In a world so focused on achievement and success, it’s important to know how play is at the foundation of everything we do. The play quotes are amazing inspiration to transform the way we teach our children; learning through play is necessary and not just a fun add-on to the academic process!
Why play is the foundation of learning
“Play is so integral to childhood that a child who does not have the opportunities to play is cut off from a major portion of childhood.” – Musselwhite
“Scientists have recently determined that it takes approximately 400 repetitions to create a new synapse in the brain — unless it’s done with play, inwhich case, it takes between 10 and 20 repetitions!” – Dr. Karen Purvis
“Games make learning a necessity to have fun. So there’s no better motivation for kids to learn than to teach the concept with a game.” – Kara Carrero
“Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning.” – Mr. Rogers
“When we engage in what we are naturally suited to do, our work takes on the quality of play and it is play that stimulates creativity.” – Linda Naiman
“The activities that are the easiest, cheapest, and most fun to do – such as singing, playing games, reading, storytelling, and just talking and listening – are also the best for child development.” – Jerome Singer
“Almost all creativity involves purposeful play.” – Abraham Maslow
“Games aren’t just filler in education. They have the ability to introduce, reinforce, or even assess learning of a given topic.” – Kara Carrero
“The worst thing a kid can say about homework is that it is too hard. The worst thing a kid can say about a game is that it’s too easy.” – Henry Jenkins
“I tried to teach my child with books,
he gave me only puzzled looks.
I tried to teach my child with words,
they passed by him often unheard.
Despairingly, I turned aside,
‘How shall I teach this child,’ I cried?
Into my hand he put the key,
‘Come,’ he said, ‘play with me.’”
– Anonymous
“Play is our brain’s favorite way of learning.” – Diane Ackerman
“It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play.” – Leo F. Buscaglia
“A little nonsense now and then is cherished by the wisest men.” – Roald Dahl
“Supporting children to play requires us to remember what life is all about. It’s not about getting from A-Z, but rather dreaming beyond both.” – Vince Gowmon
“Play is the highest form of research.” – Albert Einstein
“Do not keep children to their studies by compulsion but by play.” – Plato
“Play fuels your creativity, tickles your inner child and nurtures your soul.” – Claudia Black
“There are children playing in the streets who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer
“Whoever wants to understand much must play much.” – Gottfried Benn
“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect, but by the play instinct.” – Carl Jung
“For a small child there is no division between playing and learning; between the things he or she does ‘just for fun’ and things that are ‘educational.’ The child learns while living and any part of living that is enjoyable is also play.” – Penelope Leach
“In play a child always behaves beyond his average age, above his daily behavior. In play it is as though he were a head taller than himself.” – Lev Vygotsky
“Children have always learned and created places for themselves through play.” – Donna R. Barnes
“Every child should have mud pies, grasshoppers, water bugs, tadpoles, frogs, mud turtles, elderberries, wild strawberries, acorns, chestnuts, trees to climb. Brooks to wade, water lilies, woodchucks, bats, bees, butterflies, various animals to pet, hayfields, pine-cones, rocks to roll, sand, snakes, huckleberries and hornets; and any child who has been deprived of these has been deprived of the best part of education.” – Luther Burbank
“Play is not a break from learning. It is endless, delightful, deep, engaging, practical learning. It’s the doorway into the child’s heart!” – Vince Gowmon
Related: Research just arrived; How using board games is the best way to learn science.
“Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father.” – Roger von Oech
“To give a child a mechanical toy is equivalent to playing for him” – Walter Wood
“Play is the highest expression of human development in childhood, for it alone is the free expression of what is in a child’s soul.” – Friedrich Froebel
“The truly great advances of this generation will be made by those who can make outrageous connections, and only a mind which knows how to play can do that.” – Nagle Jackson
“Improvisation, composition, writing, painting, theater, invention, all creative acts are forms of play, the starting place of creativity in the human growth cycle, and one of the great primal life functions… Technique itself springs from play… Creative work is play… In play we manifest fresh, interactive ways of relating with people, animals, things, ideas, images, ourselves…” – Stephen Nachmanovitch, Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art
“Ritual grew up in sacred play; poetry was born in play and nourished on play; music and dancing were pure play…. We have to conclude, therefore, that civilization is, in its earliest phases, played…” – Johan Huizinga
“Nothing lights up a child’s brain like play.” – Dr. Stuart Brown
“Play is the royal road to childhood happiness and adult brilliance.” – Joseph Chiltern Pearce
“When we deny children play, we are denying them the right to understand the world.” – Erika & Nicholas Christakis
“Play is the answer to the question, ‘How does anything new come about?’” – Jean Piaget
“Play sharpens our talent for empathy & collaboration…it’s the antidote to social isolation” – S. Eberle
“If you trust play, you will not have to control your child’s development as much. Play will raise the child in ways you can never imagine.” – Vince Gowmon
“Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold.” – Joseph Chilton Pearce
“Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury. Play is a necessity.” – Kay Redfield Jamison
“If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein
“Play is the shortest route between children and their creative calling.” – Vince Gowmon
“When I was teaching high school, I could lecture for an hour and kids might glean a few minutes of understanding. But if I created a game out of learning, all 125 sixteen-year-olds learned and understood with perfect recall for the rest of the year and hopefully for a lifetime.” – Kara Carrero
Importance of parents playing with kids
“Children don’t need more things. The best toys a child can have is a parent who gets down on the floor and plays with them.” – Anonymous
“Our society tends to dismiss play for adults. Play is perceived as unproductive, petty or even a guilty pleasure. The notion is that once we reach adulthood, it’s time to get serious. And between personal and professional responsibilities, there’s no time for play. But play is just as pivotal for adults as it is for kids.” – Margarita Tartakovsky
“The playing adult steps sideward into another reality; the playing child advances forward to new stages of mastery.” – Erik H. Erikson
“I took the books off the bookshelves and replaced them with games. In our house we value reading, but we also see the importance of play. Games encourage both reading together and creating lighthearted fun with each other.” – Kara Carrero
“It’s one thing to build the sandbox for children. It’s another to jump in and play with them.” – Vince Gowmon
“Childhood is a short season.” – Helen Hayes
“It’s nearly impossible to enforce consequences in video games at the moment, but at the table, sitting face-to-face across from a tabletop game… sportsmanship matters.” – Wil Weaton
“If we don’t play with our kids, we’re depriving them of memories where we are carefree.” – Kara Carrero
“Life is more fun if you play games.” – Roald Dahl.
“Play is the language of children. Have you spoken it to them lately?” – Vince Gowmon
“Sometimes you have to drop the rake and play in the leaves.” – Douglas V’Soske
“To play with a child is to love a child.” – Vince Gowmon
“Thanksgiving, for us, is sitting around the table for more than just food. It’s about clearing that away and pulling out games to laugh and enjoy spending extra time together with a bit of friendly competition.” – Kara Carrero
“If a child has been able in his play to give up his whole loving being to the world around him, he will be able, in the serious tasks of later life, to devote himself with confidence and power to the service of the world.” – Rudolf Steiner
“A child who does not play is not a child, but the man who does not play has lost forever the child who lived in him.” – Pablo Neruda
“You will only create room for a child to play to the degree that you value play, and give yourself permission to be playful.” – Vince Gowmon
“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” – George Bernard Shaw
“When we play with our children, we give them a glimpse of our own creativity as play is a window into another person’s brain and way of thinking.” – Kara Carrero
Play for whole-person well being
“Play is the absence of stress.” – Poole
“Your body cannot heal without play. Your mind cannot heal without laughter. Your soul cannot heal without joy.” – Catherine Rippenger Fenwick
“All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.” – Samuel Butler
“It’s okay to be absurd, ridiculous and downright irrational at times; silliness is the sweet syrup that helps us swallow the bitter pills of life.” - Richelle E. Goodrich
“Children more than ever, need opportunities to be in their bodies in the world – jumping rope, bicycling, stream hopping, and fort building. It’s this engagement between limbs of the body and bones of the earth where true balance and centeredness emerge.” – David Sobel
“In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“The gift of Play is that it invites us to create without attachment, explore without a destination, and enjoy without complexity.” – Vince Gowmon
“The soul is healed by being with children.” – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“There is no better way than play to mend relationships. It has the ability to break down walls, build connections, and heal wrongdoings and misunderstandings.” – Kara Carrero
How play is a life skill to foster in kids
“Our whole life is solving puzzles” – Erno Rubik
“Play is training for the unexpected.” – Marc Bekoff
“Play builds the kind of free-and-easy, try-it-out, do-it-yourself character that our future needs.” – James L. Hymes, Jr.
