The importance of play-based
learning for preschoolers

Anyone who has observed young children knows they want to spend most of their time at play. Increasingly, early childhood educators are showing that play is not just a child’s pleasant pastime. Developmentally, it’s their job!

Play is integral to young children’s growth and learning about the world, about themselves, and about others.

There is growing evidence that play is essential to children’s development into confident, capable adults with social and executive functioning skills. But how can thoughtfully planned learning be integrated into play to prepare young children for kindergarten and beyond and set the stage for STEM engagement? 

We took a closer look at the current thinking about the role of play in early childhood and how playful inquiry can set the stage for STEM learning and give preschoolers more confidence as science learners.

Most preschool teachers include play in their classroom planning. It’s natural for children to want to play. It’s also a necessary way to release their pent-up energy and give them a break from more focused activities. It goes deeper than that, however.

Researchers are studying something called “play-based learning,” “playful learning,” or “playful inquiry,” in which planned learning goals are explored through play-based activities and scenarios. 

Play-based learning has been described as:

an educational approach that incorporates play as a central component of the learning process. It recognizes that children learn best through active engagement and exploration in a meaningful and enjoyable context. As children play, they engage their imagination, take risks, and learn problem-solving to support their development.

Key Components of Play-Based Learning

Recent research funded by the LEGO Foundation found that “Learning through play happens through joyful, actively engaging, meaningful, iterative, and socially interactive experiences.”

Let’s take a moment to unpack that list.

Joy, in this context, is a broad term that encompasses “enjoying a task for its own sake and the momentary thrill of surprise, insight, or success after overcoming challenges.” The child may not experience joy throughout a short or long play period, but the overall experience is positive. Researchers find that experiencing joy during play increases motivation and interest, which can support student perseverance in learning.

Neuroscience development research is also finding increasing evidence that the emotional experience of learning can boost dopamine levels important to memory, attention, mental shifting, creativity, and motivation.

Active engagement in learning involves mental immersion and resistance to distraction. When children are actively engaged through hands-on and “minds-on” learning, they experience learning as an active rather than passive pursuit where connections, patterns, and analogies are made, and deeper learning can be achieved. Children engaged in play-based learning are more likely to enjoy the full benefits of a lesson because they are so invested in the task.

Meaningful play enables children to connect an experience to something they already know, creating meaning for themselves that goes beyond rote learning. Drawing on their own knowledge and actively connecting it to new or different experiences stimulates them to make connections and search for patterns and relationships. This can even be possible through the help of preschool themes. Researchers found that this way of processing “recruits networks in the brain associated with analogical thinking, memory, transfer, metacognition, insight, motivation, and reward.”

Iterative play-based learning is what it sounds like: children have the opportunity to repeat experiences, building on what they discovered in previous sessions and solving problems (e.g., “How can I get a bigger tower of blocks to stay up?”). They essentially replicate the scientific method, trying out different ideas, revising their hypotheses based on what they find, and uncovering new questions. This supports new hypotheses and deeper learning. Researchers on play-based learning comment, “Because play is a scenario that provides children agency to direct their own activities and a safe space to experiment without risk, it encourages iterative and exploratory behavior.” Pretend play also helps build another set of scientific research skills, where a set of assumptions that are not based in reality are established, maintained, and tested as premises as the play proceeds.

Socially interactive play develops from infancy when babies interact with caregivers in play. Preschoolers play in increasingly social and collaborative ways. They engage in communication, listening, and sharing skills, as well as shared creativity and problem-solving skills that form the basis for learning, development, coping, and resiliency throughout life. Other researchers of playful learning stress the importance of complementary characteristics of play-based activities:

1. Self-chosen/Self-directed: The child must be given the opportunity to explore based on their own curiosity.
   
   
2. Enjoyable: The activity should be enjoyed for its own merits. The child is not directed to complete a specific goal or objective for the task, although the adult might have designed the activity with underlying learning objectives for the children.
   
   
3. Unstructured: While some researchers find that play activities can fall along a spectrum of adult involvement or guidance, others feel that free play is the most important type of play-based learning. It gives children the chance to learn their interests and dislikes without any external influence, make mistakes, and learn from those mistakes without fear of failure.
   
   
4. Process-oriented: While an adult may design and guide play activities with learning objectives in mind, children aren’t directed about how to play or given outcome-oriented objectives. The focus is on the process of discovery and creativity.
   
   
5. Imaginative: While all unstructured, process-oriented play contains aspects of imagination, “pretend play” enables the child to use creativity and imagination and role-play. This develops empathy and social-emotional skills.

