Play to Play

"Here’s to hoping that we all understand the historic moment we inhabit."

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--Project Play Report 2022

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Kids not playing, elite programs either pricing them out or burning them out. Kids quitting sport in large numbers, tired of the travel grind.

What if you had a better way? What if you could blow up pay to play?Would you do it? Or would you stay on the side lines and hope that something changes?

Joy of the People is a non profit that for the for the last 12 years has been at the cutting edge in the use of play to drive adaptive learning, we can do something about it--and we are taking action. 

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In the best environment possible 

Let's understand Play

Let's first thoroughly understand Play

Play came first.

All animals play, even bacteiria play.  Play proceeds language and thus precedes culture. Play is perhaps the original proto language, a way to interact with others--friend or foe? Cooperate of fight? As humans play is vital to the understanding ourselves, building individual competencies like communication and executive function, but perhaps more importantly, play is our language with others and is vital in our ability to work together, cooperate and build community.

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Play is vital

Kids love to play. It comes naturally and provides a vital role. Simply put when we play, we play in each other's brains. Whether it is a game of tag or monopoly, contests of play involve a very simple question: "can I get your muscles to work for me?"  In tag it is can I get you to run the wrong way (thus taking over you brain to tell your muscles to use vital energy to make a wasteful movement and making it easier for me? In monopoly it is getting your opponent to sell you Park Place. In both cases the play was in the brain. In both cases you controlled the outcome by controlling the brain of your opponent.

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Play as adaptive learning

Why is this important? Because progression and improvement are inevitable. The evolutionary theorist, Leslie Orgel said in his 'first rule' ""Whenever a spontaneous process is too slow or too inefficient a protein will evolve to speed it up or make it more efficient.". Therefore there are two was to improve, do something faster, and/or, do it easier. In sport 'Faster' usually means the individual and his or her limits, and those limits are also guided by the laws of physics.  A human can get so fast. But easier is a different story. If I can tell the goalkeeper to jump the wrong way I can much more safely pass a slower ball at the other side, and that's precisely what the top penalty takers do. fast is limited, easy is virtually limitless.

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Play overload vs Play

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Play come naturally, but is removed unaturally

As kids move into what Piaget describes as the 'concert operational stage,' at around 7 or eight years of age, you begin to see a change where kids access play in small groups. It is here that the sandlots, backyard play, recess, pond hockey and street play will 

All play has costs.

All play has value

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