What is it about water that makes a kid lose all sense of time, place and inhibition?

He was maneuvering toys along the museum exhibit’s winding river and didn’t even notice his shirt and shorts getting soaked.

“I should have brought a change of clothes,” my daughter said with a laugh. But my 3½-year-old grandson was lost in ideas and undeterred by our efforts to move him along.

That is the beauty of play. Often what an adult sees as discomfort, inconvenience or mess is inviting, fun and engrossing in the eyes of a child. And it is essential.

Play is “the foundation for everything children need later in life,” said Kimberly Stull, executive vice president of playful learning at DuPage Children’s Museum in Naperville.

It has been called a child’s work because it is vital to their devel

See Full Page