strong_museum_of_playThe Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY includes play areas, carousels, a toy museum, a mockup of Sesame Street, children’s reading corner, The National Toy Hall of Fame and The National Center for the History of Electronic Games.

They also underwrite the new quarterly academic journal The American Journal of Play. In the Spring 2009 issue (Vol 1, issue 4) the journal covers play through personal history, brain images, a learning medium, fake language, honor and fairness, play in animals, play as a civilizing tool, and nine books reviews.

Medical News Today writes a piece on the article about play as a civilizing tool in hunters and gatherers. According to the article, “[play] were means of maintaining the band’s existence – means of promoting actively the egalitarian attitude, intense sharing, and relative peacefulness for which hunter-gatherers are justly famous and upon which they depended for survival.”

As a bonus, a few other recent scholarly articles on play:

Play as a tool for learning democratic values

Free play is necessary for the creation of well-adjusted adults (Scientific American)