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The first rule of Play Club is you can鈥檛 hurt anyone.

That鈥檚 actually the only rule.

On a Thursday afternoon after the last school bell rings, several dozen third, fourth and fifth graders from Central Academy of the Arts in Pickens County, South Carolina, stream out of the school and scatter round the yard. How to spend the next two hours is entirely up to them.

Quickly there are shrieks from a basketball court where several have started a game of chase. At a picnic table, two girls pull out a notebook to continue writing their novel. Children sit in a row in the shade of the school building talking and eating snacks. Three boys stand in boxes 鈥� they are actually train cars, one declares 鈥� going chugga chugga down the sidewalk.

Kevin Stinehart just watches. Stinehart, one of two adults supervising, likens himself to a lifeguard. If someone is in danger, he will intervene. Otherwise, the students are in charge.

鈥淚t鈥檚 good for our souls just to watch them play and be kids,鈥� Stinehart said.

The amount of time children have for unstructured free play has been declining for decades, replaced by activities managed by well-intentioned adults. Today鈥檚 children spend about half as much time playing outside each week as their parents did, . COVID-19 caused more disruptions. Play dates and recess were curtailed for safety concerns. Even as those worries have subsided, efforts to remediate learning losses before, during or after school are replacing play in many places.

When Stinehart started Central Academy鈥檚 Play Club years ago, the fourth grade teacher just thought children needed more time to play like he did as a child, free from the adult gaze. Only after the club started did he begin to fully realize how seriously play matters for developing children.

There was one child at his school who teachers had never seen smile before the boy joined Play Club. He started making friends and almost instantly his behavioral issues 鈥� one week three different teachers had sent him to the principal鈥檚 office 鈥� disappeared. Teachers saw similar behavior improvements schoolwide. 

Then there were the academic benefits: A researcher who studied Central Academy鈥檚 club found that participating students did better on reading and math tests.

Play would be important even without those benefits, Stinehart and others stress. Today鈥檚 children have high rates of anxiety and depression and overall feelings of isolation, and helping them socially and emotionally was the school鈥檚 ultimate goal.

But for parents and educators alike who have worried over the learning disruptions caused by the pandemic, the academic benefits are noteworthy perks.  

鈥淲e didn鈥檛 start Play Club to raise test scores,鈥� he said. 鈥淎ll of that was just icing on the cake.鈥�

Teaching play

Central Academy is in the cradle of play.

The Pickens County superintendent is a longtime play advocate. Danny Merck traveled to Finland in 2018 and after seeing how Scandinavian schools take 15-minute breaks every 45 minutes, Merck came home and encouraged his principals to add a second recess. Once you see that kind of joy, you try to emulate it as best you can, he said.

Pickens is also home to Clemson University, where a national coalition that promotes the importance of lifelong play is headquartered. It was at the group鈥檚 annual conference one year where Stinehart met Lenore Skenazy and got the idea for Play Club.

Skenazy made headlines over a decade ago after she let her 9-year-old ride the New York City subway unchaperoned. She wrote a blog, and later a book, called Free-Range Kids and is one the most outspoken advocates for free play and children鈥檚 independence. Her nonprofit, Let Grow,  and helps schools around the country create their own.

鈥淲e鈥檇 like to make sure that childhood isn鈥檛 so cultivated and so bubble-wrapped,鈥� she said.

Skenazy knew many parents are nervous about the idea of free play. Many of those with grade-school-aged children are young enough to have grown up without experiencing it much themselves. Her group decided to anchor the Play Clubs at schools because children are there already and it鈥檚 generally a place that parents trust. Play Clubs have rules that truly unstructured free play doesn鈥檛, but Skenazy鈥檚 group saw the clubs as a way to introduce the idea.

Stinehart loved the club concept and it was an easy sell to his principal, Tish Goode. The two had talked frequently about how their students just didn鈥檛 seem to know how to play. Many had underdeveloped social skills, well before the pandemic exacerbated those concerns.

