Wednesday, May 22, 2013

November 2010

Playing IS Learning: It’s Good for Brains and Bodies TOO!

Throughout the nation a great deal of emphasis is being placed on the importance of learning and achieving at high levels and building 21st century skills. Schools are increasingly focused on test results that can help us to understand what children have learned and what needs continued emphasis.  It is very important that our public schools continue to focus on and ensure the success of each and every learner. At the same time, we also need to remember that young children, really all children and grownups too, learn many things and build important skills when playing. Especially in early childhood, playing is an essential element for healthy growth and development. Play is hard to define, but it is generally agreed that an important feature of play is that the player chooses and directs what happens.

There are many types of play: make-believe, rough-and-tumble, games with rules, games where children make-up rules, board games, video games, or organized sports. The type of play that is most important for young children is child-initiated, spontaneous, open-ended, creative play.  Many sorts of activities can be fun, but when they are created and organized by adults, they don’t offer the important features that make play so valuable for children.

Children’s play is best supported when they have access to simple open-ended materials like pebbles, cloth, blocks, boxes, sand, water, bins, buckets, small boards, paints, various tools for digging, mixing, or constructing.  Remember when kids used to go outside for hours, organizing their own activities and games, and exploring nature until suppertime?  The best toys were real objects, things we found or invented ourselves.

So many toys today are linked to television shows, movies, or other adult-created stories. These undermine the child’s own imaginative play. Toys that require very little from the child or that can only be used in one way are less useful for building thinking, reasoning, problem solving, imagination, and other important life-long skills that are developed when playing.

All children need unstructured, unhurried time in their day for imagination, for creating, and for connecting with nature and the real world.  Americans are spending more time indoors, often sitting in front of screens of one sort or another. When children are actively engaged in something they think up themselves, they are exercising their bodies, developing flexible and creative brains, building social skills, and constructing their own identities.

When children are playing they are achieving and learning at their highest level. They take on various roles, solve a variety of problems, create something original and new, In play that is spontaneous and self-directed, the child feels competent and in- charge. This gives the child the freedom to experiment, to “play with” ideas, and to try out something new or different. We all are more likely to experiment and challenge ourselves when we are in our comfort zone. The world’s greatest inventors, artists, and leaders have usually come up with something new and amazing, just by “playing around”!

Ann J. Palches, M.Ed., C.A.G.S. is theEarly Childhood Coordinator forMartha's Vineyard Public Schools and a lifelong advocate for children and play.

Previous Family Matters Issues: October 2010 | September 2010