Play is not merely a trivial pursuit but a vital component across various sectors of society. And play isn’t just for children; it’s a critical component in higher education as well as a strategic tool for innovation and engagement.
Rolling Stone wrote an article on the benefits of play and how to incorporate it into one’s work life.
Many people think of play in the form of young children at recess engaging in games of tag, and ball, using slides, and swings, and physically exploring their environment. But physical play is not the only kind of play.
The Scientific American published an article on how pretend play or make-believe play reflects a critical feature of a child’s cognitive and social development.
Play is an important part of children’s learning and development. Playful learning – an area of research that examines how children learn best through playful exchanges – shares many of the same core foundations as the study of intergenerational learning, a body of research involving older and younger generations coming together in the service of mutually beneficial learning experiences.
A commentary piece by Brookings examines how playful learning creates multigenerational opportunities with intergenerational impacts.
Play-based learning isn’t just about letting children do what they want. It’s about adults guiding and evaluating the play to engage them more deeply with the learning process.
Learn more about the value of play-based learning and how play is essential for brain development in this piece by First Five Years.
One of the major barriers to healthy development in the United States is toxic stress, which occurs when we are threatened and the body releases emergency stress hormones that prime us to handle stressful events. Toxic stress can occur when a child experiences strong, frequent, or prolonged adversity without adequate adult support.
Research by Kaboom finds that play is part of the solution to create supportive, responsive relationships with adults that can help to prevent the detrimental effects of the toxic stress response.
Free and guided play – also known as playful learning – are pedagogical tools through which children can learn in joyful and conceptually rich ways. Brain science research in animals has left clues along a path that may begin to reveal play’s human biological underpinnings, but more research is needed to investigate why play promotes learning and development.
In a publication titled The Case of Brain Science and Guided Play: A Developing Story, the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) explores this concept.
To learn more, visit the NAEYC resource website.
