At Treehouse Learning, we provide quality childcare and educational experiences that are characterized by play, relationships, and hands-on experiences that lead to relevant and meaningful learning. For young children, play is the work of childhood necessary to establish a firm foundation for a lifetime of learning, which includes a strong academic base and the social-emotional readiness to learn. Our educational philosophy is shaped by many great minds in child development, including Montessori, Reggio Emilia, Vygotsky, and Piaget. The wisdom of these leaders all coalesce around a theme and essential truth about young children: Nature designed children to learn most efficiently through play-based experiences that engage children’s bodies, hearts, minds, and senses, and occur in a social, relationship-based context.
Are Academics and Play in Conflict?
During tours of prospective preschool parents, after seeing our rich indoor and outdoor classrooms or observing children immersed in hands-on learning experiences, we are often asked, “Are you an academic-based preschool, or are you a play-based preschool?” This question often suggests a misunderstanding or mistaken belief that knowledge acquisition and play-based learning are mutually exclusive or in conflict. It can also indicate misconceptions about developmentally appropriate academic expectations for preschool-age children and misunderstandings about how play-based learning experiences are not only developmentally appropriate and best practice in early education but also solidly backed by research! The answer to this question is Yes! We are both! Children learn through play. At Treehouse Learning, play-based learning experiences are the delivery method by which children develop academically/intellectually, physically, and emotionally.
Play is the Method, Learning is the Result!
What does play-based learning look like? While the concept is broad, it is characterized by positive and joyful experiences, engaging and responsive interactions, and rooted in relationships, including the child’s relationship with the environment, peers, and teachers. For example, children love “signing in” each morning when they arrive at preschool by searching for and finding their name in a basket of classmate’s names. They select a marker and trace or write their name, and also practice spraying, wiping the ink, and putting away their sign-in materials in the context of a welcoming conversation. A teacher sitting at the sign-in table may also point out the arrows or directions of letter formation, and engage arriving children in listening for letters, sounds, and names, or participate in organic exchanges between other children, who may need to problem-solve a conflict, practice waiting for their turn, or have an exciting story to share with friends.
In high-quality early childhood learning environments, academic skills, knowledge, and experiences are built through a child-centered invitation to engage with learning materials and experiences in a prepared environment, purposefully and intentionally, that naturally leads to learning. These playful and joy-based learning experiences are gently and respectfully facilitated by experienced teachers guiding, nudging and shaping learning moments, but largely empowering the child to engage directly, and through their bodies and senses, in learning experiences offered to them through play.
In a play-based preschool environment, such as Treehouse Learning, learning centers such as dramatic play, practical life skills, blocks, art, math & numeracy, literacy, science or puzzles, are all ripe with opportunities to continue engaging and inviting the child to practice writing or literacy skills while simultaneously building other foundational skills, especially social-emotional learning. For example, a group of imagination-rich children may decide to create a post office where children have to sign and deliver packages and use a cash register to pay for services. Not only are children offered a meaningful opportunity to write their name when they sign for a package at the pretend post office, but they may also have the chance to practice communication skills, math/counting skills, symbolic representation, creativity, collaboration, problem-solving skills, and many more– all of which are necessary for future academic success.
Play is an incredibly efficient method of learning because it engages the whole child and allows learning experiences to be stacked and overlapping, involving different parts of the body, brain, and various learning modalities. Play is also varied, and playful learning experiences come in all shapes and packages. For example, children may pair up with a buddy to read, re-tell, or illustrate a story, or dictate/sound out/write a “play plan” describing what they plan to engage in during work period, such as “I’m going to build a tall tower with blocks.” Responsive teachers and a social setting both assist in providing responsive instruction and a motivating learning “scaffold.” In a prepared environment with play-based methods, flashcards, tablets/electronics, worksheets, or drill-and-kill methods to push academics simply aren’t necessary (and are often detrimental).
Why a focus on early academics is often misguided
When looking for a quality preschool experience for their child in the years before kindergarten, parents naturally want peace of mind that their child will be prepared to enter the upcoming years of a formal educational experience. We all want children to have the knowledge and skills necessary for a successful and thriving academic experience, career, and life. We also want our children to want to learn, and experience learning as joyful and meaningful for its own sake. As parents, we’re also influenced by the culture around us, which can include pressure to ensure our children meet some definition of “success,” often with the idea that pushing children into earlier academics will help them be more successful.
