If you’ve walked past our classrooms of a morning this term, you will have noticed a whole range of different activities taking place, including a whole range of play opportunities. Children have been playing with blocks, playing Connect 4, playing with animal toys, playing chess, role playing in kitchens and many, many more different experiences. Starting the morning in this way helps direct children’s way of thinking and frames their view of school. Rather than seeing school as the place of worksheets and answers that are right or wrong (which is what I grew up knowing school to be) our children start every day seeing school as a place of wonder, exploration, excitement, joy and experimentation and these feelings carry through to their other learning experiences throughout the day.
Play is not just an opportunity to have fun and to explore, it is also a great teaching and assessment opportunity for our teachers. With some subtle questions about their block fort construction, a teacher can assess a child’s understanding of 3D shapes or measurement concepts. Observing children playing a game of chess or Connect 4 can provide a wealth of assessment information about children’s oral language and listening skills, data that is much more authentic and often of a higher quality than a formal listening test, for example.
By connecting children’s curricular learning with playful experiences, we provide them with the opportunity to see the authentic purpose of the learning and with situations that are more likely to demonstrate the full extent of their capabilities.
We understand how busy life can be at home, but we encourage you to try to include some family play experiences with your child in your week. Whether it’s spending a short time playing with action figures or playing a family game of Guess Who, you will get some great insights into your child’s language skills and you will also often find that they will open up and share more about their day, their worries and the friendships while they are in the flow of a play experience (this is particularly the case with boys). We certainly see these benefits at school, which is just one of the many reasons we place such an importance on play as learning at St Paul.
If you would like to know more about play, its importance for children or play ideas to use with your child, this website is a great resource: https://raisingchildren.net.au/school-age/play-media-technology
