Playful Inquiry
Beaverton School District
Why is Play so Important?
You may have noticed that your child is engaging in online playdates or playful inquiry in school. At a time when we are all worried about our children, we might feel like children should be working on more “academic” things when they are attending synchronous time. This workshop and document is to help you understand why these play experiences are so important for your child and their future.
Play Helps Children Build Social Competence (and social competency is essential for success in life)
Research studies have found that social skills are a better predictor of long term success than academic skills. This is because in order to be successful academically, children need to learn how to share, work together, problem solve, rebound from failure. Play provides an opportunity to build this “infrastructure” for a lifetime of learning.
Play Helps Children Process Stress and Anxiety
Children often “play out” the things they feel anxious or stressed about. In playing scenarios that tackle the things they fear, children can feel like they have power and agency. In fact, Lawrence Cohen writes that children often play powerfully, “to overcome feelings of powerlessness”. Without this opportunity, children may have more issues with paying attention, focusing, and handling the big feelings we are all having right now. If your child is engaging in weapon play, that is also normal. There is no evidence linking weapon play to later violence.
Play Helps Children Build Academic Skills in an Engaging Way
Young children are experiential, which means they learn better through concrete, real experiences than just hearing about those things (think about all the times you asked your child not to do something, then they do it anyway and only then realize WHY you said not to). Play and playful inquiry give opportunities to experience important parts of literacy and math in meaningful ways. Sarah Lewis notes a study that ⅓ of all time playing is spent discovering and applying concepts in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). Some of the most important literacy work your child is learning at this age is how to retell stories, and sequence their own stories. Children at play can often do this at very sophisticated levels. The stories your child plays become the stories they write.
Play Helps Children Build Their Brain and Memory
Executive functions are the skills that enable us to wait patiently, solve multi-step problems, and remember the grocery list when we are at the store. Everyone is born with the ability to develop these skills, but they must be nurtured and fostered. Research teaches us that when children are young, play is the most effective way to develop these essential brain functions.
For more information
Website: https://www.beaverton.k12.or.us/departments/early-learning