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PLAY-BASED LEARNING
The Power of Play-Based Learning in Early Education
Play-based learning is increasingly recognized as an essential educational approach in early childhood settings, offering a more holistic and dynamic way for children to learn and grow. By tapping into children's natural curiosity and creativity, this approach not only helps children acquire academic skills but also nurtures their social, emotional, and cognitive development. If you are thinking that your child will learn better through structured worksheets and memorizing flashcards you are wrong. Years of studies has proved that Play Based Learning is the BEST way for children in Childcare to learn.
What is Play-Based Learning?
At its core, play-based learning integrates play as a central tool for children’s education. It recognizes that children learn best through active engagement, exploration, and meaningful interaction. When children are allowed to play, they engage in imaginative, risk-taking, and problem-solving activities that provide valuable learning experiences.
In a preschool setting, play-based learning takes many forms. It could be sensory activities, such as exploring textures with a water table or a sandpit, or imaginative play like pretending to cook in a play kitchen. These activities allow children to experiment, create, and build their own understanding of the world around them.
Teacher's Role in Play-Based Learning
In play-based learning, the teacher acts as a facilitator, guiding and supporting the child's exploration and growth. Rather than providing direct instructions or imposing structured tasks, teachers encourage and expand children's thinking through questions and prompts. For example, if a child is building with blocks, a teacher might ask:
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"What are you building?"
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"Why did you choose that particular block?"
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"What do you think you will do next?"
Such interactions not only support cognitive development but also foster a sense of agency in children, empowering them to take ownership of their learning.
5. Imaginative
Imaginative play allows children to explore different roles, scenarios, and perspectives. This type of play supports emotional development, empathy, and communication skills as children navigate various social situations and learn to understand others' feelings.
4. Process Oriented
Play is not just about the end result, but the journey. The process of creation, discovery, and experimentation is what matters most, enabling children to engage deeply with their ideas and interests.
3. Unstructured (unstructured play is only for a small portion of the day)
Free, unstructured play is a fundamental component. It allows children to explore, experiment, and make mistakes in a supportive environment. This type of play fosters creativity and problem-solving without the constraints of predefined rules or outcomes.
2. Enjoyable
Play-based learning works best when children enjoy what they’re doing. The activities should be engaging and free of rigid goals. For example, providing blocks and observing how children use them encourages creativity without the pressure of producing a specific outcome.
1. Self-Chosen / Self-Directed
Children should have the freedom to choose how, when, and for how long they engage in play. This autonomy encourages independence and decision-making skills, as children explore their own interests and learning styles.
Key Elements of Play-Based Learning
To maximize the benefits of play-based learning, there are several crucial elements that should be present in a child's educational experience:
Benefits of Play-Based Learning
The benefits of play-based learning extend across various areas of child development:
Promotes Language Development
During play, children encounter new vocabulary in context, helping them build language skills in a natural, interactive way. For instance, in pretend play, children use language to communicate ideas and interact with peers. Teachers can support this by modeling new words and asking open-ended questions, further expanding children’s language abilities.
Fosters Creativity and Imagination
Play sparks creativity by allowing children to experiment with ideas, roles, and materials. Pretend play, for example, helps children develop problem-solving abilities as they invent stories, solve challenges, and collaborate with others in imaginative scenarios.
Develops Social-Emotional Skills
Play-based learning is an ideal context for developing social skills like turn-taking, cooperation, and conflict resolution. Through interacting with peers, children learn to manage their emotions, understand others' feelings, and negotiate relationships. These experiences lay the foundation for emotional intelligence and resilience.
Encourages a Positive Disposition Toward Learning
When children have the freedom to choose their play activities, they are more motivated and invested in their learning. This autonomy builds confidence, persistence, and a positive attitude toward challenges, encouraging lifelong curiosity and a love for learning.
Improves Motor Skills
Physical play also plays a crucial role in developing fine and gross motor skills. Activities such as drawing, building, and painting enhance hand-eye coordination and dexterity, while climbing, running, and jumping help develop strength and balance.
Play-Based Learning in Practice
Integrating play-based learning into early childhood programs requires thoughtful planning and Play-based learning is not just a fun way for children to spend their time; it is a deeply effective approach that supports all aspects of their growth. By fostering creativity, social skills, language development, and a love of learning, this approach lays a strong foundation for future success—both in school and beyond. As more educators recognize the power of play, we can expect to see its transformative impact on children’s education worldwide.
Examples of Play-Based
Learning Activities
Water Play
As children play with water, they may learn concepts such as sinking and floating. This activity improves a child’s physical strength and hand coordination.
Dress Up & Role Play
Pretend play supports social-emotional development as children learn perspective-taking through role play. They also benefit from learning how to play cooperatively and practice empathy by assuming caretaking roles.
