How Does a Child Learn Through Play?
Through play, children can learn how to:
- Communicate with other children through role-play
- Build their self-esteem by achieving success at certain tasks
- Learn and improve their focus and persistence
- Practice their problem-solving skills (e.g. what to do when a tower of blocks fall down)
- Develop logical and analytical thinking (cause-effect relationships, consequences of certain movements)
- Understand stories
- Develop their imagination and creativity (e.g. what happens when you put this and that together?)
During playtime, children use objects and interact with other children and the immediate environment. Whenever they move and experiment, they always try to make sense of things and recognise the patterns. This is valuable in their brain development especially in their early years (children’s brains might be forming 1,000 to 1 million neural connections each second).
Because of the importance of play, modern curriculums now have more emphasis on playtime rather than traditional classroom settings.
What is the play-based approach in learning?
In this approach, early learning centres now invest more and put more time on letting children gain actual learning experiences. As a result, curriculums now often feature the following:
- Large blocks of uninterrupted and unstructured playtime for children
- Structured activities about sports, music and arts
Both these structured and unstructured activities help children reach their developmental milestones. Structured activities help ensure that children are stimulated in several different ways (through rhythm, sports activities and creative classes). On the other hand, unstructured activities allow children to explore and practice their initiative and independence.
To make play-based learning effective, we do the following here at Footsteps Early Learning Centre:
- Providing enough resources and materials that are appropriate to each child’s age, culture, interests and current abilities
- Personalising the program depending on the child’s developmental stage and challenges
- Joining in the children’s playtime so educators can better observe children’s skills and behaviours
If you want to learn more about our play-based approach, you can contact us today. You can also enquire about our school readiness program to help your child better prepare for and navigate the big school.