REAL PLAY
By
Senior lecturer Asbjørn Flemmen
Volda College

Real Play is steered by centres of attraction in the brain. It is steered by the genes, our inner guru Supported by a developmental drive, a system of drive at a high energy level.

Two features are dominating:

1. The body is much used and with great versatility
2. It is a social activity, a social behaviour, in other words; Real Play is a socio-motor behaviour.

That means that there are social drives behind our use of the body

But Real Play is dependent on one dominating factor

• it demands areas, and qualities in these areas

In a sum we can say that real play demands movement eldorados

• movement eldorados in summer environments,
• movement eldorados in winter environments

Real Play - is the name of children's' own movement culture as contrasted to sport or athletics which is the name of the adults' movement culture. For the future of the child's own culture, the distinction between those two phenomena are of great importance.

Real play is a phenomenon older than the culture itself. The dispositions for that behaviour is deeply rooted in our biological nature. The genes constitutes the driving system. It is the type of play, and the only one which we have common with other living species. Because of that reason the circumstances around real play, normally, should be relaxed. However, during an evolutionary short time, the ecology of the childhood has dramatically changed in modern societies. The environment seldom gives satis-faction to the needs and the expectations that children have out of their drive to be in activity and their social nature.

As a compensation for the lack of areas of nature our main task is to develop play areas that are specially designed with the intention to fulfil the children's needs for excitement and collaboration.

The fundament for understanding real play:

• focus on the movement behaviour
• focus on the sensio-motor aspect
• focus on the real play as s sosio-motor behaviour