20 Feb Learning Based Play by Bianca Chiplowitz – Creche Room Leader
Play-based learning is a method which provides opportunities for the children to engage with people actively and imaginatively, using objects within their environment. Right from the time a child is born, they are already wandering, exploring, watching, listening, moving about, and feeling. The daily interactions and experiences they share with Educators is how they learn about the world around them; these interactions involve play.
Play is a powerful way a child learns. It has a positive influence on children’s dispositions for learning as well as on developmental milestones such as social, physical, emotional, and cognitive growth. The best learning happens when a child plays every day.
The play-based learning environment that we offer here at Yavneh ELC focuses on unstructured and guided play. This is a relaxed approach that is highly engaging and fun!
Educators encourage children’s learning through play by:
– providing resources that reflect children’s ages, interests, knowledge, strengths, abilities and culture to encourage, stimulate and support play;
– open-ended resources such as blocks or cardboard boxes, foster creativity and the ability to manipulate concepts mentally. e.g. using a box as if it were a car;
– planning play experiences based on the assessment of children’s individual differences, interests, developmental needs and abilities. e.g. when a child displays interest in holding a pencil to raw and write, educators will give children different sized objects to grasp, and to build strength in the child’s fingers;
– observing children as they play so that they can understand how they interact with other children, developing skills and activities that can strengthen their skills during play;
– joining in children’s play to extend their learning and to model skills such as reasoning, appropriate language and positive behaviours
– providing large blocks of unhurried and uninterrupted time for play for children’s ideas and games to develop.
“Many small people, in small places, doing small things can change the world” (Eduardo Galeano)
Learn more about play-based and inquiry learning here.