The best play feels like pure fun and adventure – but when the conditions are right, children develop confidence, creativity, resilience and independence, almost without noticing…
There are camps for tennis, camps for drama, camps for football, music and coding… These are all designed to help children practise a particular skill and become better at a particular thing.
They all have their place, but we believe children also need something more fundamental. Children need somewhere they can become absorbed in the serious business of having fun.
Play is one of the most powerful forms of learning there is.
Children learn through doing: inventing, imagining, experimenting and exploring. They learn by working things out together, making mistakes when the consequences do not matter, trying again because they want to and discovering that they can do things they did not know they could.
This is the Transformational Power of Play.
Real play is enjoyable, voluntary and pursued for its own sake.
A child joins in because they really do feel that the treasure needs finding or the mystery needs solving, or that the shark-infested swamp needs crossing without anyone touching the ground.
Confidence, creativity and resilience often develop along the way, but they are not the overt reason the child is playing. Children can spot a lesson disguised as a game from a mile away.
Play works because they enter the adventure wholeheartedly. The learning is real precisely because the fun is real.
Transformational play cannot be forced, but the right conditions can make it much more likely.
The best-designed play feels spontaneous to the children inside it, even if behind the scenes, someone has thought carefully about the setting, the challenge and the rules. The structure draws children in, but the freedom within it allows them to make the experience their own.
After more than 20 years of creating experiences for children, families and adults, we have identified three conditions that help play work its magic.
Space is the arena in which ordinary expectations can be suspended. It might be a garden, a beach, a woodland or a room transformed by imagination. Whatever the place, the key is that children feel safe enough to experiment, be a bit silly and get things wrong without feeling judged.
Connection comes from playing with other people. In play, children listen, negotiate, encourage, compete and cooperate – and of course, laugh together. Through shared challenges, they discover their own place in the group and begin to trust the people around them.
Flow happens when children become completely absorbed in what they are doing. The challenge is neither so easy that it becomes boring nor so difficult that they give up. They are stretched just enough, and are having far too much fun to notice.
Bring Space, Connection and Flow together and play becomes something children inhabit completely.
Three qualities emerge again and again…
Ingenuity is the ability to imagine possibilities, think flexibly and find another way when the obvious one does not work. In children, it appears as curiosity, creativity, resourcefulness and problem-solving.
Belonging grows through shared endeavour. Children communicate, cooperate, disagree, make up and contribute different strengths. They learn that being part of a group does not require everyone to be the same.
Vitality is the energy, resilience and joy that come from being fully involved in the moment. Children take risks, experience setbacks and keep going. Confidence grows because they have experienced themselves meeting the challenge.
Independence develops across all three. Children become more willing to make choices, suggest ideas and solve problems without waiting for an adult to provide every answer.
At a Sharky + George camp, children are not working towards mastery of a single sport or skill.
They might spend one part of the day solving a mystery, another inventing something, another racing through water or attempting a gloriously ridiculous team challenge.
A great thing about this variety is that no single kind of child has home advantage, so everyone gets a moment to shine. The fastest child will not win everything and the loudest is not always the leader. There are moments for the strategist, the inventor, the explorer, the encourager and the child who very quietly spots the thing everyone else has missed.
Children encounter different challenges, different people, even different versions of themselves.
The result is a week centred wholeheartedly on fun, play and adventure, while confidence, communication, creativity, resilience, teamwork and independence develop along the way.
Children’s time is increasingly organised around measurable activities and identifiable outcomes. It is easy to feel that every hour should be used to improve a particular ability.
We want to make the case for something broader: adventures without an educational label; games in which imagination matters more than expertise; challenges that reward curiosity, collaboration and courage.
As George Whitefield, founder of Sharky + George, puts it:
“Play is not a distraction from serious work, but a catalyst for it. The spark it brings – a feeling of possibility, belonging and pure, unfiltered joy – is just as vital for children as the air they breathe.”
We take play seriously enough to design it brilliantly, then allow children to experience it simply as fun.
When children are wholeheartedly enjoying themselves, they are not switching off from learning. They are learning in the most natural way they know.
From holiday camps and birthday parties to extraordinary family adventures, discover how Sharky + George brings the Transformational Power of Play to life.
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You can also read more about the thinking behind our approach in our free white paper, The Transformational Power of Play.