Unfortunately, even educational policy at the institutional level is often set by politicians, bureaucrats, or technology companies with little understanding of child development, with a downward retrofit of academic outcomes pushed younger and younger, as if preschool children should simply be viewed as smaller versions of second-graders, rather than developing preschool children with distinct trajectories for their intellectual, social-emotional, and physical growth and maturation. We wouldn’t wear our winter parkas, hats, and mittens in the heat of June, in anticipation that eventually winter will arrive and it will be cold outside; yet we often require preschool children to hold their bodies perfectly still or fill out worksheets, or consent to being drilled on a “letter of the day,” in anticipation that eventually they’ll need to sit at a desk, take a test, or write a paper.
We would also never build the second story of a building before establishing a firm foundation upon which the building is to stand. However, an inappropriate focus on early academic outcomes which are easy to quantify, measure, and assess, especially through screen-based technology, often results in adult-centered instructional methods that focus on rote memorization of surface-level skills that are divorced from a meaningful context for the child and cease to be enjoyable entirely. Preschool children are designed to learn and engage with the world through their senses and their bodies, not through a tablet or electronic screen!
These methods, in addition to often creating unnecessary anxiety, may also entirely backfire and extinguish the flame of children’s natural curiosity and desire to learn, engage, and explore, precisely because learning is fun! Learning should always be engaging and joyful, especially for preschool-age children! When learning is appropriately nourished through play-based experiences that are purposeful and meaningful for the child and involve multiple senses and domains, the learning sticks. Connections made through joyful, multi-sensorial experiences are like hooks or anchors on the wall, which hold up endless future connections, relationships, information, and knowledge about the world.
Play-based learning is critical to establish the social-emotional foundation necessary for learning readiness, as well as physical development and maturation, such as the core strength to sit on a chair and write, or the fine-motor skills to hold a pencil. Unfortunately, many of the most important skills necessary for all academic learning, such as executive function, planning and completing a task, self-regulation, or the ability to solve a conflict with another person in pro-social, beneficial way are much more difficult to assess through standardized testing.
Sadly, when social-emotional skills (which most readily emerge through play-based experiences) are neglected to focus on easily tested academic skills, we inappropriately push children to reproduce early academic “surface skills” at the expense of the deeper foundational skills. This transforms the learning process into an externally driven requirement rather than an internally motivated process that endures for a lifetime when properly nourished. Academic skills can be easily and readily absorbed when the child is developmentally ready, but academics and play should never be in conflict for preschool-age children. Play is the delivery method for truly effective learning.
Additionally, our culture often treats children as if they are passive recipients of information that an adult simply deposits into them (as if they were a computer uploading software), rather than remembering that children are unique individuals and whole people who actively participate in making meaning and building understanding of the world around them. At Treehouse Learning, we believe that nature designed children to learn through play, in real life, with real things and real people, not screens. All children deserve to have the freedom of a play-based childhood and child-directed learning experiences where they experience agency and self-determination, and are empowered to understand and expand their self-concept as capable learners with a growth mindset.
Do children actually learn through play?
As early childhood educators and champions for childhood, we understand that there is no actual distinction between play, work, and learning. All play leads to learning. A play-based education is not a free-for-all invitation for chaos without rules or structure, but rather a purposeful activity that should be intentionally cultivated within the positive boundaries of a community environment and shared expectations for the care of self, others, and materials within the classroom environment (and beyond). Through play-based learning, children are socialized to learn appropriate behavior, expectations, and community norms- in other words- the social skills necessary for a thriving life.
While educational policy is often lagging behind the data, the research is compelling and definitive and overwhelmingly supports the benefits of play as well as the necessity of play as a foundation for academic learning. Fortunately, in Colorado, our statewide Early Learning and Developmental Guidelines, and Colorado Shines Quality Standards encourage a holistic, whole-child approach encompassing children’s development across domains, which is directly supported by a play-based approach.
“Play is often talked about as if it is relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.” – Fred Rogers
Mr. Rogers’s description that play is the work of childhood is in recognition that play is critical to children’s development and well-being. We observe daily that play offers varied and valuable learning, such as language, logic, empathy, self-reflection, problem-solving, sustained attention, content connection, and much more. It only takes the time to truly observe children deeply immersed in child-directed, purposeful play in a prepared environment to grasp the effectiveness of play in engaging children to learn, as well as igniting their intrinsic motivation to passionately pursue learning, like they were born seeking to learn through play! One of the greatest gifts we can give our children is the freedom to learn through play, and an opportunity to unleash the power of play.