A blank slate. A new year lays in front of us. Happy New Year! What are your plans for 2023? More play every day! That is my plan for 2023… to play more. Last year, my co-authors and I published our curriculum-based assessment. The AEPS-3 (Bricker et al., 2022) covers 8 areas (i.e., adaptive, cognitive, communication, fine motor, gross motor, social emotional, literacy and math) where play could be embedded into the assessment, as well as the curriculum and instruction. I have been interested in play-based assessment since I was a doctoral student and created an approach for my dissertation study using play as the context for assessing young children to determine if toddlers are eligible for early intervention (IDEA, Part C). I’m guessing if you are reading this blog, you too are interested in play.

As early childhood educators, we value play for children. However, what about us?! We are good at observing children at play. We know what child’s play looks and sounds like. But what do we know about adult play? Would we know it if we saw it?

Maybe here is how you know it is play…. One more! You know you are at play when you: (a) want to do more of it, (b) look at the time and you’re surprised at how fast time went by when you were engaged in the activity, and (c) the memory of it when it’s over makes you smile, giggle, and best of all belly laugh! Play can be one more chapter in that book you’re reading for fun, one more lap before going in from a sweaty run, one more page for the scrapbook, one more topic on a long phone call with a friend, one more row of knitting before putting the ball of yarn back into the basket. One more! That’s it. Simple. You want more of it. Play! It’s so good for us!

Do we forget how to play when we age? Children understand play. They know what to do! Sometimes it seems like children are from a completely different planet from us. We can try and take their perspective when it comes to play. Dr. Stuart Brown has a TedTalk focused on play where he introduces the concept of neoteny which is basically taking a childlike playful approach to life.

Neoteny! One way we can focus on neoteny and become more playful is to find a picture of ourselves doing something that brought us joy during play. Use the picture as a visual reminder. Put the picture of play on cell phone and every time we look at our phone we see the picture of ourselves engaged in play.

Here is the picture I currently have on my phone to remind me about my 2023 goal to play more.

This wallpaper reminds me every time I look at my phone to be playful with my family. During the holidays, I hired a photographer to take family photographs. We met Hannah on campus and she took beautiful pictures before sunset. I brought along a prop for our new antelope statue. Our campus mascot turned into Rudolph briefly with the red nose prop I brought from home. When we were done taking pictures and ready to leave, my husband placed the red nose on his face. We laughed so hard at his spontaneous playfulness. Now every time I look at my phone, I’m reminded of how much joy this play created in our family. Neoteny!

One more lap? YES! One more page? YES!! One more red nose? YES!!! Saying heck YAY to PLAY in 2023!

Reference

Bricker, D., Dionne, C., Grisham, J., Johnson, J.J., Macy, M., Slentz, K., & Waddell, M. (2022). Assessment, Evaluation, and Programming System for Infants and Children, Third Edition (AEPS®- 3). Baltimore: Brookes Publishing Co.