“The Glass Bead Game is not a simple pastime,” said the Master to young Josef. “It is an art that unites music, mathematics, and thought, and whoever practises it must learn to weave mind and soul together. It is not about winning or losing, but about understanding the world through the game itself.” And so Josef spent hours moving the beads, inventing sequences and invisible melodies, discovering that true enjoyment lay in the beauty of the game and in the freedom to create new rules every day. (Hesse, 1943)
An educational perspective in our after-school service. Play is a fundamental dimension of human experience: spontaneous, creative, and capable of supporting growth. Saying that play is not a toy means recognising that its value comes from what the child imagines and constructs, not from the objects in their hands. Maria Montessori expressed this clearly: play is a natural way of learning. “Play is the child’s work, and the child’s work is to play seriously.” (Montessori, 1909). For her, there is no separation between play and learning: what matters is an environment that fosters autonomy and curiosity.
Johan Huizinga, in Homo Ludens, wrote: “Culture arises in play and as play.” (Huizinga, 1938). Play is freedom, the creation of worlds, relationship.
Bruno Munari, in turn, adds another perspective: “To preserve the spirit of play even in work is a sign of a lively intelligence.” (Fantasia, 1977)
In our after-school setting, play is born from imagination, a principle that becomes everyday practice: play is not defined by the object, but by the experience.
Some examples?
- A cardboard box becomes a house, a rocket, or a shadow theatre.
- Sticks, leaves, cloths, and pegs become tools for building stories, pathways, shared inventions.
- Torches and light fabrics create secret rooms, lights, spontaneous narratives.
- Loose parts (caps, ropes, tubes, small pieces of wood) invite children to design, collaborate, and experiment.
- Slow time allows children to return to their play, modify it, transform it—without hurry.
It is not the object that makes play meaningful, but the way in which children reinvent it together.
Time and spaces as precious as “glass beads”. Like Josef Knecht and his Glass Bead Game, we imagine play as a precious, chosen, creative time.
The rhythms, spaces, and materials in our after-school setting are designed precisely in this way: desired environments where play can nurture identity, relationships, and growth—for younger and older children alike.
