Dr. Emily AronoffI believe deeply that both prayer and play are essential processes to practice throughout the entire lifespan. These verbs can mean different things to different people. But no matter the variation, they involve creation, reflection, expression, and connection.
I named my new collection, Pray and Play because I love both. Though I wasn’t aware of it at the time, I now see that the rich prayer practice I developed as a young person is what I leaned on, what allowed me to survive my darkest seasons. I was a camp and youth group kid, a musical theater nerd, and a band geek. I still am. Musical play was the best way I knew how to connect to people and to community, from the time I was a kiddo myself. My best childhood core memories revolve around music. I made memories and meaning when my dad would sit at the piano and play while we sang for hours, when I was encouraged to take on leadership during camp tefillah (prayer), and when I turned my thoughts and feelings into music.
I made a career out of those activities as an adult. I want everyone in the room, the kiddos and the grown ups with them, to find them accessible and joyful. And I want to equip the people who lead these moments to design them well, facilitate them with confidence, and understand the kind of impact we can achieve.
What Play Means for Child Development
When I say play, I mean an act of creation and expression, freely chosen and freely shaped. A person invents a song that did not exist a moment ago. An instrument is handled to add expression that brings discovery and delight. People engage in shared, responsive movement. Play is what humans do when we get to make and say things in our own way, without grades, without a script, without somebody else’s idea of what counts.
The musical manipulatives I reach for, like shakers, scarves, and rhythm sticks, give even the youngest kiddo a way into this kind of play before they have the words for it. They turn an abstract invitation into something a body can do. (As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.)
Dr. Stuart Brown, who founded the National Institute for Play, writes that play is something done for its own sake: voluntary, pleasurable, and able to take us out of time. His research argues that the same patterns show up across the lifespan. Kiddos need play to develop empathy, communication, and resilience. Adults need it too. (His TED talk, “Play Is More Than Just Fun,” makes the case beautifully.)
The Research on Play: The AAP, NAEYC, and Stuart Brown
The American Academy of Pediatrics agrees. In their 2018 clinical report, The Power of Play, they recommend that pediatricians prescribe play during well-child visits. NAEYC, the leading authority on early childhood education, anchors its developmentally appropriate practice in play as the way kiddos construct knowledge and meaning. Both authorities say the same thing: this matters for kiddos, and it matters for the adults in their lives.
Zipper Songs: Inviting Play Into Jewish Prayer
Prayer can also be an act of creation and expression. A new song created. A connection sturdied. A powerful petition.
About half of the twenty-five songs in my Pray and Play collection are zipper songs. The melody and the chord progression stay sturdy. One slot opens for the participant to fill with their own word, their own movement, their own melody. The room responds or reflects.
Tot Shabbat as Adult Jewish Learning
Dr. Lisa Miller’s three decades of research at Columbia, published in The Spiritual Child (2015), found that adult spirituality is often reawakened through caregiving relationships with children. The window between ages five and fifteen is the most plastic for the child. It is also the window in which the adults around them have the most direct invitation to re-engage their own spiritual capacity. The kiddo’s openness can inspire growth in the grown up (don’t you love it when that happens?).
My 2018 dissertation, Exploring Tot Shabbat, documented this directly. Families who attended Tot Shabbat consistently described the experience as their own Jewish learning. They reported being welcomed into a Jewish space without judgment for the first time in years. They reported learning prayers and melodies they had never been taught as children. They reported watching their kiddo discover Jewish life and being invited in alongside them. Tot Shabbat is functioning, in practice, as adult Jewish education for a generation of grown ups who were never given the door.
NAEYC’s research on family engagement converges on the same point. Family programs work best when the grown ups are participating, not spectating. The kiddo’s development is accelerated when the adults in their life are engaged, and the adults’ development is accelerated by the same engagement.
