Day 1: The 7 Day Play Challenge
Anyone Can Participate
This is the 7 DAY PLAY CHALLENGE. Anyone can participate. Here’s what it looks like:
Each morning I will post a short video (above) inviting you (adult you) into 5 minutes of playful activity that can be done solo at home or with kids/friends.
After finishing the activity, report back by commenting on this post and sharing a few words about how the experience affected you.
We learn from each other and how it felt.
You can also follow along and read more comments on my FB page.
I’m increasingly drawn to playful activities with adults, because it helps
break stuck mental patterns
open new ideas
create laughter, fun, and intimacy
This kind of thing takes guts! So I will cultivate a safe place for us to explore the activities and discussion. I’m sure playful things will come up, but I also expect uncomfortable feelings to arise in some of us. All of that is welcome. The purpose isn’t success. The purpose is learning and growth. It will likely be a provocative and rich exploration for people who haven’t played in a long time.
I am the author of How to Tell Stories to Children, now in 21 languages, and an independent forest school teacher. I spend almost everyday outside with kids, adults, and elders learning, laughing, getting serious, and being silly. I am, in a sense, an expert at play.
But I don’t just mean silliness, because skillful play requires tuning to how others are feeling and being affected (and ourselves). We don’t just want to laugh our way into ruining someone else’s safe space (or our own). My expertise lies in cultivating that safety so that kids and adults can bridge play with serious inquiry and life experience. As a complete loop, this is extremely powerful learning.
Ways to Comment and Share Your Experience
Leave a comment at the end of this post
Reply to this email and ask me to post your message in the comments
Send a rabbit to me on an incredible journey
Read and comment on my Facebook Page
Tell people about what you’re doing
You’re welcome to send me a private message if you’d like that, but don’t want to share with everyone
There is no cost, but if you feel inspired by this exercise, please consider supporting my work by becoming a paid subscriber for $5/mo.
You’ll likely find yourself reflecting on the experience throughout the day, both positively and negatively. The discussion and comments can help you gain perspective, but you have all the freedom in the world to hold your play to yourself in a safe and curious way in order to explore your own heart and mind.
A Few Words About Me and Where I’m Going
I’ve been teaching and playing with children and families for over 10 years, and writing about those experiences online, in print, and elsewhere. This summer, I’m converting this free newsletter into an income resource in order to expand and support my work with kids and parents.
My Values
Every child is intelligent
Connection, not curriculum, is the foundation of learning and growth
All educational models have strengths
Having fun is important
Life is personal
Respect for women’s leadership
Subscription Details
By the end of summer, I will be sharing posts and creating events with paid subscribers only. Cost is $5/month. Free subscribers will get occasional newsletters and previews.
Why am I doing this? I work with kids and families in thoughtful and loving ways that transcend conventional ideas of education, childcare, or mentorship. I want to build an inexpensive business model that allows me to work with children and families in person and online without asking for payment at every transaction. Your support helps and gives you access to:
Practices to support play, learning, growth, and community
Tools to build connection with kids, families, and elders
Alternative education news and resources
Online calls on parenting, education, and community topics
Storytelling events
The Essence is Connection
Children thrive when they feel seen for who they are. Learning and growth become more self-directed and relatively easy. Friendships and family relationships blossom.
Alternatively, the soup of judgement and competition many of us grew up within often leads us to hate what we’re doing, even if we learn to do it well! Many of us are learning to do that today - to hate education, hate work, our neighbors, our leaders, and even ourselves and our role on the planet.
I’m not working against any of this. I’m only willing to work FOR what I want - which is kids and families, and all people, to feel more love and connection in their lives (so that all the other stuff is easier).
By becoming a paid subscriber, you help me make this work available to the kids and families who need it. Please consider it.
Joseph Sarosy
I am the author of How to Tell Stories to Children, Off Grid Kids, numerous resources on parenting, and the creator of the Juniper School, a homeschool cooperative in Taos, New Mexico. I have two degrees, one in civil engineering because I’m a math nerd, and one in philosophy because my friends were weird. I respect community members and elders, POC, and indigenous voices. I listen to children when they talk to me.
For over 10 years I have been teaching, writing, learning, and exploring the earth with my students and a collaborative group of elders, farmers, and craftswomen - almost exclusively in outdoor settings. In 2022, I co-facilitated a Forest Kindergarten Teacher Training, and in 2023 I received a grant from VELA Education Fund to promote alternative education in Taos. But I like public education. I’m not against anything. I’m just for what I am.
What I am is a father who loves his daughter and sees the benefit of honest, loving attention. I want this for everyone. Everywhere.
I myself had a hard time playing this one out today. I'm simultaneously teaching a playwriting and theatrical storytelling workshop for teens in town, and today was the first day. Took a lot of energy, but was very creative and fun. Watching kids develop and tell their own stories - this kind of stuff makes me feel alive.
Then, on the way home it was raining and my daughter and I were running through parking lots (safely!) to buy groceries. Then dinner. Then my sweetheart, who lives down the road, was having a bit of a day so I went to see her, shared some tears, and left feeling lighthearted but full.
All the while, in the back of my mind - all day long, mind you - I was saying, "You're not doing this good enough. You should respond. Now. Sooner. When?" and that kind of thing. But on the drive home, around 8:30, I look out the window and there, amidst the clouds, was this tiny golden sun peeking through at the horizon. I stopped the truck. Fireworks across thy sky. Pink and gold and all those delicious shades of blue, gray, and cream that a late sunset will spill onto the clouds.
"Sunset," I texted my sweetheart, "Look."
"Pretty," she texted back.
"Fireworks," I wrote, "out the window."
To me, that's play. I didn't follow the rules. I was too late. I did everything wrong. But when the moment struck, I was there. Playing on the side of the road.
Drones are now used in “Fireworks” shows and this informed the images in view of my mind. I am on a third floor with a view from my classroom of many buildings and rooftops. They became the playground for living fireworks. Hurdles diving boards, surfaces for hopscotch skipping. The play and parcoure of the mental figures was my own in perceptible way.
Exploring how this made me feel brought to mind the feeling of planning a trip, we can be excited by expectations of an impending experience. Yet, the future trip is no more real the figures leaping from roof to roof outside my window.
Certainly points to the power of the mind to induce some powerful happy particles (serotonin). Mindfulness meditation would be another parallel: A positive dualistic focus bringing a quieter focused mind.
I imagine this visualizing might be a regular activity of a certain kind scientific, architectural or mathematical genius, who places themself inside a structure to manipulate molecules and angles into new possibilities. Thanks for the experience Joe.