Play produces children who are emotionally healthy and ready for school
A quote from George Bernard Shaw hangs in our office, guiding our daily interactions: “We don’t quit playing because we grow old; we grow old because we quit playing.”
These days, we feel a strong need to defend playtime for children, too. According to Howard Chudacoff, a cultural historian at Brown University, today’s children have less time to play than children of previous generations. With the increased emphasis on academics and enrichment activities, preschool children are now spending more time in organized activities and scheduled lessons and much less time in self-directed, imaginative free play. Chudacoff believes this has hampered some children’s cognitive, social, and emotional development.
Learning is not simply a process of adults feeding information to children. Learning occurs through active investigation—play! Research confirms that as children play, they actually “construct” their knowledge of the world, building new understandings on previous knowledge. Some people think of play as the opposite of work, but child development experts insist that play is a child’s “work” because play is how children learn and practice the skills they will need in later life.
Play also has an important role in the development of school readiness, especially in encouraging literacy-related language skills. A good reader and a good player have an important characteristic in common—they both have good language skills.
The kind of play that’s most effective in enhancing language development is called sociodramatic or pretend play. This kind of play draws children into making up stories in ways that foster their narrative skills. It often involves a group of preschoolers who craft a story, decide who will play each role, and then act out the story. It should come as no surprise that social play is the most effective way to increase literacy because learning to talk and learning to read are both social activities.
When children have time to engage in make-believe or pretend play, they also develop critical cognitive skills known as executive function or self-regulatory skills. Executive function skills include making plans, controlling emotions and impulses, and regulating one’s own behavior. Laura Berk, a professor of psychology at Illinois State University and an executive-function researcher, explains: “Self-regulation predicts effective development in virtually every domain; in fact, good executive function is a better predictor of success in school than a child’s IQ.” Executive function contributes to success in work and school because it allows people to fit in socially and regulate their own behavior.
As library staff, we can be advocates for play-based early learning environments. Playful storytimes engage children in language and literacy in all its forms: reading, singing, chanting, telling stories and jokes, marching, reciting poems and nursery rhymes, clapping, and stomping to a variety of music.
In our storytimes, we facilitate executive function skills because we foster language in a fun way, and language is a fundamental part of executive control. We can also help children by playing games that encourage restraint. In storytime, while using shakers and saying the chant “Shake and shake and shake and STOP,” children begin to learn to resist the impulse to shake constantly and loudly all the time.
Children need to play, and they need adults to create a balance between play, academic enrichment, and organized activities. Play produces children who are emotionally healthy, ready for school, and eager to learn to read. Play is generally regarded as something that’s done for enjoyment or pleasure, whereas work is meaningful and purposeful. We’re convinced that play is also meaningful and purposeful!