The joy of movement begins in the early years!
The PLAYshop is a brief (60-75 minute) parent focused workshop (although children participate too) that aims to help parents create a joyful understanding of movement and play in their children and enhances their parent-child connection. The PLAYshop includes opportunities for experiential learning (parents participate in playful activities with their children), the provision of simple key messages and modeling of approaches that align with, and promote the development of physical literacy.
During the PLAYshop parents learn to ‘play on purpose’; they are reminded of the joy of playing and they walk away energized with some targeted activities and principles that help them to enhance their connection with their children by engaging them in fun and motivating physically active play that builds their movement skills, confidence and motivation to move and play physically for the rest of their lives.
The PLAYshop
a) enhances parents’ understanding of physical activity and physical literacy and their role in supporting it
b) increases the number and variety of playful activities and resources that parents have at their fingertips
c) increases parent confidence in implementing playful activities with their children.
The inaugural PLAYshop Leader Training workshop was held in partnership with Sport for Life and their 2026 Summit in Calgary, Alberta. This session brought together 40 leaders representing diverse sport and physical literacy organizations across Canada, fostering a nationwide network of movement advocates. Participants reported high satisfaction with workshop content and delivery. Specifically, 96% of participants were satisfied/extremely satisfied with workshop content and 92% were satisfied/extremely satisfied with workshop delivery.
Looking ahead, we are committed to making this valuable training more accessible by developing a virtual leader training workshop.
If you are interested in learning more about hosting a PLAYshop Leader Training Workshop in your community, please contact the PLAYshop coordinators at perbel@ualberta.ca.
