Learning through play

Last Friday, the school held a workshop regarding the importance of playing in children's learning.

In PYP 1, children do spend a lot of time playing. Sometimes, they play structured activities that teachers set up with specific purposes, such as to explore
Mathematics or Language, or to inquire about concepts regarding or Units of Inquiry.

At other times, play time is less structured, allowing children to explore ideas, imagine and act out different situations, emotions and themselves freely, coming to conclusions about themselves, their peers and the world around them

Below are some highlights form the Workshop.

Keep on playing!

Play...

Enables children to explore the world.

Develops social and cultural understandings.

Helps children express their thoughts and feelings.

Provides opportunities to meet and solve problems.

Develops different academic skills.

Stages of Play

• Practice: Play involving repetition of an act for pleasure or skill practice
• Symbolic: Make-Believe play or play involving representation of absent objects
• Games with rules: Playing established or invented games that have agreed-on rules
• Constructions: Play that involves making products as models

Three types of knowledge constructed through play

• Physical knowledge

• Logico-mathematical

• Social

Theories about Play

Maria Montessori - play is children’s work; learn about reality and how things work

Froebel- spiritual significance; children learn about the unity of God, nature, and human mankind.

Freud - means of expressing and releasing emotions and tensions.

Vygotsky - important for the childś adaptation of the social world.

Piaget - Free, unstructured play is healthy and essential for helping children reach important social, emotional, and cognitive developmental milestones.

Race to Nowhere
Play is Children's Work
Not a box