Did you know… Play is one of the most important ways children learn?
In the popular Exchange book, Play: A Beginnings Workshop Book, Betty Jones, in her article “The Play’s the Thing: Styles of Playfulness“, notes the many ways children learn through play…
- to make appropriate choices among many possibilities.
- to use their imagination, to improvise, to think flexibly, and explore new options.
- to be aware of their own real interests, without being distracted by other possibilities: to say “yes” and to say “no.”
- to solve problems, both with materials and with people.
- to cooperate with other children in the creation of mutually satisfying projects.
- to work through their feelings in creative, non-destructive ways.
- to pay attention to a project until it’s done.
- to use something — a dramatic action, a word, a toy, a set of blocks, a collection of marks on paper — to represent something else — a real experience, a powerful feeling. Practice in these sorts of representation is essential in the process of becoming literate, which is another form of representation.
- to see themselves as competent and interesting people, with useful skills and good ideas.
