How did you Play? and... an Introduction to Play Work

This past summer, Penny Willson (a London Play Worker) came to Anchorage and we had a chance to visit with her. Here's a video featuring her:


One of the questions she posed is a great way to engage people: simply ask them for their memories of play. I posed that question to my friends on Facebook, and received the following replies. What's your answer? Please share via comment on this blog. How do the answers below, and your own answers shape the way we should really be addressing play?

• Climbing trees, exploring wooded areas, catching insects. Basically being free to explore open and wooded areas.
• When I was a kid we used to play "Escape from Libya" in the creek by our house. That game pretty much puts a timestamp on me and a political stamp on my parents.
• Free ranging on my tricycle, then later my bicycle all summer long. The neighborhood kids and I were also very adept at building snow forts in the winter months...it was tragic every year when they'd melt
• Ahh... probably colouring in my favourite colouring boouk. [note: this may have been mocking my Canadian spelling practices]
• Going over to a friend's house in seattle, where there was a huge playroom filled with every toy on the market. and a cable slide in the yard. and we could forget about table manners and all other ideas about proper conduct and protocol
• Riding around the neighbourhood making up treasure hunts with my friend...oh and there were walkie talkies too.
• Monkey bars.
• Rambling through the fields, forests and pig pastures of our farm, mapping all the nooks and crannies, and giving them names, then later baking a mess of mud pies for sustenance. Frequently in rubber boots, sometimes in winter ones
• The first ones that come to mind deal with getting completely lost in imaginary worlds that were so real... whether in the woods, on the monkey bars, playing with Lego, reading a book or 'playing star wars'. I sincerely miss that feeling... but do recapture it once in a while. THAT is the highlight of my adult life... =
• Lap game.
• Swimming in a mud puddle! I know, sad, isn't it? :)
• Kick the can, nighttime camping games with a bunch of us roaming around with no parents watching
• Playing with frogs and toads. and catching grasshoppers. and lightening bugs. and building houses for them all to keep in my window.
• Riding bikes and playing on 'the hill'... a little mound of dirt in a wildflower field which wasn't much of a hill and is now covered with housing... and massive neighbourhood wide games of hide & seek...
• Exploring in abandoned buildings and riding bikes in the neighborhood. Also playing tag on summer days rocked!!!
• One more...playing "Not-it" on the monkey bars.