Convince me of the merits of Learning Through Play...

[FreudianSlimmery]

And the problems that may be caused by an overly structured approach?

I was discussing the two local infant schools with a friend and she was very excited about how academic one is, apparently even in yrR they aren't big on Learning Through Play.

Now obviously I won't choose until we've visited both schools, but I need some advice/info here. I am an absolute geek and I know that my natural instinct is Ooooh let's get the 4yos sitting down and LEARNING STUFF. Even though my brain is screaming nooooo, play-based is better.

So. Please can you tell me why it's so much better?

No stranded, I think the play at school is cleverly directed so that skills are developed by expert teachers as they begin to introduce phonics and numeracy. They are also socialising with other adults and peers, independantly of you, which is also deeply important.

play at home just would not achieve this level of emotional development and preparation for formal learning from y1 and y2

Which is exactly why I suggested they use a different work. Most parents will associate the word play with the unstructured, unsupervised play at home (nothing wrong with that but as I said not something I send them to school for). Learning through experience, learning through experiment, learning through exploration - would all work better for me.

sorry word not work

What is Play

I am not a trained educator (teacher or similar).
But it seems obvious to me that the whole biological purpose of play is for learning to be pleasurable, and then kids (people) want to do more and of it. If learning is pleasurable, the more a child will retain more of the information and want to learn more and more.

I haven't read any of the links, just figured all that from observing my own DC.... and even dogs or parrots or other animals that enjoy play, too. You can tell that play is about making us intelligent animals enjoy learning. Play should be learning and learning should be play. Young children especially are completely hard-wired for the two to be almost interchangible.

To be honest, I have never felt a different word was needed. This simply has never occured to me as a source of misunderstanding really.

I see what you are saying, but at my primary school, they gave a meeting about it to explain how it works right at the start of term, which seemed to help.

I think play at home does help children to learn the difference (if there is one) is that in school the direction of the play is sometimes channelled towards specific learning outcomes.

?Play is a uniquely adaptive act, not subordinate to some other adaptive act, but with a special function of its own in human experience.? Johan Huizinga

?It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them.? Leo F. Buscaglia

good quotes mrz.

As lljkk suggested, play is a natural process. It has evolved as the means by which the young of any social animal learns the skills it needs as an adult.

When you have anything that powerful, it makes sense to harness it in our schools. This is how we are meant to learn.

We are overseas and dd is at a Montessori school so perhaps it will all become clearer to me when she returns to the UK and in reception at our local primary there from January onwards.

My DD is 6 and at Montessori Primary. All of their activities are called work from when they start nursery but if parents looked in they would call it play. Working with beads is improving fine motor control which is needed for writing. Parents looking in might just see playing with beads.

Stranded - Love the Xmas name change btw! I agree that reading shouldn't be always delayed, I learned at 3 as I was very keen and I'm sure if mum had forbidden it or put it off my enthusiasm would have suffered.

Also, the great thing abot learning through play is that if a child is reading (or at least is advanced compared to peers) a decent teacher will allow for that in the playing.

I love watching DD play, it's like I can see the cogs whirring as she figures something out. It's magic to me :)

I think a meeting for parents of new pupils would be great, to explain how this type of learning works. I'm sure you'd still get some cynics who would continue to look down on playing though.

There is no distinction between work and play. Play is a child's work.
I love this poem by Malaguzzi
The Hundred Languages of Children

The child
is made of one hundred.
The child has
a hundred languages
a hundred hands
a hundred thoughts
a hundred ways of thinking
of playing, of speaking.
A hundred always a hundred
ways of listening
of marvelling, of loving
a hundred joys
for singing and understanding
a hundred worlds
to discover
a hundred worlds
to invent
a hundred worlds
to dream.
The child has
a hundred languages
(and a hundred hundred hundred more)
but they steal ninety-nine.
The school and the culture
separate the head from the body.
They tell the child:
to think without hands
to do without head
to listen and not to speak
to understand without joy
to love and to marvel
only at Easter and at Christmas.
They tell the child:
to discover the world already there
and of the hundred
they steal ninety-nine.
They tell the child:
that work and play
reality and fantasy
science and imagination
sky and earth
reason and dream
are things
that do not belong together.

And thus they tell the child
that the hundred is not there.

The child says:
No way. The hundred is there.

Loris Malaguzzi (translated by Lella Gandini)

From The New Early Years Professional (2007) edited by Angela D. Nurse