Play involves children engaging in imaginative actions, with or without materials. Every time children engage in play, they are having an experience, and with this experience, they are learning.
Play-based curriculum helps stimulate brain growth and nurtures the growing executive functions of the brain. Play helps children learn better, retain better, and enjoy the learning process. Play teaches kids to reason, use logic, plan, work with others, sometimes lead and sometimes follow, to win or lose, and to shake hands and make up after a fight.
Every educationist and educational philosopher has advocated the need for hands-on, play-based learning. Be it our own Mahatma Gandhi, who devised the 3 H method of education involving the Hand, Heart, and Head, or good old Montessori, who believed that play involves all three aspects essential for learning: the muscles, senses, and brain.
Benefits of Play-Based Learning
- Touching, feeling, exploring, making, breaking are all activities that enrich the senses, helping new synapses develop in the brain.
- Free play, or play that involves choices, logic, and thinking, helps enhance the frontal lobe. In early years teacher training courses, this is vital for educators to learn to facilitate cognitive development in young learners.
- The hand and the brain need each other. Brain expert Wilson states that neurologically, "a hand is always in search of a brain and a brain is in search of a hand." Use of the hands to manipulate three-dimensional objects is an essential part of brain development. Early childhood teaching courses also teach educators about different arts and crafts activities to engage young learners and improve their hand-eye coordination.
- Imaginative play and role play are parts of symbolic play. Symbolic play is when a child uses a symbol or object to represent another item, for example, using a block as a telephone. When a child experiences symbolic play, they will excel in reading and writing activities, as reading represents pictures or words as symbols (all letters and words are symbols).
- All play should make kids enjoy themselves, as positive emotions enhance memory. No play should be stressful or overly competitive, as stress releases harmful chemicals that are not good for brain development.
Conclusion
Incorporating play-based learning into early childhood education is essential for all-inclusive child development. By embracing play as a fundamental component of the curriculum, early educators can foster cognitive, social, emotional, and physical growth in young learners.
Programs provided by Podar Institute of Education (PIE), such as offline and online early childhood education courses, emphasize the importance of play, equipping future educators with the tools to create enriching learning environments. Prioritizing play in education lays a strong foundation for lifelong learning and success.