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Cris Rowan, pediatric occupational therapist calls on parents, teachers, and government to ban the use of all handheld devices for children under the age of 12 years.

REPOSTED from Moving To Learn.ca
This is anedited list for more references and information please refer to the original article.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Canadian Society of Pediatrics state infants aged 0-2 years should not have any exposure to technology, 3-5 years be restricted to one hour per day, and 6-18 years restricted to 2 hours per day (AAP 2001/13, CPS 2010). Children and youth use 4-5 times the recommended amount of technology, with serious and often life threatening consequences (Kaiser Foundation 2010, Active Healthy Kids Canada 2012). Handheld devices (cell phones, tablets, electronic games) have dramatically increased the accessibility and usage of technology, causing escalating usage, especially by very young children (Common Sense Media, 2013). Following are ten research evidenced reasons for this ban. Please visit zonein.ca to view the Zone’in Fact Sheet for referenced research.

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Gordon Neufeld on Raising Children in a Digital World

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Developmental psychologist Gordon Neufeld discusses how parents can prepare children to live and thrive in the digital world at the KMT Child Development and Community Conference in Toronto. This is quite possibly one of the most important lectures of our time. This is NOT about media and technology being inherently bad or wrong. It is about balance and developmental readiness. It is about what is best for our children’s hearts and minds.

Why Kids Don’t Play Anymore

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follow-the-leaderORIGINALLY POSTED AT GLOBE AND MAIL WEBSITE HERE

The brand-new subdivisions of Toronto roll on and on into the cornfields, a new one every month. I drive by them all the time. This is where young families live. But the streets and sidewalks are eerily quiet. You hardly ever see a child. No kids riding bikes. No kids playing shinny. No kids running wild in packs until their moms call them in for supper. It’s as if the kids have vanished.

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The Play Deficit

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Children-playChildren today are cossetted and pressured in equal measure.
Without the freedom to play they will never grow up.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE WRITTEN BY FROM Aeon Magazine

When I was a child in the 1950s, my friends and I had two educations. We had school (which was not the big deal it is today), and we also had what I call a hunter-gather education. We played in mixed-age neighbourhood groups almost every day after school, often until dark. We played all weekend and all summer long. We had time to explore in all sorts of ways, and also time to become bored and figure out how to overcome boredom, time to get into trouble and find our way out of it, time to daydream, time to immerse ourselves in hobbies, and time to read comics and whatever else we wanted to read rather than the books assigned to us. What I learnt in my hunter-gatherer education has been far more valuable to my adult life than what I learnt in school, and I think others in my age group would say the same if they took time to think about it.

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