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Out of this world

We need to give children permission to play imaginatively rather than dampening them down with adult ideas, says Philip Waters, in the latest article in his series on play types Imagine you are a tree. Go on; just humour me for a moment. You're a tree, maybe a great oak with gigantic outstretched arms, or perhaps some spindly, thorny thing that has particularly twisted branches. I guess for many of you this is a difficult task, partly because it's embarrassing, even though you are just thinking about being a tree and not actually performing as one, but also because you know trees are unconscious things, they are alive but not in the same way as you and I, so attempting to place yourself in that frame of mind is at most 'rooted' in some physical perspective.

Imagine you are a tree. Go on; just humour me for a moment. You're a tree, maybe a great oak with gigantic outstretched arms, or perhaps some spindly, thorny thing that has particularly twisted branches. I guess for many of you this is a difficult task, partly because it's embarrassing, even though you are just thinking about being a tree and not actually performing as one, but also because you know trees are unconscious things, they are alive but not in the same way as you and I, so attempting to place yourself in that frame of mind is at most 'rooted' in some physical perspective.

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