It is becoming increasingly clear through research on the brain as well as in other area of study, that childhood needs play. Play acts as a forward feed mechanism into courageous, creative, rigorous thinking in adulthood.
--Tina Bruce, Professor, London Metropolitan University

Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning....They have to play with what they know to be true in order to find out more, and then they can use what they learn in new forms of play.
--Fred Rogers of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
--Plato, Greek philosopher

“When kids play, they remember. They may not be aware they are learning, but they sure are aware they are having fun. When you have a good belly laugh with your siblings or parents or friends, that stays with you. And the great thing is that is comes so naturally…if we only let it.”
--Rebecca Krook, play facilitator for kids with disabilities

Play for young children is not recreation activity; it is not leisure-time activity nor escape activity. Play is thinking time for young children. It is language time. Problem-solving time. It is memory time, planning time, investigating time. It is organization-of-ideas time, when the young child uses his mind and body and his social skills and all his powers in response to the stimuli he has met
.--James L. Hymes, Jr., child development specialist, author

Play is the highest expression of human development in childhood, for it alone is the free expression of what is in a child's soul.
--Friedrich Froebel, "father" of modern kindergarten

We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.
-- George Bernard Shaw, playwright