Play @ TOPP KIDS
PLAY @ TOPP KIDS
TOPP KIDS Out of School Clubs/ Foundation is committed to promoting PLAY, providing play opportunities, and educating all Calgarians on the importance of play to our community. As signatories to Calgary’s PLAY Charter, and as an organization concerned with positive childhood development, we know that it is our responsibility to promote, enable, and work towards comprehensive play opportunities for all.
WE BELIEVE PLAY develops a core set of skills for healthy well-being. That
play is a vital component of childhood; it is freely chosen, personally directed,
and intrinsically motivated.
PLAY is fun, uncertain, challenging, and flexible. When children have
opportunities to PLAY they use creativity, innovation, and reflection to learn,
experiment, solve problems, create new worlds, test boundaries, assess risk,
and meet challenges. PLAY is a natural state for a child.
WE WILL support PLAY that encourages physical, emotional, and social
development. Understand and communicate that risk is a valuable
component to play, and we will encourage, support, and enable play that
allows children to develop risk-taking skills. Create environments that children
can control – providing flexibility in materials and spaces that promote inquiry
and evoke curiosity, embrace the geography and climate of Calgary and
support children to play outdoors all year-round. Educate and inform adults,
using a common language on the importance of PLAY. Involve children in
the decisions that affect their lives.
Create opportunities to PLAY WITH PURPOSE!
WHAT IS PLAY?
This year, Canadian children received a “D+” grade for Overall Physical Activity, “D+” for Sedentary Behaviour, “B” for Sleep, and “F” for overall 24-Hour Movement Behaviours. Considering these grades, it’s time to consider various ways to shift these trends in a more favourable direction. What can we do at TOPP KIDS to positively support the healthy movement behaviours of our kids?
At TOPP KIDS, we believe the recipe for raising healthier generations doesn’t have to be complicated. When people are active and socially connected, their lives improve. Open-ended, spontaneous outdoor play is one of the most accessible, adaptable, and inclusive ways of bringing those two ingredients to a community.
There are many different ways to define play; below is one from Outdoor Play Canada:
Play is a universal, developmentally appropriate, culturally relevant expression of childhood and can be viewed in a multitude of ways and within the context of many settings. It occurs sporadically during children’s free time and is broadly identified as unstructured, though it can also include child-directed symbolic activities or games with rules.
The following are summaries of how play can be described, some of the play’s benefits, and some of the play types.
spontaneous (Hewes, 2014, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov);
first-hand experience and include struggle, manipulation, exploration, discovery and practice (Bruce 1994); goalless — it is often described in terms of process rather than product (Bruner 1972);
where the child is in control of the content and intent (Hughes 2000);
a performance of motor patterns in novel sequences, like galumphing, or movements out of context, like the cat that runs sideways with its tail at an odd angle (Miller 1973);
repetitious, to facilitate the learning of complex skills (Connolly 1973) neophilic, i.e., drawn to the novel, new, fun or interesting (Morris 1964, 1967); non-detrimental (King 1987);
contain play cues or meta-signals, like eye contacts, facial expressions and body positions that start processes of many social and non- social engagements (van Hoof 1972, Bateson 1955; Else and Sturrock 1998);
a balance of different experiences(Hughes 1988).
If a behavioural routine does not satisfy most of these criteria, direction and intrinsic motivation, particularly those relating to free choice, personal direction and intrinsic motivation, then it is not play and any benefits that are said to come from playing, will not apply.
As we can see, play is a very complex phenomenon, where a number of conditions that seem to be less about what the player actually does and more about how and why s/he does it, have to be satisfied.
TYPES OF PLAY
Structured Play- organized hockey or gymnastics would be a great example of structured play.
Free Play – Play that the child chooses because they want to do it. There is no goal at the end, there is no structure, there’s just freedom.
PLAY can be anywhere and everywhere! At TOPP KIDS we develop opportunities both through
Structured and Unstructured PLAY opportunities. Our Program delivery is designed to focus on
developing well rounded young adults and help them become TOPP KIDS!