Drawing & Painting
Drawing and painting allow children to express themselves creatively and support their fine motor development necessary for emerging writing skills. Specifically, painting can offer a sensory experience when using your fingers and hands to paint as well as an impromptu science lesson in color mixing.
Music, Singing & Dancing
The benefits of music and movement in early childhood development are well established. Music and dancing can help develop social-emotional skills, cognitive skills, motor skills, and sensory skills.
Pretend Cooking
Pretend cooking, serving, and shopping are good scenarios for preschoolers to role-play as they learn how to interact with others. It also teaches basic mathematical concepts, home safety, and sensory play.
Literacy
Children can build literacy skills through play-based learning in several ways, including:
Exploring literacy materials
Children can explore literacy materials like books, writing tools, and props at their own pace.
Encountering Print
Children can encounter print in various contexts, such as signs, labels, and books, which helps them connect spoken and written language.
Practicing Oral Language
Children can practice putting their thoughts into words through play, such as pretending to be animals or playing store.
Developing Narrative Skills
Children can learn narrative skills through dramatic play, such as making up stories for what they're doing.
Building Phonological Awareness
Children can build phonological awareness by hearing how words break apart into separate sounds. Activities like singing songs, reciting rhymes, and playing with tongue twisters can help build phonological awareness.
Connecting Literacy to Their Own Experiences
Children can connect literacy concepts to their own experiences, families, and community.
STEAM
Children develop STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) skills through play-based learning in a variety of natural, engaging, and meaningful ways. Play-based learning encourages exploration, experimentation, and problem-solving, which are essential components of STEAM. Here’s how each area is developed through play:
Science
Through play, children explore the world around them, asking questions and observing the effects of their actions.
For example:
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Nature Play: Exploring outdoor environments, observing plants and animals, or investigating changes in weather (e.g., rain, snow) helps them understand basic scientific concepts like growth, ecosystems, and seasons.
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Simple Experiments: Activities like mixing colors, watching water freeze and melt, or observing how objects sink or float introduce children to basic scientific principles and foster critical thinking.
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Curiosity-driven Learning: Play allows children to experiment with “what happens if?” scenarios, such as dropping different objects to see which fall fastest, promoting inquiry-based learning.
Technology
Though often thought of as “screen time,” technology in early childhood can also refer to tools, machines, and problem-solving with technology in the real world:
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Building and Constructing: Using tools like blocks, gears, or simple machines (e.g., pulleys, levers) helps children understand cause and effect, basic mechanics, and how things work together.
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Digital Play (with Guidance): Activities using age-appropriate apps or computers (like drawing apps or problem-solving games) teach children basic digital literacy, problem-solving, and how to use technology in creative ways.
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Imaginative Play: Children might “pretend” to be engineers or designers, using toys or other materials to “build” or solve challenges, which supports both imaginative and technological thinking.
Engineering
Engineering skills emerge through hands-on building, designing, and solving problems, which children often engage with through play:
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Construction Play: Activities like building with blocks, LEGOs, or other manipulatives help children grasp concepts of stability, balance, and structure. They learn to design, test, and modify their creations.
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Problem-Solving: When children encounter challenges during play—such as how to make a tower taller without it falling or how to move an object from one place to another—they begin to think like engineers, planning and iterating on their solutions.
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Simple Design Projects: Tasks like creating a bridge from blocks or designing a car from recyclable materials allow children to experiment with shape, size, and balance, while developing early engineering skills.
Arts
The arts are a powerful tool in developing creativity, expression, and problem-solving abilities, and are central to play-based learning:
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Creative Expression: Whether through drawing, painting, music, dance, or dramatic play, children use art to express themselves and communicate their ideas. These activities help build fine motor skills, spatial awareness, and emotional intelligence.
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Storytelling and Role Play: Children may invent characters, set up play scenarios, and engage in dramatic play, which encourages critical thinking, language development, and understanding of social dynamics.
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Exploration of Materials: Through sensory play (e.g., molding clay, playing with fabric, or experimenting with colors), children develop both creative and problem-solving skills as they manipulate materials to create and express ideas.
Math
Math skills develop naturally through various play-based activities that involve counting, sorting, measuring, and spatial reasoning:
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Counting and Sorting Games: Children can count and organize objects by size, color, shape, or type during play activities like setting the table, playing with blocks, or sorting toys.
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Measurement: Whether filling containers with water in a sensory bin or using a ruler to measure length, children learn basic measurement concepts while having fun.
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Patterns and Sequences: Activities like arranging blocks, beads, or even dancing to a rhythm help children recognize and create patterns—important for later mathematical understanding.
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Problem-Solving: When children encounter a challenge in their play, like figuring out how many blocks are needed to complete a structure, they practice logic and critical thinking.