A Range of Adult Involvement

Unlike free play with no learning objectives, play-based learning involves a spectrum of adult planning and involvement. Here are some different examples:

Free Play - The adult has little involvement other than to set up the conditions or setting of the play

Guided Play  - The adult poses scenarios and questions to inspire or guide children’s discovery

Rules-Based Games - The adult scaffolds and oversees

Collaboratively Designed Play - The children design the direction of the play with some adult input (falls in the area between free play and guided play)

This range of play-based learning is largely child-led and open-ended. This is in contrast to direct instruction or didactic learning, in which an adult delivers a designed lesson and children receive it relatively passively. That said, the teacher always plays a part in play-based learning to further specific learning objectives.

The Role of Inquiry

One key aspect of play-based learning, even at the earliest age, is the spirit of inquiry. Researchers have found that science inquiry, imagination, and play are important elements that provide a foundation for later scientific study. Inquiry-based learning methods start with a topic or question that sparks the student’s curiosity and drives continuing investigation, experimentation, and observation.

For older children, the teacher guides students to formulate a specific question, research the topic, and present their findings or conclusions in some way. This process follows the scientific process, teaches research and inquiry skills, gives the child the experience of being a researcher, and enables them to be an expert in a particular area. It also builds a deeper understanding of a topic within the whole classroom as all the children present their observations and findings to each other.

For preschool children, inquiry-based learning is at the heart of play-based learning. Since it is child-directed, it contains the elements of joy and active engagement that are essential to play-based learning. The autonomy and self-direction of the play “allows children to confidently explore challenges, make goals, take appropriate risks, and learn to be persistent.”

Research in child development, education, and neuroscience shows that for children younger than eight, “the most age-appropriate and effective method is a balanced approach that embeds brief periods of direct instruction within a play-based learning environment.” The impact of play-based learning on preschool-aged children cannot be overstated. It can be applied across all content domains and affects broad developmental areas such as critical thinking, communication, language, and social skills. Here are a few more benefits of play-based learning:

As children collaborate, explore, and try new things, they learn to communicate their own ideas and needs to classmates and listen to their classmates in turn. These conversations help them practice new vocabulary and build skills around paying attention to their classmates, the activity, and the adult guiding and asking questions. This also ties in with language and literacy skills as well. 

Pretend play, in which children adopt roles and enact scenes, has social, emotional, and developmental benefits. Children must imagine themselves in different roles and develop empathy with both imaginary characters and their peers. Playing with other children includes communicating needs, taking turns, cooperating, and working together to solve a problem. It also involves regulating their own emotions, an important aspect of social-emotional learning.

These skills include collaboration, communication, critical thinking, creative innovation, thinking and reasoning, problem-solving, cognitive skills, and confidence. The experience of successfully solving a problem or mastering a topic contributes not only to a child’s sense of confidence in themselves as a learner but also to their self-image as a scientist or investigator. Research has shown that this sense of self contributes to children’s success as STEM learners in elementary, secondary, and beyond.

Joyful, engaged play gives children the opportunity to practice and refine both gross and fine motor skills in an enjoyable way.

Young children learning and playing with no pressure other than their own curiosity and the modeling of their teacher can develop a sense of mastery, a self-image as an investigator, and confidence in themselves as learners. A sensory activity can be the difference in a young child being engaged. Acting under their own agency and giving their creativity and curiosity full reign, young children can develop positive attitudes toward learning while they “confidently explore challenges, make goals, take appropriate risks, and learn to be persistent.”

In an atmosphere of high-stakes testing, many educators and parents are concerned that even preschool-aged children receive the academic preparation they need to succeed in kindergarten and beyond. Within the context of STEM, researchers note that developing a positive attitude toward STEM learning needs to take place much earlier than previously expected, but also that most STEM curricula are not appropriate for very young children. Some skills, like alphabet recognition, counting, and phonological awareness, may best be learned through rote learning; research shows play-based and inquiry-based learning models are more effective techniques for young children.

The key is that young children who learn through play develop ownership over their learning and a greater conceptual understanding of concepts. This makes them better prepared to apply what they’ve learned in settings beyond preschool. Children also learn executive functioning skills through play-based learning, or what one group of researchers referred to as “that crucial suite of skills used in goal-setting and flexible thinking.” These “learning to learn” skills include working memory, impulse control, and the ability to switch attention between tasks or rule sets, all particularly important in math and literacy. All of these skills lay a strong foundation for the more structured learning environment of the kindergarten classroom.

Finally, the social-emotional skills that preschoolers learn through play-based learning are important for preparing them for kindergarten. Communicating, self-regulation, turn-taking, and paying attention are just some of the SEL benefits of play-based learning.

