At school
You may be surprised when you walk into your child's classroom. Are they just playing? Why are they dressing up, building with blocks, and splashing around in a water table? Where are the desks and the workbooks? Why isn't the teacher at the front of the class "teaching"? These are legitimate and understandable questions. Your child's classroom may not look and sound like school as you remember it.
However, when you see your child "playing" at school, you can be assured they are learning. Play, in fact, is how children learn. Extensive research on child development unmistakably shows that real, meaningful learning is actively constructed by the child, rather than passively absorbed through memorization, lectures, and worksheets. It is therefore the teacher's responsibility to set up a classroom where children can feel free and safe in exploring their world through hands on experiences and interactions with others.
So, besides as a mechanism for developmentally appropriate learning, what are some more specific benefits of play?
However, when you see your child "playing" at school, you can be assured they are learning. Play, in fact, is how children learn. Extensive research on child development unmistakably shows that real, meaningful learning is actively constructed by the child, rather than passively absorbed through memorization, lectures, and worksheets. It is therefore the teacher's responsibility to set up a classroom where children can feel free and safe in exploring their world through hands on experiences and interactions with others.
So, besides as a mechanism for developmentally appropriate learning, what are some more specific benefits of play?
- Play encourages children's natural curiosity. Young children are born scientists ready to investigate their world.
- Play is intrinsically rewarding and incorporates children's personal interests. This intrinsic motivation (motivation which comes from inside the child) is essential to lifelong learning and success in school.
- Play teaches many vital social skills such as cooperation, self-regulation, turn-taking, forming and maintaining friendships, conflict resolution, compromise, rule making and following, perspective taking, and empathy.
- Play facilitates autonomy and moral development, preparing children to become productive, concerned citizens.
- Play builds focus, self-esteem, and self-efficacy. Children see themselves as capable learners.
- Play provides endless opportunities for decision making, problem solving, and critical thinking.
- Play is a safe venue in which children can express and work out their fears and anxieties.
- Play helps children understand how things work, learning key concepts such as an understanding of number, knowledge of print, sequencing, classifying, patterning, symbolic thinking, and cause and effect.
- Play integrates educational curriculum (e.g., reading, writing, math, science, social students, and the arts) in a way that more closely resembles real life.
- Play builds vocabulary and literacy knowledge in a natural, authentic way. For example, children write letters to people they know, create grocery lists during pretend play, and use/make maps and signs as they construct roads and communities with blocks.
- Play develops children's gross motor, fine motor, and visual-spatial skills and coordination. It promotes physical health and reduces childhood obesity.
- Play invites children to use all their multiple intelligences, and it easily adapts to suit different learning styles.
- Play allows children to try on different roles. They can be a mother, father, teacher, expert, caregiver, firefighter, chef, doctor, storybook character, and much more. Play lets children's creativity and imagination take them anywhere they want to go.
Resources
Bredekamp, S., & Copple, C. (Eds.). (2009). Developmentally appropriate practice in early childhood programs: Serving children from birth through age 8 (3rd ed.). Washington, DC: NAEYC.
Mayesky, M. (2009). Creative activities for young children (9th ed.). Clifton Park, NY: Delmar.
Miller, S. A. (2005). Reflections on kindergarten: Giving young children what they deserve. Childhood Education, 81, 256-261.
Peterson, R., & Felton-Collins, V. (1986). The Piaget handbook for teachers and parents: Children in the age of discovery, preschool-third grade. New York: Teachers College Press.
Waite-Stupiansky, S. (1997). Building understanding together: A constructivist approach to early childhood education. Albany, NY: Delmar.