“The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.” – Arnold Toynbee
“The most successful adults maintain the ability to play.” – Dr. Jack Shonkoff
“People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.” – Dale Carnegie
“A man is getting old when he walks around a puddle instead of through it.” – R.C. Ferguson
“Those who play rarely become brittle in the face of stress or lose the healing capacity for humor.” – Stuart Brown
“This is the real secret of life—to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.” – Alan W. Watts
“Life is playfulness…We need to play so that we can rediscover the magic all around us.” – Flora Colao
“Creative play is like a spring that bubbles up from deep within a child.” – Joan Almon
“If we want our kids to have happy, productive, moral lives, we must allow more time for play, not less.” – Peter Gray
“Play prepares the children of today to be the innovative thought leaders of tomorrow.” – Vince Gowmon
“If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.” – John Cleese
“Play energizes us and enlivens us. It eases our burdens. It renews our natural sense of optimism and opens us up to new possibilities.” – Stuart Brown, MD
“People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.” – Dale Carnegie
“The true object of all human life is play.” – G. K. Chesterton
“It is in playing, and only in playing, that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self.” – D.W. Winnicott, British pediatrician
“Life must be lived as play.” – Plato
Related: 5 research-backed ways board games influence reading success
“The masters in the art of living make little distinction between their work and their play, their labor and their leisure, their minds and their bodies, their information, their recreation, their love and their religion. They hardly know which is which, they simply pursue their vision of excellence at whatever they do, leaving others to decide whether they are working or playing.” – James Michener
Other Play quotes
“First you must learn to play by the rules, then you must forget the rules and play from your heart.” – Anonymous
“With talent you win a game. With consistency, you become a champion.” – Unknown
“It may be that all games are silly, then then so are humans” – Robert Lynd
“Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game” – Voltaire
“Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined we would have to defend children’s right to play.” – Nancy Carlsson-Paige
“The opposite of play is not work. It’s depression.” – Brian Sutton-Smith
“It is a happy talent to know how to play.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“We finally move into our destiny when we understand that we are to live in and as adventurous play…perhaps the whole natural world is a party, a festival, and we, the long awaited champagne.” – Brian Swimme
“Structured play is akin to making a meal from someone else’s recipe. Unstructured play is like creating your own meal from your imagination.” – Vince Gowmon
“If it’s not fun, you’re not doing it right.” – Bob Basso
“Play every game as if it was your last one” -Gary Laffeur
“Bear in mind 3 essential qualities in all games of intellect: 1 – Never show selfishness to wound the feelings of your adversary. 2 – To be modest with a good game. 3 – To lose without ill-temper, and to win without bragging.”
“And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.” – Kahlil Gibran
“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” – Plato
“I shouldn’t have to defend play for children any more than I should have to defend their eating, sleeping, and breathing.” – Rae Pica
“I played with an idea, and grew willful; tossed it into the air; transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy, and winged it with paradox.” – Oscar Wilde
“You’ve achieved success in your field when you don’t know whether what you’re doing is work or play.” – Warren Beatty
“When I look at t\playing cards, I see limitless potential. When these simple symbols are shuffled, fortunes are won, the future is foretold, or magic is unleashed.” – Joshua Jay
More Play Resources
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Moe
I loved those games quotes!
Thank you.