AT ONE SCHOOL, A PUSH FOR MORE PLAY TIME

AT ONE SCHOOL, A PUSH FOR MORE PLAY TIME

Some kindergarten parents at Public School 101, a graceful brick castle in Forest Hills, Queens, wanted more free play time for their children; so they decided to do something about it.
Gone were the play kitchens, sand and water tables, and dress-up areas; half-days were now full days. Instead, there were whiteboards, and the kindergartners, in classes of up to 27, practiced reading and math on work sheets on desks at P.S. 101, also known as the School in the Gardens.
Play came in the form of “choice time,” a roughly 30-minute afternoon period during which each child chose what blocks or toys in the classroom to work with, and at recess, which was often truncated by the time it took for every child to calm down and form an orderly line back to class.
Time and space for imaginative play in city schools seem to be shrinking as the academic emphasis on reading and math grows, said Clara Hemphill, who researches the city’s schools. “Across the city, we’ve seen dress-up areas taken away and replaced with computer desks,” Ms. Hemphill said. That has brought a quiet backlash from some parents. Some parents at P.S. 101 said they wanted to see a greater emphasis on play on days when children cannot go outside; now, they are sometimes plopped down to watch television cartoons. “We wanted something like board games or Simon Says, but I think the staffing was too much to organize,” Donna Chin, a kindergarten parent, said

The School in the Gardens has a rigorous academic curriculum, and it is the sort of place where homework assignments by third grade can stretch to an hour.
About half of the parents support the idea of kindergarten homework, and about half do not, said one parent,