Let Them Play

By Jane Ching Fung

"What is 'Choice Time?,'" she demanded. "Students don’t have time to play."

My heart sank when I heard these words coming from the mouth of a district administrator. Everyone on our kindergarten team had included "Choice" minutes in her daily schedule. Choice was a time for students to engage in centers and activities that were not teacher directed, assigned, or graded but intentionally designed to be open-ended, student driven, and to promote unstructured interactions among the children.

Dare I say that "Choice" was time set aside for our young students to play ?

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