Deep Fun provides an amazing variety of articles, ideas, weblogs, and other useful resources for appreciating & developing your own senses of humor, connection, and playfulness. An extraordinary resource for educators seeking to engage their students in playful learning. Explore your own "playful path to happiness" by visiting www.deepfun.com.

Deep Play. Diane Ackerman.

Free Play—The Power of Improvisation in Life & the Arts. Stephen Nachmanovitch.

The Importance of Being Lazy: In Praise of Play, Leisure, and Vacation. Al Gini. How well do you do nothing? Our ability to really and thoroughly relax helps us become even more successful, creative, and productive the rest of the time. Read this new book and get some great ideas about how to feel less guilty when you take care of yourself!

Institute for Play. This organization focuses its attention on why play is such an essential part of the healthy development of humans of all ages. "The components of play—curiosity, discovery, novelty, risk-taking, trial and error, pretense, games, social etiquette and other ever more complex adaptive activities—are the same as the components of learning. Humans are designed by nature to play, and have played throughout their evolution." To learn more, as well as order the Institute's excellent 3-hour PBS miniseries The Promise of Play, visit www.instituteforplay.com.

Managing To Have Fun. Matt Weinstein. This book shows how large and small organizations alike can improve staff morale, increase job satisfaction, achieve important goals, and inspire greater team performance by having more fun at work. Highly recommended!

Playing by Heart—The Vision & Practice Of Belonging. O. Fred Donaldson. A magical exploration of the power of play for humans & many other species.

Children are all foreigners. We treat them as such. We cannot understand their speech or their mode of life, and so our Education is remote and accidental and not closely applied to the fact.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

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When I play, it gets me smart for my homework.
—5 year-old child

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I can imagine that someday we will regard our children not as creatures to manipulate or to change but rather as messengers from a world we once deeply knew, but which we have long since forgotten, who can reveal to us more about the true secrets of life, and also our own lives, than our parents were ever able to. We do not need to be told whether to be strict or permissive with our children. What we do need is to have respect for their needs, their feelings, and their individuality, as well as for our own.
—Alice Miller

The stakes are high. Children's basic needs have not changed that much, despite the much-publicized layer of technology that has been recently added. The following resources can help you and your neighbors make sure that play in your community is still understood and valued as the core of childhood development, and not seen as some kind of frivolous reward parceled out only when "all your work is done."

Alliance For Children.

American Association for the Child's Right To Play.

Failure To Connect—How Computers Affect Our Children's Minds and What We Can Do About It. Jane Healy.

Magical Parent, Magical Child: The Optimum Learning Relationship. Michael Mendizza with Joseph Chilton Pearce.

Playful Parenting. Lawrence J. Cohen. Subtitled "A Bold New Way to Nurture Close Connections, Solve Behavior Problems, and Encourage Children's Confidence," this book is a delight! If actually implemented widely throughout the world, this approach to parenting would dramatically improve the lives of children and the adults who help nurture their growth & development. Highly recommended!

The Gift of Play—And Why Young Children Cannot Thrive Without It. Maria Piers & Genevieve Landau.

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Playfair: Everybody's Guide to Noncompetitive Play. Matt Weinstein & Joel Goodman. Highly recommended!

Playful Activities for Powerful Presentations. Bruce Williamson. This best-selling book is filled with a wealth of insight and ideas for facilitators who want to learn how to include more playfulness in their classes and presentations.

The New Games Book and More New Games! Andrew Fluegelman. These are the classic books that helped start people playing brand-new kinds of group games as well as making up new rules for old ones.

The Second Cooperative Sports & Games Book. Terry Orlick.

The Ungame. “Speak out and touch someone.” This and other games & puzzles are available at your local toy & games store or by visiting www.talicor.com.

Baby Think It Over is the award-winning education program used for teen pregnancy prevention & parenting education. Its purpose is to provide a learning experience for young people that dramatically and realistically simulates the parenting of an infant. For more information about infant simulators, available educational materials, and other programs such as the NICoteen stop smoking program, visit www.realityworksinc.com.

Desert Survival Situation; and Subarctic Survival Situation. To find out more about these and other exercises that stimulate teamwork, problem-solving, decision making, and group process skills, visit www.humansyn.com/main_frame.html or call them at 800/622-7684.

The Global Simulation Workshop engages all participants in a hands-on, highly creative & interactive exploration of the complex systems, critical challenges & difficult choices facing people everywhere on our planet. Contact osEarth, Inc. at 203/787-9295 or visit them at www.osearth.com for more information about how your school, organization, or company can get involved. An innovative approach to developing skills in conflict & dispute resolution, leadership, teamwork, negotiation, problem solving and communication!

Bafá Bafá; StarPower; What Is No? and Where Do You Draw The Line? simulation activities help groups explore values, ethics, trust, perception & cross-cultural communication. For more information call 800/942-2900 or visit www.simulationtrainingsystems.com/schools/.