“When it comes to what children should be doing in the early years, play is more important than chasing milestones. Play is a loaded word these days. In a workaholic, get-ahead culture, it sounds almost heretical – a guilty pleasure, an excuse for indolence or wasting time.” (page 52).
“Play is just a natural version of the more structured learning that occurs in the classroom – and it may even lay the foundations for reading, writing and numeracy. In one study, Herbert Ginsberg, a professor of psychology and education at Columbia University, observed 80 children. He found that they devoted 46% of their free play to countng, exploring shapes and patterns and sorting objects into sets – basic mathematics, in other words.” (page 56)