Goode, who went to the conference with Stinehart, said she started to realize children at her school were struggling to play simply because they were not given many opportunities to learn how. When adults solve every single conflict, children don鈥檛 learn how to do so themselves.

Central Academy鈥檚 club operates like most. Stinehart opens enrollment twice a year, filling a fall and spring cohort. There鈥檚 always a waiting list 鈥� 81 students signed up for 40 spots in the current cohort 鈥� so this year he added a third section. Other teachers help supervise on a rotating basis. The club meets weekly on Thursdays after school ends.

Parents and students alike sign a contract agreeing to the rules. No, you can鈥檛 hurt anyone. But they also agree children will work out problems themselves. It鈥檚 not the adults鈥� job to mediate interpersonal conflicts. It鈥檚 not their job to entertain or ensure children are having fun, either.

This makes Play Club different from recess. At recess, Stinehart will intervene if he sees a child say, cutting the line to go on the slide out of turn. During Play Club, he鈥檒l say nothing.

But what happens is students start to police themselves. A few years ago, Stinehart watched as a group of students decided to make a big pile of leaves. Another child strolled over and sat in the middle of the pile, clearly trying to instigate something. At first, the others complained and begged the boy to move. He doubled down. The adults were wary, nervous they might need to intervene. Then the group decided the leaf pile was big enough for them all. When his behavior stopped getting a rise out of the others, the boy got bored and went to play somewhere else.

Students won鈥檛 always solve problems so easily, Skenazy said, but they get better with practice.

鈥淵ou鈥檙e constantly figuring out how to make things happen in the best way,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hat means trying out new ways that might not work, but it doesn鈥檛 matter because it鈥檚 just play.鈥�

Goode, the principal, was regularly dealing with 200 or more disciplinary incidents a year. Nearly all were from playground fights. Last year, less than 50 crossed her desk. She credits that to Play Club鈥檚 influence. She sees students at recess talking out problems instead of fighting.

A head taller

A lot of lessons are imparted during what can look like a carefree activity.

Free play builds a child鈥檚 sense of independence. Children learn critical thinking skills and how to interact with others in the world. They grow confidence in their own ability to solve problems.

Peter Gray has been studying play since the 1980s, a decade that marked the biggest decline in the amount of time children spend each week playing. Gray helped develop the Play Club model based on his research showing the value not just of play, but of mixed-age interactions.

Play was at its height in the 1950s. Baby Boomers were young and children of all ages would play until the streetlights came on. The time children spent playing each week started to fall in the mid-1960s but two cultural changes in the 80s prompted a more drastic decline.

First, academic expectations rose. The average time students spent at school and on homework increased by 12 hours a week, a product of a nation worried about falling behind academically. Second, several high-profile kidnappings led to a rise in stranger danger. It became bad parenting to not know where your child was at all times. Working parents started to enroll their children in after-school activities that promised to keep them both entertained and safe but which substituted child-led play for play that鈥檚 supervised and managed by adults.

Gray鈥檚 son was a child in the 1980s and went to an unorthodox school that bucked the trends happening nationwide. His son鈥檚 school incorporated significant time for free play and independent exploration, and the experience made Gray want to understand how exactly children learn from play.

The real magic happens when children of different ages play together, Gray has come to believe. There鈥檚 a perception that older children will bully younger ones, or dumb down their play. His research and others鈥� has found the opposite happens.

Older children are empathetic and kinder to younger children than they are to their peers. They like explaining how games work, a skill that flexes their own language abilities. And younger children love playing with the big kids. The saying among people who study this is that children become a head taller when they play. A group of 5- and 6-year-olds who can鈥檛 read couldn鈥檛 play a game that requires that. With older children鈥檚 help, they can usually figure it out.

Translate to the classroom

The study at Central Academy is the first to look into play鈥檚 academic benefits.