CURRICULUM
Theme of the Week
Lets talk about a bad curriculum...
The first sign is "Theme of the Week"
This Approach in early childhood education is developmental-
ly inappropriate for children because it forces children to move through topics at a fast pace. Often these themes aren’t meaningful, relevant, or appropriate to the child’s real life experiences. For eg. infants learning about the lifecycle of a children or toddlers exploring a space theme are not learning anything as these topics are not age
appropriate for this age group. Children need to be able to make real life connections to topics in order for them to be meaningful.
When we explore topics that children can’t cognitively grasp yet, real learning or opportunity for development actually happens. Children's learning is fluid and driven by curiosity and hands on age-appropriate explorations such as sensory activities, painting and dramatic play. When educators push weekly themes it disrupts the natural learning process. This is not to say that theme based learning doesn’t have a place in a quality childcare it most certainly does but a theme should never be given a specific time frame nor should it be a
scheduled theme on a calendar.
Amazing teachers explore topics that are relatable to the children and give them as much time as they need to explore the theme. Weekly Themes that are scheduled in advance are adopted for convenience by teachers who do not understand child development and provide parents with a false sense that their child is learning something new. It also doesn’t align with brain development for young children.
Developmental Readiness
The Letter of the week approach is a one size fits all model and doesn’t account for the fact that children reacg different developemnetal milestones at different ages. Children develop at different paces when it comes to literacy skills and there is no magic week when children will grasp these concepts. Some children can read at 3 years old and other read at 6 years old. Other than completetly stress a child out there is nothing that adults can do to make a child ready if they are developmentally not ready to learn. The best way to aid in a
child;s development is to enrol them in a quality program where they feel good about their learning, where they are able to expore , have fun and be a child. This will promote a love for learning.
Limited Learning through rigid planning
This approach restricts spontaneous , meaningful learning opportunities and it takes away from children’s natural curiosity. For eg. if the curriculum calls for the children to learn the letter “M” but the children have a keen interest in another topic it takes away the opportunity for teachable moments. As parents, don’t be fooled by these gimmicks
this is how teachers fool you to think your children will learn. When teachers incorporate learning into play in the early years and incorporate literacy into planned meaningful activities it makes children’s learning meaningful.
OUR CURRICULUM: FOUR'S / VPK'S
Letter of the Week
In early childhood the letter of the week has been a longstanding methods used many educators to introduce children to the alphabet. This structured method introduces children to a specific letter that they memorize each week and then the teacher will incorporate activities relevant to that letter. While this approach seems logical and can be a fun way to explore letters, research has proven significant drawbacks and the ineffectiveness of children learning this way.
There are several reasons why it is ineffective:
Lack of Meaning
Dr Rebecca McCatherine did a study that was published in the early childhood education journal and she found that isolating letters from their natural context can hinder a child’s understanding of how letters can function within words and sentences Children may memorize the letters without comprehending their application in reading and writing. For eg. The letter “B” becomes meaningful when it is used in context of a story of “A BIG BROWN BEAR”. Or pointing to the S.T.O.P on a sign that is passed frequently.
Misalignment with Authentic Learning
From an adults perspective highlighting words and images of the same letter such as “A” is for “Astronaut) appears to be a simple way to reinforce letter recognition, however children do not process information in the same way adults do and their understanding of the world is rooted with familiar experiences. If a child has never learned
about space or an astronaut its unlikely that they will identify with that and the focus will change from learning to decoding the unfamiliar object and therefore no learning occurs. Learning only happens when its age appropriate, meaningful and age appropriate.
Instead of The Letter Of The Week and The Theme Of The Week a quality early childhood program will have the following:
Dramatic Play Areas
-Include literacy materials like shopping lists, letters, prescription pads, grocery flyers and signs that encourage reading during play.
Story Retelling
-Using puppets, props, flannel boards for children to create their own stories.
Play-Based Literacy Games
-Create games that involve letters and words such as letter hunts, alphabet puzzles and memory games.
Interactive Read Aloud
-During circle time staff will be asking children questions to allow them to predict what’s going to happen next in the story.
Singing Songs
-Support literacy by enhancing phonological awareness through rhythmic patterns. Additionally, singing promotes language development and
comprehension.
Writing Opportunities
-Children should be provided with ample opportunities to draw and write throughout the day.
Worksheets
Craft Activities, Handprint Art and colouring books are staples in many early childhood programs providing structured skills development. Recent Studies have now shown that these conventional tools are doing more harm than good and are limiting children’s potential and harming their critical thinking skills. During the crucial time of development spanning from 0-6 years old children undergo the greatest physical , socio emotional and cognitive development period than any other time in their life and rather than limiting a child’s creativity and focusing on “finished products” the emphasis should be on fostering curiosity and critical thinking.
