The full detailed schedule is coming soon…but until then, below is an alphabetical list of the MORE THAN 60 recorded Educational Sessions and Research Symposium Sessions that will be core content for the 2021 VIRTUAL Conference on the Value of Play: PLAY IS SURVIVAL, available online from April 1 through June 30.
As we prepare for our second online Play Conference, there is a renewed intensity to connect play advocates, educate our national and global community, support play research and publications, and truly fulfill our mission to promote the VALUE of play throughout life. We continue to incorporate phenomenal speakers and resources with unique opportunities for learning through play!
- A Play-Based Literacy Program for The Professional Development of Reception Year Teachers
- A Prescription for Play in Education
- Access for All: Providing Equitable Hands-On Learning Experiences in A Digital World
- All Ages, All Abilities, All the Time
- Beyond Candyland: Learning Through Making Board Games
- Big Body Play Powers A Child’s Learning Trajectory
- Capture the Flag: How Traditionally Marginalized Residents Reclaim Urban Space Through Play
- Circus Is an International Language
- Crazy Games Workshop Explores Using Low Cost Materials Outside Normal Usage to Create Fun Learning
- Designing Everyday Spaces for Children
- Designing Hybrid Outdoor Play and Learning Spaces for All Ages
- Eduspeak And Play: Surviving the Wolf at The Door While Keeping Play Alive & Well in Your Classroom
- Equity and Play: Surviving and Thriving
- Future of Play: Technology Integration
- Healthy Communities, Parks and Splashpads
- Hobby Horses—A Hobby, Sport or Pure Play? Feminine Debates on A Contemporary Plaything
- Inclusive Playground Design: A Case Study of Three New England Playgrounds
- Intergenerational Play Within the Workplace: A Powerful Mechanism for Informal Learning
- Legacy of Laughter; A Grandparent Playbook
- Let’s Start With Play. Why Play in The Emergency Department Can Be Our Best Tool for Patients
- Making Connections: People, Places, And Physical Activity
- More to Say After Outdoor Play: Bookmaking and Storytelling with Children
- No, They’re Not Too Old to Play. Bringing Loose Parts Play to South Florida Middle Schoolers.
- Nonprofit, Let’s Play America, Hangs on During the Pandemic with Virtual Play Days & Handbooks
- Paddle, Pivot, Pedal, Prance and Most of All…PLAY!
- Parent LAB PLAY DAY Series
- Parents’ Perceptions of Play Throughout the Pandemic and In the Social Justice Movement
- Performative Play for The Project Based Learning Classroom
- Play and Expressive Therapy Interventions for Enhancing Emotion Regulation
- Play as Culturally Sustainable Family Engagement
- Play Behavior of Children from an Isolated Area in Brazil: Body and Space as Cultural Expression
- Play Frisco 2.0
- Play Like Our World Depends on It: Using Playfulness to Engage Others in The Climate Emergency
- Play on The Go: Tips for Developing and Using Prop Boxes
- Play Programming During the Pandemic…. What Can We Learn?
