Learning Through Play

All they do is play. This is a statement that I’ve heard many times while working in the classroom. This is a big compliment, because the statement says that we are doing a good job at making learning fun. Play is a child’s work.  It is our job to integrate learning in the midst of their work. It takes content knowledge and intentionality to turn play into an opportunity for learning. According to the National Association for the Education of Young Children; valued content is learned through investigation, play, and focused, intentional teaching. Children learn by exploring, thinking about, and inquiring about all sorts of phenomena. These experiences help children investigate ‘big ideas,' those that are important at any age and are connected to later learning. (2003, 2) Project work allows us to extend this play into many content areas. For example, this year’s kindergarten class showed an interest in restaurants. The teachers took this observed interest and built many opportunities for the children to learn through play. Creating a menu allowed for social development as the children worked together to decide on food items for their restaurant, decided what jobs were necessary and who had which responsibilities.  Literacy concepts were added as the children wrote up the menus and then the customer orders. Deciding how much each item cost got the children thinking about math concepts, gave them meaningful opportunities to write number symbols, and introduced addition. Identifying money was also a focus as the customers paid for the food that they had ordered. All of this learning took place in the context of a democratic environment in which everyone worked together. Good Eats, the restaurant’s name, was a good opportunity to learn by playing.