The Power of Playful Learning in the Early Childhood Setting

Whether solitary, dramatic, parallel, social, cooperative, onlooker, object, fantasy, physical, constructive, or games with rules, play, in all of its forms, is a teaching practice that optimally facilitates young children's development and learning. Rather than view children as empty vessels r...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:YC young children 2022-07, Vol.77 (2), p.6-13
Main Authors: Zosh, Jennifer M, Gaudreau, Caroline, Golinkoff, Roberta Michnick, Hirsh-Pasek, Kathy
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic Achievement
Child development
Core curriculum
Early childhood education
Early Reading
Grade 1
Kindergarten
Learning
Lifelong Learning
No Child Left Behind Act 2001-US
Pedagogy
Preschool education
Preschool Teachers
Primary Education
Skill Development
Skills
Teachers
Teaching
Teaching Methods
Young Children
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Summary:Whether solitary, dramatic, parallel, social, cooperative, onlooker, object, fantasy, physical, constructive, or games with rules, play, in all of its forms, is a teaching practice that optimally facilitates young children's development and learning. Rather than view children as empty vessels receiving information, teachers see children as active explorers and discoverers who bring their prior knowledge into the learning experience and construct an understanding of, for example, words such as forecast and low pressure as they explore weather patterns and the science behind them. Playful learning in the form of guided play, in which the teacher builds in the learning as part of a fun context such as a weather report, keeps the child's agency but adds an intentional component to the play that helps children learn more from the experience. [...]when researchers compared children's skill development during free play in comparison to guided play, they found that children learned more vocabulary (Toub et al. 2018) and spatial skills (Fisher et al. 2013) in guided play than in free play.
ISSN:1538-6619
1941-2002