I had a wonderful opportunity this morning to discuss a subject which ignites my passion every time…how DO children learn best? There is an ongoing controversy about play vs. academics in an early childhood setting. I was able to touch on some of the aspects of this subject, but there is so much breadth to this debate. I will be doing a weekly series touching on some of the research around this topic as well as what to look for in classroom and how to integrate at home.
Somewhere along the line it has been categorized as either play or academic. They are not mutually exclusive. The first step is defining for yourself what you mean by play and what you mean by academic. The next step is finding out how the school you are considering defines play and academics. What you should see are opportunities for choice, movement, and use of found objects. There is something to be said about the child that is more interested in playing with the box rather than the toy itself. It is also important to look beyond the obvious. Sure, you may see a classroom with no play kitchen. Does that mean there is no dramatic play? Not if they have the chance to prepare snack and use real kitchen items. Are there boxes, bowls and tables that could be used for the kitchen as well as the construction site?
Activities should be appropriate for the children’s level of development. Academics may be defined as reading, math, science but there are many ways for children to learn that through play. It is the old “Drill and kill” or long periods of sitting with the teacher delivering information to the children. I just observed 2 schools last week and one school delivered a lesson for reading where the teacher was behind the table and a few children on the other side of the table as they recited words out of a workbook. The other school had a lesson on geography where the teacher was on the floor with the children with pictures, a globe, a map and some cultural artifacts. Which do you think was more developmentally appropriate? There should be multiple opportunities of learning within every activity to engage the individual learners of the group.
As I said, this topic has a lot of depth and breadth. Be sure to add us to your feed so you can keep up with this topic and many others. Check back at our site for the clip of this morning’s news segment. Thoughts, comments and questions are always welcome.