Jane McGonigal Quotes

I don't see anyone walking around with a puppet on his hand in real life. Puppet therapy is very common for children. It's not something that adults take on.

All children want to do is play in worlds they create and project on their external world. If allowed to do that, they are constantly building new neural structures for creating internal worlds and projecting them on their external world. And they build up an enormous self-esteem and feeling of power over the external world through their own capacities.

Scientists who study play, in animals and humans alike, are developing a consensus view that play is something more than a way for restless kids to work off steam; more than a way for chubby kids to burn off calories; more than a frivolous luxury.

I think day care is terrific. Kids get to be around other kids, and they're playing, and they're teaching each other. When I was in college, my summer job was being a preschool teacher. I loved it, and after that experience, I said I can't wait to put my kid in day care because I could see how much they loved it.

When kids play, they are working on imagining the kind of world we live in.

It's critical that children spend time before they arrive in school in a warm, attractive and inclusive environment, where they can learn through play, master social skills and prepare for formal schooling.

I think having imaginary friends is an amazing coping mechanism. It's pretty wonderful, and it makes a lot of sense to me.

Kids who don't play are not just at greater risk of falling behind academically, but also of becoming overweight or obese, failing to integrate socially, and even engaging in criminal activity.

Play is a uniquely adaptive act, not subordinate to some other adaptive act, but with a special function of its own in human experience.

I visited a Child Friendly Space where children take part in structured play and development activities in a safe environment. These are designed to develop their cognitive ability as well as address their psychosocial needs. As I watched them sing songs and take part in games, it struck me that these kids could be anywhere in the world.

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.

Our brain comes hard-wired with an urge to play, one that hurls us into sociability. A child's play both demands and creates its own safe space, one in which she can confront threats, fears, and dangers, but always come through whole. Play offers a child a natural way to manage feared separations or abandonment, rendering them instead opportunities for mastery and self-discovery.

The playing adult steps sideward into another reality; the playing child advances forward to new stages of mastery.

Working with children is very different than the way in which I work with adults. I never tell the children the actual truth of the thing that I want them to act. Although children are really into play and play acting, and this is a major part of their existence, they never actually find the playing or acting of adults credible.

Play is as necessary to the perfect development of a child as sunshine is to the perfect development of a plant.

Children that play outside develop better problem solving skills and have a stronger ability to work within a group.

Music enhances the education of our children by helping them to make connections and broadening the depth with which they think and feel. If we are to hope for a society of culturally literate people, music must be a vital part of our children's education.

Play is the royal road to childhood happiness and adult brilliance.

Childhood play is nothing more than an expression of our individuality and preparation for human interaction.

I play with children so that I can learn from them.

There is a good deal of excellent research on child's play. It has shown conclusively that through play, with the freedom of action it allows and the stressless environment in which it occurs, children discover, relate to and define themselves and their world. ...It is, therefore, paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play.

You can do anything with children if you only play with them.

In play, the child is always behaving beyond his age, above his usual everyday behaviour; in play he is, as it were, a head above himself. Play contains in a concentrated form, as in the focus of a magnifying glass, all developmental tendencies; it is as if the child tries to jump above his usual level.

Pretending is not just play. Pretending is imagined possibility. Pretending, or acting, is a very valuable life skill and we do it all the time.

Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable, inasmuch as he has the fountain of reason in him not yet regulated.