In the University of Michigan-Flint's bustling Early Childhood Development Center, a preschool boy bangs on a set of blocks as if it's a keyboard and stages a make-believe concert with his peers. Girls wearing a mish-mash of colorful clothes gather around plastic ovens to "cook" plastic meals.
This is where the seeds of unstructured play are watered and nurtured.
"We believe in the value of play," said Della Becker-Cornell, director of the UM-Flint center. "We have an hour of exploration time where children can work on problem-solving and social skills."
But somewhere between the ages of 3 and 13 or even younger, the thirst and the time for imaginative play is lost in the whirlwind of school, structured extracurricular activities, organized sports and video games.
Around the country, educators and parents are torn between yearning for "the good old days" when kids played hopscotch, tag and hide-and-seek in their backyards, and the pressure to see their children perform so they can enter college and compete globally.
Patterns of play
The National Institute for Play in Carmel Valley, Calif., identifies seven "patterns of play":
• Attunement play: When an infant makes eye contact with her mother, each experiences a spontaneous surge of emotion (joy). The baby responds with a radiant smile, the mother with her own s mile and rhythmic vocalizations (baby talk). This is the grounding base of the state-of-play.
• Body play and movement: Learning about self-movement structures an individual's knowledge of the world. For example, the play-driven movement of leaping upward is a lesson about gravity as well as one's body.
• Object play: The curiosity about and playing with objects is a pervasive, innately fun pattern of play. To be a good research engineer, for example, may mean that the times spent in high school fixing cars or building airplane models are as important as getting an advanced degree, particularly if the engineer is also expected to function as an innovative problem solver.
• Social play: From the simplest romp and wrestling of young animals to the most jocular and complex banter of close friends, social play is a key aspect of play behavior.
• Imaginative and pretend play: The ability of the young child to create his own sense of his mind, and that of others, takes place through pretend play.
• Storytelling/narrative play: The constancy of stories that enliven and help us understand ourselves and others -- from a parent's telling how it was when they were young to media-driven stories like Big Bird's rants to Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon yarns.
• Transformative-integrative and creative play: We can access fantasy-play to transcend the reality of our ordinary lives, and in the process germinate new ideas and reshape them.
The success of "The Dangerous Book for Boys," with its instructions for activities such as folding paper airplanes and skipping stones, and "The Daring Book for Girls," with keys to secret note-passing skills and playing double dutch, may attest to the nostalgia for simpler times.
But even bestsellers like these must compete with the ever-growing and changing world of electronic media.
The Harris Interactive Youth and Education Research Group reported in March 2007 that children spend more time at the computer or in front of TV gaming consoles than they spend on any other form of entertainment. These studies estimate that kids ages 8-18 are spending up to two hours a day playing video games.
Video games do have some "play value," conceded Stuart Brown, president of the National Institute for Play in
Carmel Valley, Calif., at a recent talk at the New York Public Library. But, he stressed, a true sense of "interpersonal nuance" can be achieved only by a child who is engaging all five senses by playing in a three-dimensional world, according to an article in The New York Times.
Brown called play "part of the developmental sequencing of becoming a human primate. If you look at what produces learning and memory and well-being, play is as fundamental as any other aspect of life, including sleep and dreams.''
Yet, in Flint and elsewhere, some "parents are saying kids have no interest in unstructured play," said Recco Richardson, who counsels 200 to 300 children each month in his private practice here.
"They'd rather sit in front of the computer and play with the Wii."
As a result, Richardson said, "their social skills are not as developed as they should be or could be because they're mesmerized by video games, computers and today's music."
Unstructured play sparks "cognitive development, encourages independence and autonomy, and exposes (children) to problem-solving," Richardson stressed.
Electronic games are not the sole culprit in the decline of imaginative play.
"When we were growing up, we'd go to a corner lot and play baseball, tag or kick the can," said Richardson, who was raised on Flint's north side.
"It's not as safe to allow kids to play kick ball with the neighbors as it used to be. It doesn't matter which neighborhood you're in."
Even in schools, recess is no longer simply a sanctuary away from the academic grind.
"Children have recess time taken away from them for infractions," said Aviva Dorfman, assistant professor of early childhood education at UM-Flint. "These are often the children who need physical activity the most."
Some educators say the No Child Left Behind Act's emphasis on academic achievement and test scores may squeeze out more creative subjects.
"I think tests have a role in knowing how children are acquiring knowledge, but the high stakes of these tests have distorted their results, and they've had unwanted consequences in schools," Dorfman said.
"We usually think about learning as a tube -- the teacher shoots the information down the tube to the student," she explained.
Instead, the teacher should provide a blueprint for the child to construct knowledge and understanding on his own, she noted.
"The way children go about this is through open exploration and investigation -- creating models, painting pictures, writing stories and poems, making up plays," Dorfman said. "They also need time to reflect upon what they learn and represent it to others."
In Finland, for example, children don't begin school until age 7, said Dorfman, referring to an article she read in a journal. "Even in preschools, they don't focus on reading or writing before the age of 7. They don't believe it's necessary.
"Very quickly, their reading levels exceed (those of children in) other countries," she said. "Up to the ninth grade, for every 45 minutes of academic activity, they're required to have 15 minutes of either physical movement or music. Art, music, physical education, woodworking and crafts are required subjects throughout the grades."
Finnish high-schoolers do well in mathematics, science and reading, she added.
Barbara Watkins, principal of Anderson Elementary in Grand Blanc, said some public schools do provide time for unstructured play.
Anderson Elementary kindergarten through second-graders choose what they want to play during "center time."
For instance, while learning oral language development, they can play with puppets and blocks, do science activities or make art projects. Then the teachers encourage them to talk and write about their projects with a partner, she said.
"We've provided a springboard for unstructured play," Watkins said. Students also have time to play during recess, she added.
Lori Martin of Montrose said her 8-year-old son, Jay, would rather play outside than watch video games, though he likes his Game Boy Micro once in a while.
"He's a very outdoorsy kid," she said. "It doesn't matter how cold it is, he bundles up in his snow pants, boots, hat and mittens. He has a bunch of big Tonka construction trucks that he pushes on the ice and snow.
"He'll build up mountains of snow and push them down like he's doing construction work. He'll make mounds of dirt and dam up a pond of water. In the summer, he pushes dirt around in a sandbox. He makes sound effects big time.
"Jay is kind of an independent soul."
Information from The New York Times and About.com is included in this report.