Young Children Need to Play for Optimal Development

I am still trying to come to terms with a phone call I got from a friend yesterday.

She is the parent of a preschooler, and was talking about her child’s magnet school. Like me, this person has worked with young children for many years. She was distraught. In her child’s preschool, the teacher was doing flash cards, with sight words, to begin each day. I was stunned. As an education advocate, I know how vital literacy skills are for students to succeed. But as a child development expert, I also know how young children develop language and literacy skills. This flash card method is so far from optimal for children’s long term development, it really could be called malpractice.

Children learn language in context. The printed word is a symbolic language. Literacy is learned in context. Skilled teachers build children’s literacy skills in context. They teach children about letter sounds and word “chunks” through rhyming games and songs. They begin children’s literacy learning with the child’s own name, making it exciting and relevant. They put the child’s name on that child’s cubby with a picture of the child attached. They make a list of names and post it for the “line leader” and teach children how to count and follow the list as they wait for their big day. (Nothing bigger in the preschool economy than being line leader.) Words represent something – they are not just letters on a card.  

For our youngest learners, literacy is learned, optimally, and most thoroughly through play. And the more I hear about our kindergartens and preschools, especially in public schools, the more I hear about less time for play.

An article in this month’s journal Pediatrics makes the case for play in the early childhood years – for better child outcomes. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/129/1/e204.full. It takes particular issue with the negative impact of reduced playtime for low- income children, who are increasingly in “academic prep” preschools as early childhood is applied as a strategy to close the achievement gap.

Preschoolers are very different than 3rd graders, or 2nd graders. Readers may recall taking child development in high school or college. One of the first tenets of development is that it is discontinuous – or that development takes place in stages, that are qualitatively different. Yet it seems like our education “experts” who are paid big bucks to “align” curriculum, missed out on their own learning in child development 101. They try and push down elementary practices, vs. design practices for young learners.

But mothers in the US, who are also experts about their child’s learning - are worried. 95 percent of mothers surveyed expressed deep concern that their children are growing up too quickly and missing out on the joys of experiential learning and opportunities for free play and natural exploration.  (Alliance for Childhood, 2010). http://www.allianceforchildhood.org/publications

I am hopeful that the most recent article in Pediatrics and other articles about the importance of play for children’s cognitive development will start to have an impact on the practice in our schools. What is so tough about it is that really smart, hard working, well-meaning, education professionals think they are doing the right thing with rigid, scripted curricula for young children. When you ask “where are the blocks?” –  they look distraught, but say – “there is just not time.”

When there is no time for blocks, dress up, house, playdoh, and sand play in preschool and kindergarten, we are missing out on the most important kind of learning – the kind of learning that builds collaborative, creative, self regulating students for the rest of their education. These attributes lead to later school success - persisitence and grit. Grit: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/magazine/what-if-the-secret-to-success-is-failure.html?pagewanted=all

Yes, we need teachers to begin teaching pre-literacy skills in preschool. What we need to remember is the “pre” – "pre"-literacy in "pre"- school.