Mahalo For Your Votes!

Aloha everyone!

Wow – it’s amazing but not surprising - that all of you rallied together enough votes to bring Ka Hana Pono the second place award for family childcare provider of the year!!!  You guys are so awesome!!  The first place award went to a child care provider from Maui so Bison says we can still say we’re number one on Oahu :)

Thank you all so so much for the time you took to vote for us.  At the award ceremony PATCH anonymously read each comment that came from our clients -- the comments blew us away and had us both crying :) tears of joy – that really was the most special and memorable part of the evening for us!! 

There was no way to leave the award ceremony not feeling fulfilled and motivated to work even harder at our dreams… 

We’re very grateful for all of you in our lives and want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for being so supportive of our program at Ka Hana Pono...it’s with love that we open those doors each day and we appreciate your / your keikis being there and filling the space with even more love, peace and joy..every day...thank you.

"That's what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game,

but how we lose and how we've changed because of it

and what we take away from it that we never had before,

to apply to other games.

Losing, in a curious way, is winning."

Richard David Bach

Aloha & Malama,

Angelica & Jason Friedmann

(Aunty Gel & Uncle Bison)

 

Did you know that children are spending less time in unstructured play – especially outdoors and in natural settings – than at any other time in history?  Meanwhile, there is the pressure to formalize and structure early childhood programs, despite the fact that everything we know about how children learn and develop tells us that it is through PLAY.  

 Pausing to listen to an airplane in the sky, stooping to watch a ladybug on a plant, sitting on a rock to watch the waves crash over the quayside—children have their own agendas and timescales. As they find out more about their world and their place in it; they work hard not to let adults hurry them. We need to hear their voices. Cathy Nutbrown Contemporary British educational theorist

Play, while it cannot change the external realities of children’s lives, can be a vehicle for children to explore and enjoy their differences and similarities and to create, even for a brief time, a more just world where everyone is an equal and valued participant. Patricia G. Ramsey, Contemporary American educational psychologist

As astronauts and space travelers children puzzle over the future; as dinosaurs and princesses they unearth the past. As weather reporters and restaurant workers they make sense of reality; as monsters and gremlins they make sense of the unreal. Gretchen Owocki, Contemporary American early childhood educator

Play energizes us and enlivens us. It eases our burdens. It renews our natural sense of optimism and opens us up to new possibilities. Stuart Brown, MD Contemporary American psychiatrist

It is a happy talent to know how to play. Ralph Waldo Emerson, American writer 1803–1882

Life must be lived as play. Plato, Greek philosopher 427–347 BC

In our play we reveal what kind of people we are. Ovid, Roman poet 43 BC–17 or 18 AD

Play is our brain's favorite way of learning. Diane Ackerman, Contemporary American author

Culture arises and unfolds in and as play. Johan Huizinga, Dutch historian 1872–1945

Almost all creativity involves purposeful play. Abraham Maslow, American psychologist 1908–1970

Whoever wants to understand much must play much. Gottfried Benn, German physician 1886–1956

Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold. Joseph Chilton Pearce, Contemporary American scholar

The true object of all human life is play. G. K. Chesterton, British author 1874–1936

Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning. Fred Rogers, American television personality 1928–2003

A child loves his play, not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard. Benjamin Spock, American pediatrician 1903–1998

Play fosters belonging and encourages cooperation. Stuart Brown, MD, Contemporary American psychiatrist

Play has been man’s most useful preoccupation. Frank Caplan, Contemporary American author 1911–1988

To the art of working well a civilized race would add the art of playing well. George Santayana, American philosopher 1863–1952

People tend to forget that play is serious. David Hockney, Contemporary British painter

Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury. Play is a necessity.  Kay Redfield Jamison, Contemporary American professor of psychiatry

Do not…keep children to their studies by compulsion but by play. Plato, Greek philosopher 427–347 BC

Deep meaning lies often in childish play. Johann Friedrich von Schiller, German poet 1759–1805

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play. Heraclitus, Greek philosopher 535–475 BC