Educators at the school were eager to collaborate with Melyssa Mandelbaum, a doctoral candidate at Long Island University. Mandelbaum loved the concepts of independence and resilience that Play Clubs try to foster.

Mandelbaum studied the fall 2019 cohort, comparing students who participated with those who were waitlisted. She looked at attendance, tardiness and reading and math test scores.

There ended up not being a difference in the two groups when it came to attendance or tardiness, something that could be because Play Club only meets once a week. But when it came to academics, she found the Play Club students did significantly better in both subjects.

Mandelbaum鈥檚 study doesn鈥檛 explain why Play Club students did better academically. Her sample was small and she says more research needs to be done. But it speaks to the skills that researchers have observed in free play for years, she said. A student explaining how a game works is using expressing language skills. One keeping track of scores is using math.

鈥淚f you鈥檙e building those skills, that might actually really translate to the classroom,鈥� Mandelbaum said.

It鈥檚 promising to see how even small amounts of free play can boost student achievement, she said. Central Academy鈥檚 Play Club just meets weekly for a couple of hours. Mandelbaum said she鈥檚 curious if more frequent play would have an even larger effect. 

Gray and Skenazy said they weren鈥檛 surprised by what Mandelbaum found.

When children are playing, they鈥檙e forced to keep trying to find solutions to problems. That鈥檚 the same type of critical thinking required in the classroom.

Skenazy hopes educators take note and get some relief from the findings, particularly as she sees schools compensate for COVID learning loss by scaling down recess. 

鈥淪o many schools have been under the gun in terms of standardized testing that they cut back on free time and free play to give kids more time to quote unquote 鈥榩repare for the tests,鈥欌�� she said. 鈥淲hat great news that preparing for the test turns out to be play.鈥�

The Pickens educators were a little bit more surprised by the results. When Stinehart started Play Club, test scores were the last thing on his mind.

Stinehart identifies with Scandinavian educators the superintendent learned about on his visit in 2018. They were surprised the country鈥檚 test scores were some of the highest in the world since scores were never their primary focus. It speaks to how critical a child鈥檚 emotional and social well-being is to their academic success. You can鈥檛 have one without the other.

Just visiting

Out on the playground Stinehart could hardly contain his excitement.

Rainstorms had threatened to push the second play club of the school year inside, but instead the clouds broke and the sun was bearing down. Everyone was hot and sweaty.

鈥淟ook at this,鈥� he said, pointing.

Perched on the playground equipment were two girls carefully taking a small parachute and arranging it over top. After putting up their makeshift umbrella, the girls just sat in the shade talking.

Stinehart had never seen students play with the parachute that way or realize it could be used like that. But this is the type of creativity and problem-solving he sees happening in Play Club regularly. Instead of complaining about the heat, the girls just worked together to mitigate it.

The girls鈥� canopy quickly drew others鈥� attention and their chat ended abruptly. The playground set had instantly, imaginatively, transformed into a castle under siege.

鈥淚鈥檓 infiltrating,鈥� fourth grader Jackson Buier screamed.

鈥淕et out!,鈥� third grader Evelyn Diaz-Cabera told him.

Buier changed his tactic.

鈥淥K, I鈥檓 only visiting now. I鈥檓 just visiting, not infiltrating,鈥� he said, grinning.

Buier and a few others climbed the slide. The siege ended quickly, everyone鈥檚 attention turning elsewhere. Some tossed a beanbag around. A few played on a seesaw. A boy sat by himself on a bench with a box over his head, watching the whole scene through the peephole he鈥檇 carved out using Stinehart鈥檚 keys. Another child scaled the playground equipment, climbing to the tippy-top of the monkey bars. A single look at the distance to the ground revealed her regret, and she started to climb back down.

鈥淭his is too dangerous, I鈥檓 not doing this,鈥� third grader Riley Cain said.

This originally appeared at  and is published here in partnership with the .

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