Relating to Children

Many writers and teachers have stressed the value of play. Working with Chris Harris and his children, it soon became clear to me that the recognition of this value underlay many of the activities in his classroom. Michael Armstrong, in his accounts of play-like activities in my own classroom two years earlier, had described how play can be an essentially intellectual activity. ¹ What interested me now was how the children structured their play. Perhaps this would tell us something about the relationships we, as teachers, should try to develop with children.