In designing the play yards for her schools, Anneliese keeps the significance
of play in mind. She believes that:
A playground must be a world of wonder
by itself with hiding places, secret places, quiet places, places to
play in the mud, places to in the water, places to jump, trees to climb,
things to grow. In short, a place to challenge the creative powers and
imagination of children.
 The
forms of play are thus as free and protean as the children's own inventivenes,
supervised but not obtrusively so, certainly with no distinction between
appropriate girl and boy play. Instinctively, children create games here,
which enable them to discover things about themselves — their motor
skills, thier creativity, their capacity for leadership and cooperation.
The playgroud itself is designed to give children the feeling that they
are part of the natural world, co-existing with the environment.
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The children's recess is not considered a break from the learning day.
Rather it is regarded as an equally important part of the child's cognitive
and humanistic development. Through play, children often confront and
resolve psychological and emotional issues, which they might not confront
in the more structured environment of the classroom. Educational theorist
Bruno Bettelheim notes that children use play to work through and master
quite complex psychological difficulties of the past and present.
