Learning Through Play In The Adventure Primes
"Pretend play is children's primary research method. It's how, as individuals and groups, they explore the ideas and feelings they find the most pressing and captivating. For teachers, pretend play is the primary subject of research; we observe and, when we can, document the play, because the play is a window into children's thinking and emotional landscape."
-Donna King
Evolutionary science tells us that humans are naturally hard-wired to learn through play. For young children, play is literally the engine that drives their development. Observing, documenting, and reflecting upon children's play is how teachers learn about the children's interests, and provides insight into where they are in their social-emotional, physical, and cognitive development.
As they grow, children are engaging in many different types of play, from parallel play to loosely-connected associative play, to true cooperative play with a shared vision and goal. Most often at age four or five (the ages of the children in Adventure Primes) we see collaborative play happening between two, maybe three children at a time. With one or two peers, children practice sharing ideas and working together. Transitioning from playing with one or two friends to engaging in large group cooperative play is actually incredibly challenging! Imagine that you and six or seven acquaintances are working together on a group project. The topic/theme/design of the project can be literally anything that any of you can imagine. Think about the negotiation, compromise, and communication skills needed to successfully plan and execute this task, when the possibilities are endless and no outside authority is dictating your actions!
Knowing the importance of play and understanding that children are already working so hard when they play together, we are always thinking about which environments and materials will best support the children's play. Based on research and our own experiences and observations, it is abundantly clear that one of the most powerful steps we can take in support of play is to allow the children long, uninterrupted periods of time outside. Nature provides an abundance of open-ended materials, plenty of physical space for bodies to move and come together comfortably, and naturally creates situations where children have to work together to achieve a goal. Nature is a restorative environment and often children are more regulated outdoors and better able to access higher-order executive function skills like working memory, mental flexibility, perspective-taking, and inhibitory control.
So far this year the Aventure Primes have spent more than 70 hours playing together in the preschool woods spot and on Tuesday morning teachers witnessed a beautiful example of the outdoor environment facilitating large group cooperative play. It began with a few children playing a game consisting of running away from imaginary meteors falling from the sky and finding shelter before the meteors crashed into the earth. Gradually these original players decided that they would build some metal nets to catch the falling meteors. Then one child had the idea to create a meteor museum in which to display the various sizes and types of meteors.
This idea took off rapidly! Instead of imaginary meteors, the group decided that any sized rock in the forest could be a meteor-- and large branches could be designated as meteors as well. They began using the small stage in our woods spot as the location of the museum. Other children noticed the lively and excited collecting and arranging of materials and wanted to join in. The forest contains an endless supply of rocks, so it was easy for anyone who wanted to join to find a meteor to add to the museum. Many of the meteors were quite heavy and impossible for one child to transport on their own. Cries of, "Help me move this meteor!" and "We need more help over here!" echoed through the forest as multiple children struggled to roll large rocks across the forest to the museum. "Are these meteors okay?" a child asked, holding up a small handful of tiny pebbles. "Yes!" came the enthusiastic reply, "meteors are all different sizes!"
The theme of "Meteor Museum" is pretty open-ended, and many children who didn't necessarily want to collect meteors could easily find other entry points into the game. One child who was pretending to be godzilla was deputized as the security guard for the museum. He paced around the museum, making sure no "bad guys" came to steal this precious collection. The swing next to the meteor museum was dubbed the "meteor ride" and children took turns swinging back and forth, pretending to either ride a meteor or to be a meteor themselves. Other children grabbed cardboard and oil crayons to make drawings and signs to adorn the meteor museum.
One point of tension arose when some of the children who were drawing and making signs decided that they wanted to keep displaying their artwork in the museum, but didn't want to keep drawing meteors. Those who were still deep in meteor play did not want bits of unrelated artwork displayed among the meteors. The disagreement was solved when a few children recalled their own experiences visiting museums. "I remember at the museum I went to one part had animals and another part had dinosaur bones," offered one child. More kids chimed in with other examples of different sections they have seen in museums. A compromise was reached and the children decided to create an "art museum" wing just to the side of the established meteor museum. Children carried over crates and wooden boxes and set to work displaying their art in the new wing of the museum. This play continued for more than an hour, with almost the entire class participating at one time or another.
There is so much power in the children's play, and so much for us to learn! We are so fortunate to have such inspiring outdoor spaces in which to spend our days, and to teach at a school where play is honored and recognized and valued as essential for children's learning.
