PLAY CENTRE WEEK

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31661, 23 April 1968, Page 3

PLAY CENTRE WEEK

Play centre members hope to clear up some of the public’s misconceptions about their movement during the national play centre week, which began yesterday.

A spokesman for the Canterbury association said many people thought children were wasting their time at centres because they were playing. “They don’t realise children learn by playing. Many don’t know that although the children choose what they do, the play is structured,” she said. “Special learning skills are fostered.”

Visions of children being allowed to do as they pleased were quite incorrect. “Children are well supervised and there are certainly limits. “Training for supervisors is very thorough, and courses

in child development, family relationships and so on continue after the initial course. It is also a very practical training,” she said. Parents were the first, most influential, and enduring teachers of their children, Mr R. Sanders, Dominion president of the New Zealand Federation of Playcentre Associations, said in his address on the national play centre week. “The concept of parents, through increased knowledge, working for the immediate benefit of their own and their neighbours’ children has been the basic starting point of the New Zealand play centre movement,” he said. Last year more than 10,000 families contributed more than $340,000. A grant of $llB,OOO was given by the Government.

“It is a genuine, indigenous product working at the grass roots for the benefit of this

and subsequent generations of New Zealanders—pakeha and Maori.

“Play centre parents are adamant in the belief that the most productive and enduring enterprise of a people will always be the intelligent rearing of its young,” he said. Public interest in the display set up by the association in the Riccarton Mall has already been excellent. Supervisors with the children, who are shown in the photograph above happily occupied in a sample of play centre activities in one stand, have found people coming forward readily to ask questions.

A variety of books and pamphlets is available from the library stall. This week many local centres will hold open days for the public to see play centres in action.