Be Active Kids and the North Carolina Early Childhood Active Play Alliance work to increase awareness in the community, as well as with teachers and parents for and about the importance of children's play while increasing the time and opportunity children spend engaged in active play. Over the past 8 years, Be Active Kids and the Active Play Alliance have developed three strong grassroots initiatives to increase play opportunities; PlayDaze, PlayMobile, PlayPods. Through our play initiatives over 100,000 children and families have had the opportunity to engage in active play!
What is Play?
- PLAY is communication and expression, combining thought and action; it gives satisfaction and a feeling of achievement.
- PLAY is instinctive, voluntary, and spontaneous.
- PLAY helps children develop physically, mentally, emotionally and socially.
- PLAY is a means of learning to live, not a mere passing of time.
- PLAY, along with the basic needs of nutrition, health, shelter and education, is vital to develop the potential of all children.
Need for Play:
- North Carolina has the 17th highest rate of childhood obesity in the country.
- Children are missing out on the benefits of play that were enjoyed by many generations before, with so many of today’s children being much more structured, supervised and constrained, with few opportunities for free play.
- Adults’ attitudes towards children’s play range from ignoring it, to dismissing it as trivial or a waste of time, to curbing it as something dangerous or subversive, through to appropriating it as a mechanism for learning or socialization.
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Barriers to Play: |
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