Quotes About

Play & Learning

“Play is the beginning of knowledge.” ~ Anonymous

“Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold.” ~ Joseph Chilton Pearce (author)

“It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for
play without seeing the vital connection between them.” ~ Leo Buscaglia (author, educator)

“Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury. Play is a necessity.” Kay Redfield Jamison
(professor of psychiatry)

“The child amidst his baubles is learning the action of light, motion, gravity, muscular force….” ~ Ralph Waldo
Emerson (writer)

“The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things.” ~ Plato (Greek
philosopher)

“Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning…They have to play with what they know to be
true in order to find out more, and then they can use what they learn in new forms of play.” ~ Fred Rogers (Mr.
Rogers’ Neighborhood)

“It is becoming increasingly clear through research on the brain, as well as in other areas of study, that
childhood needs play. Play acts as a forward feed mechanism into courageous, creative, rigorous thinking in
adulthood.” ~ Tina Bruce (Professor, London Metropolitan University)

“The very existence of youth is due in part to the necessity for play; the animal does not play because he is
young, he has a period of youth because he must play.” Karl Groos (German evolutionary biologist)

“Parents who homeschool with the greatest success love to play with their children. They learn to protect
children's playtime. They appreciate how much learning results from many kinds of play. PLAY allows the
spark of creative insight to flame - a most powerful learning tool.” ~ Ann Lahrson-Fisher (homeschooling
writer)

“Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father.” ~ Roger von Oech (President,
Creative Think)

“Play permits the child to resolve in symbolic form unsolved problems of the past and to cope directly or
symbolically with present concerns. It is also his most significant tool for preparing himself for the future and
its tasks.” ~ Bruno Bettelheim (child psychologist)

“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)
“Close observation of children at play suggests that they find out about the world in the same way as scientists
find out about new phenonoma and test new ideas…during this exploration, all the senses are used to observe
and draw conclusions about objects and events through simple, if crude, scientific investigations.” ~ Judith
Roden (lecturer, Canterbury Christ Church University College)

“Children learn as they play. Most importantly, in play children learn how to learn.” ~ O. Fred Donaldson
(martial arts master)

“A child loves his play, not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard.” ~ Benjamin Spock (pediatrician, author)

“It’s not so much what children learn through play, but what they won’t learn if we don’t give them the chance
to play. Many functional skills like literacy and arithmetic can be learned either through play or through
instruction – the issue is the amount of stress on the child. However, many coping skills like compassion, self-
regulation, self-confidence, the habit of active engagement, and the motivation to learn and be literate cannot be
instructed. They can only be learned through self-directed experience (i.e. play). ~ Susan J. Oliver (author,
Playing for Keeps)

“Play builds the kind of free-and-easy, try-it-out, do-it-yourself character that our future needs.” ~ James L.
Hymes Jr. (child development specialist, author)

“The main characteristic of play – whether of child or adult – is not it content but its mode. Play is an approach
to action, not a form of activity.” ~ Jerome Bruner (psychologist, professor)

“Play is not only our creative drive; it’s a fundamental mode of learning.” ~ David Elkind (psychologist, author)

“As astronauts and space travelers children puzzle over the future; as dinosaurs and princesses they unearth the
past. As weather reporters and restaurant workers they make sense of reality; as monsters and gremlins they
make sense of the unreal.” ~ Gretchen Owocki (childhood educator)

“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
(professor, Yale University)

“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 (founder of the concept of kindergarten)

“Almost all creativity involves purposeful play.” ~ Abraham Maslow (psychologist)

“Men should learn to live with the same seriousness with which children play.” ~ Nietzsche (philosopher,
writer)

“Play is the highest form of research.” ~ Albert Einstein (scientist)