Surely all God’s people…like to play. John Muir, American naturalist 1838–1914

Children at play are not playing about. Their games should be seen as their most serious minded activity. Michel de Montaigne, French essayist
1533–1592

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father. Roger von Oech, Contemporary American creativity guru

Play keeps us fit physically and mentally. Stuart Brown, MD Contemporary American psychiatrist

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. Plato, Greek philosopher 427–347 BC

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct. Carl Jung, Swiss psychoanalyst 1875–1961

In play a child always behaves beyond his average age, above his daily behavior. In play it is as though he were a head taller than himself. Lev Vygotsky, Russian psychologist 1896–1934

Creative people are curious, flexible, persistent, and independent with a tremendous spirit of adventure and a love of play. Henri Matisse, French painter
1869–1954

The opposite of play is not work. It’s depression. Brian Sutton-Smith, Contemporary American folklorist

Play is training for the unexpected. Marc Bekoff, Contemporary American biologist

Creative play is like a spring that bubbles up from deep within a child. Joan Almon, Contemporary American educator

Children learn as they play. Most importantly, in play children learn how to learn. O. Fred Donaldson, Contemporary American martial arts master

Human beings need pleasure the way they need vitamins. Lionel Tiger, Contemporary Canadian anthropologist

Those who play rarely become brittle in the face of stress or lose the healing capacity for humor. Stuart Brown, MD Contemporary American psychiatrist

When children pretend, they’re using their imaginations to move beyond the bounds of reality. A stick can be a magic wand. A sock can be a puppet. A small child can be a superhero. Fred Rogers, American children’s television host 1928–2003

The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable. Carl Jung, Swiss psychoanalyst 1875–1961

In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play. Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher 1844–1900

Play is hard to maintain as you get older. You get less playful. You shouldn’t, of course. Richard Feynman, American physicist 1918–1988

Just play. Have fun. Enjoy the game. Michael Jordan, American basketball player

Children have always learned and created places for themselves through play. Donna R. Barnes, Contemporary American psychologist

There is for many a poverty of play. D.W. Winnicott, British pediatrician 1896–1971

Play allows us to develop alternatives to violence and despair; it helps us learn perseverance and gain optimism. Stuart Brown MD, Contemporary American psychiatrist

The very existence of youth is due in part to the necessity for play; the animal does not play because he is young, he has a period of youth because he must play. Karl Groos, German evolutionary biologist 1861–1946

If you want to be creative, stay in part a child, with the creativity and invention that characterizes children before they are deformed by adult society. Jean Piaget, Swiss philosopher 1896–1980

A child who does not play is not a child, but the man who does not play has lost forever the child who lived in him. Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet
1904–1973

I believe that those boys who take part in rough, hard play outside of school will not find any need for horse-play in school. Theodore Roosevelt, American president 1858–1919

It is in playing, and only in playing, that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self. D.W. Winnicott, British pediatrician 1896–1971

Now in myth and ritual the great instinctive forces of civilized life have their origin: law and order, commerce and profit, craft and art, poetry, wisdom and science. All are rooted in the primeval soil of play. Johan Huizing, Dutch historian 1872–1945

The playing adult steps sideward into another reality; the playing child advances forward to new stages of mastery. Erik H. Erikson, American psychoanalyst 1902–1994

Ritual grew up in sacred play; poetry was born in play and nourished on play; music and dancing were pure play.... We have to conclude, therefore, that civilization is, in its earliest phases, played. It does not come from play...it arises in and as play, and never leaves it. Johan Huizing
Dutch historian, 1872–1945

We all need empty hours in our lives or we will have no time to create or dream. Robert Coles, Contemporary American child psychologist

The child amidst his baubles is learning the action of light, motion, gravity, muscular force…  Ralph Waldo Emerson, American writer 1803–1882

So, in all these spheres—in painting, sculpture, drawing, music, singing, dancing, gymnastics, games, sports, writing, and speech—we can carry on to our heart’s content, all through our long lives, complex and specialized forms of exploration and experiment. Desmond Morris, Contemporary British zoologist