- Play, Politics, & Policy: Building a State-Wide Movement for Recess
- Playground Design for School Communities – Moving Towards a Better Way
- Playing in a Pandemic: Lessons from Virtual and Traditional Instruction in Early Elementary School
- Pretend Play as a Tool for Development During Virtual Learning of Young Children
- Prototyping: Play Applied
- Ready Player One: Harnessing the Power of Activity and Fun Using A Digital Medium
- Recess and Play Before and During the Covid-19 Pandemic
- Reconsidering Solitary Play: Understanding Self, Place, and Nature
- Reducing the Negative Impacts of Trauma Through Outdoor Play
- Removing Invisible Barriers: A Design Call to Action from Families of Those with Differing Abilities
- Sacred Play: An Ancient Contribution to Contemporary Play Theory
- Shifting Play from Survival to Thrivival
- Social Togetherness in a Time of Social Distancing
- Soulful Play
- Sustainability of Self
- Teaching Off Trail
- The Benefits and Uses of Collaborative Competition in the Classroom
- The Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Young Children’s Play
- The Effects of a Multi Recess Intervention on Body Composition in Elementary School Children
- The Importance of Failure in Play
- The Push Play Project
- The Rubber Shark Principle: How Play Is Bridging Our Relationship with Disability Inclusion
- The Value of Adult Play Is All in the Design
- Those Summer Days: Exploring Extreme Heat’s Impact on Children’s Outdoor Play and Physical Activity
- Toy Activism Through Teddybears: Promoting Playful Resilience and Ludounity In Pandemic Times
- Ways to Play the Virtual Way
- Wordplay: How Silly Jokes, Nonsense Rhymes, and Secret Languages Thrive in Unstructured Play
The Conference on the VALUE of Play
The Play Conference, as it is commonly known, is an annual educational conference presented by the US Play Coalition. The latest research and practices in the field of play are presented at the conference, which brings together play researchers, park and recreation professionals, educators, health scientists, architects, landscape architects, designers, planners, business and community leaders, psychologists, physicians and parents from across the U.S. and beyond. The 2021 Virtual Conference on the Value of Play: PLAY IS SURVIVAL includes keynote and featured speakers, round tables on critical issues and trends, research symposium for academics, educational sessions for practitioners, action and research grant opportunities, PLAYtalks and PLAYinstitutes, networking, EPIC play breaks and more.
As we get older, naturally, play finds itself towards the bottom of the priority list. We cannot always escape the demands life brings, and many of us may feel as though play no longer deserves the time we once gave it when we were younger. Or maybe we feel we are incapable of dedicating large amounts of time to it because we are occupied with things that are more important in fulfilling our definition of what being an adult means. Much like in the movie Hook starring Robin Williams as Peter Pan, he one day leaves Neverland and as time goes by, he forgets that it was even a part of his life. He doesn’t remember Tinkerbell, the Lost Boys, or even his enemy… Captain Hook. As he is forced to come back to Neverland, he slowly starts to see the life he used to live and has forgotten. He remembers how to be a kid again.
developed very quickly as a kid. We had a backyard that was split into two levels; the middle was held up by a wall of rocks with creatures of all sorts living in the dark areas between them and served as our platform to test how high we could jump off the ground. It wasn’t unusual to wake up with a herd of deer on the other side of the fence dividing our property and my neighbor’s. We had a wooden playset on the right side and a trampoline on the left that my two sisters and I spent hours upon hours jumping, playing zombie or trying to perfect our front flips. I developed a deeper connection and appreciation for the scenery and nature around me as I got older, so the time we spent outside was the most fun when I took in what was around me and let my imagination kick in.
Play has a certain aspect of vulnerability when putting yourself and your imagination out there. My imagination when I was younger was often put towards making up new places for me to live. I had and still have such a fascination for exotic homes: treehouses, our old camper, castles, towers, fairy gardens, secret worlds, you name it. I never imagined I was anyONE else, but someWHERE else – and living a different life. When we’d take our pop-up camper up to the mountains, my dad would have it sitting in the front of our house for a few days before we left. That camper became MY home – with my own kitchen, bed, coffee, and secret password to enter, given to those that were allowed. When winter rolled around with loads of snow it was the perfect opportunity to create a new home with my bare hands. I remember one year we got so much snow we built an igloo in my front yard with a sledding hill going down the side of our house. I imagined living in that igloo for the rest of my life. For me, there was something comfortable about being confined in such a small home.
The 
Simone Chin, Ph.D., and Susan Caruso of 
program for adolescents (ages 11-14) from South Florida’s economically challenged, underserved or vulnerable African American, Caribbean- American, and Hispanic population. Build & Play invites children to create, invent and build using their imagination and loose parts.
