About Playing for Keeps
Who We Are
Playing for Keeps is a national not-for-profit organization founded in 1999 that exists to help bridge the gap between what researchers have learned about play and what parents and professionals who impact kids' lives on a day-to-day, hour-by-hour need to know to help nurture our precious children to their full potential. We are driven by our mission of improving outcomes for children through increasing their access to healthy play.
Executive Director
Susan J. Oliver, executive director of the national not-for-profit organization Playing for Keeps, devotes her time to promoting the role of play in our culture and leading efforts to support a research and policy infrastructure that will make play a healthy part of our children's development.
Playing for Keeps is a strong, credible voice promoting healthy play for all children.
We help translate research about play into usable, everyday practice by parents, teachers, human service providers and the toy industry. Information provided by Playing for Keeps is grounded in scholarly research about natural, healthy, developmentally appropriate practices for parenting and educating young children.
Our goals are to
- Help parents understand the importance of play in their children's healthy development
- Increase parents' commitment to play time in their children's lives – both at home and in community and educational settings
- Increase parental decision making and behavior changes to accommodate increased healthy play for their children
- Help parents understand the role of play in their children's preschool and early elementary learning and motivate parents to choose play-based learning settings for their children
- Increase the amount of children's discretionary time at every age level spent in child-driven, constructive play and to contribute to the decrease in the amount of children's discretionary time consumed with sedentary and passive activities (like watching television and playing computer games)
What We Do
- Playing for Keeps uses scholarly research about child development as the base for parent education:
- Consolidating the knowledge base about play
- Continually updating the knowledge base as more research is completed
- Supporting new research to fill gaps in the knowledge base
- Reaching parents through media outlets including public television, parenting publications, mass media and Web.
- Adding play education to parent-education services provided to parents already served by national or local programs. Including home visiting programs, children's museums nationwide and other human services.
- Reaching parents through toy retailers including specialty toy stores and mass market stores
- Reaching parent influencers through publications and other outreach, including:
- Annual Playing for Keeps international conference on play
- Articles in professional journals
- Chapters in books for early childhood educators and policymakers
- Presentations at key national early childhood conferences
Core Beliefs
Play is vital.
Play stimulates the imagination. It is a catalyst by which children learn to develop an understanding of themselves and their relationships with others; it is a testing ground for language, behavior and problem-solving; and it prepares children for academic learning and rewarding adult lives.
Parents and caregivers perform a critical role in play.
Parents and caregivers are children's first playmates, and they play a key role in creating fun, constructive playtime experiences for their children throughout childhood. The more parents and caregivers understand the links between play and healthy development, the more they will be equipped to make informed decisions about play.
All children should have access to fun and constructive play.
Kids have a natural instinct to play because it is so central to their development. All children deserve the opportunity to engage in play suited to their needs and developmental level, regardless of their socioeconomic background, abilities, or other factors that sometimes can limit access to play.
To receive updates on Rice Krispies® cereal, sign up for the newsletter here.
