According to UNICEF every child has the right to leisure. By the way, there are 10 fundamental rights for children, in summary:
Principle I: Right to equality, regardless of race, religion or nationality.
Principle II: The right to special protection for your physical, mental and social development.
Principle III: The right to a name and a nationality.
Principle IV: The right to food, housing and adequate medical care for the child and the mother.
Principle V: The right to education and special care for physically or mentally disabled child.
Principle VI: The right to love and understanding from parents and society.
Principle VII: The right to free education and children’s play.
Principle VIII: Right to be rescued in the first place, in the event of disasters.
Principle IX: Right to be protected against abandonment and exploitation at work.
Principle X: Right to grow in a spirit of solidarity, understanding, friendship and justice among peoples.
Children’s play means to engage in recreation, and to play is to make any action with the purpose of fun and entertainment. You can have a sport or cultural reason and also a form of communication and expression related to the physical and mental well-being.
Playing means relaxing body and mind and still promotes an endless list of benefits. The act of playing the game, develops the most complex connections in our brain, which is to understand the world in a very structured, regulated and strategically way. Children can learn that for all things in life there are rules, and how to be aware of what it means one or more movements, possible or necessary, be a physical movement or a mental movement (reasoning) or both, followed or repeatedly ; and whether there are consequences (action and reaction).
The game encourages dialogue and respect, pointing out that we are all different and imperfect, yet we have our talents and gifts; and that when we work together we are one, that is, teamwork is more efficient than a single job, as the saying “two heads are better than one.”
Another key factor in playing is the presence of playfulness. The innocent-looking, unassuming and uncommitted the act of playing leads us to believe that it’s mere element of distraction and entertainment. However, it is inexhaustible source of creation, imagination, fantasy, expression of emotions and creative freedom.
The game involves the development of sensor motor coordination processes, neural connections, logical reasoning, concentration, discovery skills, scientific and investigative thinking. It is a unique experience of try and error, balance and conflict, affirmation and negation, reality and fiction. It’s a simulation, a reconstruction of the acquired experiences and witnessed experiences where interaction and socialization are strongly present.
So… Let the children play!
See more at:
Stanford Education – Children´s right
Image from: Lily Pond Country Day School