When children participate in sensory play, imaginative play and manipulation of materials they refine their motor skills problem solving abilities and create a deep concrete understanding to the world around them. By encouraging process driven activities over product driven activities parents and educators lay the foundation for future academic success and lifelong learning
Memorization of colors, shapes , numbers and letters DOES NOT provide any kind of academic advantage to a child’s learning. This approach is developmentally inappropriate and will lead to the disinterest and surface level leaning without your child ever having a meaningful understanding. Additionally, it produces pressure and stress on children detracting from social and emotional skills development that are critical skills in the early years. Prioritizing social and emotional well-being and exploration in children is of great importance because it lays the groundwork for effective learning. When children feel emotional safe and secure with
their teachers they are more receptive and have better outcomes.
PLAY fosters creativity, social and problem solving skills and allows children to be children and promotes independence and curiosity. These foundational elements alongside a supportive learning environment where children are not over academically prepared but also socially and emotionally prepared will set the stage for a healthy child that’s ready for lifelong learning.
In short if you tour a Centre with a bulletin board that has all the same pictures of a penguin and it actually looks like a penguin it was just a waste of that child’s time. If you see lots of handprint art this is a clear indication that the Centre doesn’t understand how beneficial process art is over product art.
Seeing this is also a clear indication of a Centre that doesn’t understand how children really learn combined with educators who don’t understand child development however we are
glad that we've taken the time to educate you as a parent so you know what to look for in a quality environment
Misconceptions About Crafts
“Crafts are needed for Development.”
Absolutely not! Open ended exploration of materials such as creating a collage. without a fixed or final piece to glue allowed children to work for as long as they like because the activity is intrinsically motivating. Open ended Painting is the number one best activity that you will see in a quality early childhood program. Playdoh is also the number one most incredible thing that parents should be looking for in a quality classroom as playdoh builds up the hand muscles to prepare children for handwriting skills such as name writing,
“Children Need Crafts to follow Directions.”
Absolutely not! Children follow directions all day as they line up, cleanup. In fact children can benefit from more autonomy and being independent
“It’s what parents prefer.”
Absolutely not! While parents may want or expect crafts, who wants a piece of art your child’s teacher created on their fridge. Parents should prefer staff to spend quality time with the children engaging with them rather than spending hours wasting their time preparing a wasted piece of handprint art for thanksgiving. We call these "craptivities” for a reason
“Crafts are for special Occasions.”
Absolutely Not! What’s more special than a child’s authentic work as it truly represents your child! There’s nothing like a precious scribble that down the road is going to lead to handwriting or a painting that’s open ended, creative and your child has taken pride in while creating.
When are worksheets, crafts and coloring sheets
appropriate?
While we heavily encourage open ended ,hands on age appropriate learning experiences we do believe their is space for crafts and coloring sheets and some limited worksheets as children grow older (ages 3.5-5 years). These activities should account for 25% of the curriculum.
Crafts
Crafts should be done in a classroom where children can execute them on their own from start to finish without the teacher doing the craft for the child.
Colouring Sheets
Colouring Sheets can be introduced occasionally for relaxation and enjoyment however children should not be pressured or shamed for staying in the lines or for using unconventional colours. A bright imaginative child will paint the sky red and that’s ok!
Worksheets
Worksheets are appropriate for children in Kindergarten who are ready top practice specific skills in a structured format.
Program Statement
The Creative Curriculum highlights its foundation in developmental theories and its focus on creating a responsive, child-centered learning environment. By integrating the ideas of key theorists such as Brazelton, Maslow, Erikson, Greenspan, Piaget, and Vygotsky, it emphasizes the importance of meeting children's basic needs, forming positive relationships, and providing opportunities for cognitive and social growth through interaction and play.
The curriculum is structured to support children's development across four main stages:
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Social/Emotional
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Physical
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Cognitive
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Language
These stages guide the goals and objectives for children’s learning, fostering independence, communication skills, critical thinking, and motor development.
Our Curriculum is organized by FIVE KEY COMPONENTS
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Understanding children’s development
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Creating a responsive environment
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Identifying what children are learning
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Supporting caregivers in their teaching roles
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building partnerships with families
The role of the teacher is central to this framework, ensuring that each child's individual needs and interests are met through thoughtful planning and rich interactions.
Classroom environments are designed to encourage exploration and autonomy, with accessible materials and distinct learning areas that support various interests and developmental goals. Teachers are encouraged to provide diverse experiences, observe children closely, and work in partnership with families to ensure holistic development.
Overall, the curriculum promotes an integrated approach to early childhood education that recognizes the interconnectedness of social, emotional, cognitive, and physical development, and the vital role of the teacher in fostering a nurturing, growth-oriented environment