I'm a huge fan of unstructured play. Recently, I read a great article in the May issue of Canadian Today's Parent by childhood fitness advocate Silken Lauman about just that. "Play experiences build strength, flexibilty and balance in different and important ways" than organised sports. I was surprised to read that physios see overuse injuries in 10 year olds. A child who only played soccer for example.I am very blessed to live in Vancouver, a beautiful city where there are a number of parks walking distance from my house.
As my daughters get older, I plan to continue making trips to the park a common occurrence for games of tag, capture the flag, frisbee, tennis, etc. Now that they are little, naturally, we are at the park almost every day weather permitting.
These are a few photos of my 3 year old climbing a park structure (it was a little scary to watch at first!) and she going down a cool zip line thing at another park. She must have tried it ten times at least.
Until next blog... adios.
Here's to unstructured play!! I can imagine that I'll be freaking by the time Ian is able to climb a structure like that. For now I kinda like that he rolls over only from front to back and scooches only a few feet at a time across the floor on his back. The hair on his head is starting to show signs of rug burn.
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