Most preschool teachers will say that they do incorporate play into every day. However, a play-based curriculum that includes playful learning and other forms of play-based learning is unique. It requires teacher prep and active teacher involvement. It may also require a major shift in thinking about learning outcomes, child agency, and the learning process. Teachers who have made this transition say they love incorporating a play-based curriculum into their preschool classroom. The investment of time is well worth it, as it makes their teaching lives easier and more rewarding.

Teachers using play-based learning say they enjoy assisting in the learning journey rather than conducting and controlling it. They also note that they see their students learning more organically and enjoying it in the process. Preschool teachers note that it’s developmentally appropriate for this age group and meets learners where they are rather than forcing them to conform to the traditional structure of an elementary classroom. Perhaps most importantly, they find that play-based learning meets the needs of diverse learning styles and English language learners more effectively than direct instruction.

In play-based learning, children can:

Experience the lesson first-hand. Through hands-on activities that interest them, inquiry, and the invitation and time to make connections, conclusions, and meaning themselves, children fully engage in the process of learning and understand material more deeply.

Have agency in their own learning. Play-based learning empowers children to make decisions about the play. They follow their own curiosity and interests, interact with other children and the teacher about the direction of the activity, and take ownership of what they discover and create. Research shows that agency gives children greater confidence in their abilities as a learner, leader, and problem-solver, all key to becoming more successful STEM learners in kindergarten and beyond.

Engage in productive struggle. Not all play-based learning is positive, initially. Children may find themselves struggling with a task, idea, or problem or assessing differing ideas contributed by other children. Working through these challenges develops grit or perseverance, and achieving a sense of ownership and mastery of a subject are important to academic success. Engagement in play is an important motivation for children to persist through times of uncertainty and frustration.

Navigate social interactions and social obstacles. The preschool setting is often where children confront basic social situations like sharing, taking turns, and waiting patiently. Learning and practicing these skills is particularly effective in play when children are motivated to engage out of enjoyment and shared interest.

A play-based approach gives preschool teachers different roles, depending on where along the spectrum of adult involvement the play falls.

• They can design a setting and have the children engage in free play within that context, providing materials that enable children to spontaneously develop toward a specific learning goal.
• They can watch the children play, make comments, ask questions, and encourage children to ask questions. They might observe the children’s interest or curiosity about a topic and provide additional tools or materials for exploration. For example, they can provide soil and seeds if children are playing in a pretend garden or flower shop.
• In collaboratively designed play, the teacher and children share control over the activity equally. The teacher offers guidance, questions, or suggestions while the children make decisions about the story and resources for the play.
• In a more structured games-oriented approach, the teacher can choose a game based on their learning objectives, explain the rules, and facilitate as the children play, if necessary.
• For content that requires a more didactic approach to learning, like writing practice or numbers, the teacher can incorporate a story-based or playful context to practice. Let’s consider examples of each of these roles.

Most classrooms have stations or areas set up for particular types of play and exploration. An area with blocks, a play kitchen area, and a water table are all common examples of these settings. A teacher with specific learning objectives might use a familiar setting but add new elements, such as blocks with different shapes and colors, an assortment of play fruits and vegetables in the kitchen for “cooking,” or pretend order forms that need to be completed for a play store.

Observing children building a structure out of blocks, the teacher might ask which blocks work best to hold up other blocks, which combinations of shapes seem most stable, or what would happen if certain combinations were stacked. In a conflict between a child who enjoys knocking blocks down and another who wants to build structures, the teacher could model communication about needs and suggest options for compromise.

In this shared activity, the teacher might invite the children to collaboratively design a new play setting, like an airport or a doctor’s office, and guide a discussion about what elements would be needed to create it. The teacher might present the children with a problem that needs to be solved, possibly in a story context, and guide them through a discussion of possible solutions.

In this approach, the teacher selects games that target specific skill development. For example, a teacher might introduce Go Fish for number recognition.

In this approach, the teacher might build on a pretend activity the children have already engaged in, like having them practice writing letters, words, or numbers on order forms in a pretend store.

While play-based learning is spontaneous, creative, and self-directed for the preschoolers who engage in it, designing play-based learning activities requires thoughtful teacher planning. Whether choosing a game, designing a play station, or thinking through guiding questions and learning objectives for a story-based problem scenario, even experienced preschool teachers may find the approach unfamiliar and unstructured.

Professional development, peer support, and the support and understanding of school administrators are all helpful for successful play-based approaches in the classroom. You can also start small. Add just one activity or type of activity at a time, and tweak it until it feels effective. Parent buy-in may also lead to broader support for play-based learning as an important part of that school’s early childhood education program.

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