Free Play

Lore & Background

The term free play was used in its current sense in the 1967 educational film Organizing Free Play, produced by Vassar College for project Head Start training programs. Howard Chudacoff in his 2007 history of children at play called the first half of the twentieth century the 'Golden Age of Unstructured Play'. In the second half of the century, free play declined sharply, and experts have noticed increases in anxiety, depression, and other problems in children and adolescents. A 2009 international study reported a decline in spontaneous play in the two decades preceding the study due to factors such as increased time with television and digital media, organized sports, lack of nearby venues, and reduction of school recess.

Reader's Guide

Free play is play that isn’t organized or directed by adults or older peers and that generally doesn't have a defined purpose or outcome. It has been termed 'self-directed', as opposed to play guided by adults. Types of free play include creative (drawing, coloring, painting, sculpting), imaginative (dress-up, role-playing), physical (running, climbing, swinging, playing hide-and-seek or tag), constructive (building with blocks or Lego), sensory (playing with sand, water, clay), exploratory (collecting rocks, leaves, seashells), independent (reading, playing with toys), social (playing with others, inventing games), and symbolic (make-believe, pretend).

Did You Know?

• Friedrich Fröbel, founder of kindergarten, invented the sandbox in the 1830s to stimulate free play among children.
• A 2014 study found that the more time children spent in unstructured activity, the better their self-directed executive functioning was.
• Peter Gray defined free play as unstructured play among children without adult supervision, giving the example that pickup baseball is free play but a Little League game is not.