Ariana Brazier, CEO and co-founder of 
families of color, particularly from poor and low-income communities as well as teachers, school administrators and any individuals and/or groups who serve in their focus community. The Parent LAB PLAY DAY Series engages participants in interactive games designed to connect the active body to brain development, and thus enhance cognitive learning experiences. They use physically interactive games in and through our PLAY DAY Series to celebrate and promote opportunities for Black cultural expression.
Angela Kyle, Co-Founder/ Executive Director of 
Action Grant for her initiative “Super-Powering Play: Mobilizing PlayBuild’s Volunteer Community Board as Play Ambassadors.” The PlayBuild Community Board is a grass-roots volunteer network of committed and passionate community residents who manage the day-to-day operations and programmatic activities of the organization. Established in the summer of 2019 the Community Board is the connective tissue between the organization and the Central City neighborhood where we work. The Community Board members have no formal training in child development, education, or design disciplines, however, they have shown enthusiasm and willingness to acquire the skills and training that will make them more effective brand ambassadors for PlayBuild’s work.
William Massey, Ph.D., Assistant Professor at Oregon State University, received this year’s $3,000 Research Seed Grant Award for his project, “The recess initiative: A participatory action approach to increasing physical activity and self-regulation through recess in 
elementary schools.”
Working through the 
Christine Alexander is executive assistant of Let’s Play America in Takoma Park, MD. She believes that play is “a distinctly human experience, a happening that we can all understand and share regardless of background, age, ability, or point of entry.” Christine believes strongly that play is NOT just for children. “Despite all that we know about the value of play in human development, when faced with the observation and potential for judgment from our peers, adults will forego child-led play-based learning in order to avoid the chaos of free play. This blatant devaluation of play is what drives me to advocate for accessible free play opportunities for all stages of human development.”
Alicia Chiaravalli is an environmental consultant and freelance designer from the Detroit area. She is also continuing her education in a Design for Play program within Industrial Design. As a student of play design, Alicia’s definition of play is constantly evolving. “Play can take many forms, be deeply personal and often intra-personal, but the expression of play is irrefutably transcendent.” The Play Conference affords her the opportunity to connect with designers, artists, practitioners, historians, theorists and craftspeople who are similarly concerned with how play can contribute to the public good.
Development Inc. She is currently working on a project to intentionally integrate student-led play opportunities into the classroom of the Title One schools in her surrounding communities. As a former PreK teacher, Tia knows the value of play in the classroom, but in elementary schools she often faces feedback that questioned the challenge and rigor or lessons infused with meaningful play. For Tia, the Play Conference provides the research and resources she needs “to educate and encourage my colleagues in the fight toward educational equity…I hope to learn valuable strategies for influencing challenging learning environments that fail to see the value of play.”
Lauren Willis is director of the Preschool at Holly Springs Center, a community effort to bring a quality play-based preschool program to rural Pickens County, South Carolina. “We know that play is valuable, because we see the benefits everyday, but we’d love to learn the Hows and Whys. I’m eager to learn more ways to help my staff develop and implement new ways to bring play to our students, and I feel that the PLAY Conference is an amazing opportunity to do this.”
Join us on Twitter Wednesday, September 30 at 7:00pm ET/4:00pm PT for the next installment of our monthly 
education, focusing on assessment practices and gifted education. One of Angela’s research interests in play, in particular, the connections of giftedness, creativity, equity, and play. She has worked in public education in the gifted field as a classroom teacher, resource teacher, and central office support, as well as in the private non-profit sector of gifted education. She is an equity advocate and is a member of the Diversity Scholars Network, part of the National Center for Institutional Diversity.
As schools reopen, it is important to remember that recess is an essential component of an educational approach that considers the whole child. A supportive school recess plan can benefit both students and teachers, back from months of interrupted routines, boredom, loneliness, family stress, anxiety and often a lack of physically active and social play.
Join our first ever Virtual Poster Session “Happy Hour,” Recorded Live on Zoom