Play

This synthesis is funded by the Alberta Centre for Child, Family and Community Research.

If play is associated with children’s academic and social development, educators and parents are encouraged to create play environments that will stimulate and foster children’s learning. Depending on the type of play, researchers recommend providing toys that enhance children’s:

• motor coordination and physical skills (e.g., challenging forms of climbing structures);
• creativity (e.g., building blocks, paint, play dough);
• mathematics skills (e.g., board games “Chutes and Ladders” - estimation, counting, and numeral identification);
• language and reading skills (e.g., plastic letters, rhyming games, making shopping lists, bedtime story books, toys for pretending).

Other recommendations have been suggested in order to enhance literacy skills in children. Researchers suggest that setting up literacy-rich environments such as a “real restaurant” with tables, menus, name-tags, pencils and notepads, are effective to increase children’s potential in early literacy development. Educators are also encouraged to adopt a whole child approach that targets not only literacy learning but also the child’s creativity, imagination, persistence and positive attitudes in reading. Teachers and educators should also make a parallel between what can be learned from playful activities and academic curriculum in order for children to understand that play allows them to practice and reinforce what is learned in class. However, educators should ensure that a curriculum based on playful learning includes activities that are perceived as playful by children themselves rather than only by the teachers. Lastly, most experts agree that a balanced approach consisting of periods of free play and structured/guided play should be favoured.

See also...

• How important is it?
• What do we know?
• According to experts
• Key messages