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The Importance of Play in Education

September 21, 2005 by Leave a Comment

Back in the days when my children were toddlers and our home resembled a Fisher-Price obstacle course, I used to envy a local toy lending library. What if I could follow that method at home and keep all toys, books, and other childhood paraphernalia sorted into locked cabinets, allowing my “patrons” to borrow only three items per week? The restrictions could be expanded to enforce the replacement of all playthings after 5:00 pm and prohibit their removal before 9:00 am the next morning. Nothing would be allowed to remain on the floor in major traffic paths, puzzle pieces would never be lost (or eaten), and life would be peaceful and pleasant. That, however, was only a daydream, and like nearly all daydreams, it is not compatible with reality.

As messy as playtime can become, I have learned to see the tremendous value in it for education. When I enrolled my son in public Kindergarten (yes, that was a mistake, but I remedied it the following year), the teacher spent a brief time with each child and assessed their skills. She praised me for having given my son so many different experiences, from trips to the zoo to reading books to him. She praised his ability to use scissors, crayons, markers, and paintbrushes with relative proficiency. She said he ranked far above some of her previous students in his knowledge and talents. Silly me, all this time I had thought that was what parents were supposed to do with their children. What has filled the past five years, if a child entering Kindergarten has never used crayons or sat on a lap to hear a story?

I have friends who have recently returned from several years as missionaries in Africa. In hearing the mundane details of their daily routines, I began to see deeper into the value of children’s playtime. The toys I used to dread picking up day after day are not available to most African-bush children or to the poorer children of any culture. The education supplied by what we consider to be simple toys was demonstrated in the adult man who was employed as household help for this missionary family. He worked for them for several years and yet never could master the task of stacking the bowls, pans, or containers in the kitchen cupboards. The colorful, nesting cups that my children stacked into towers, knocked over, nested together, dumped out, and stacked again had not played a foundational role in this man’s education. As a result, he was not familiar with a concept that is so incredibly common to most of us. This gap in his education left him confused as to how to successfully arrange the kitchenware with largest on the bottom and smallest on the top. Repeated demonstrations and instructions did not help. His lack of experience in the early years had left a seemingly permanent mark.

Just as adults can become bored with doing the same repetitive tasks over and over, children also appreciate variety in their playtime. If I can belabor the nesting cups topic just a bit longer, any variety within that task will act to further the child’s understanding of the nesting concept, whether various shapes of cups (round, square, hexagonal, etc.) or different types of stackable items (paper cups, Mom’s measuring cups with handles, or an assortment of empty shoe boxes in graduated sizes). Other types of toys expand upon this same nesting principle: stacking colored rings onto a peg in size order, nesting dolls, even shape-sorter toys combine the principle of matching with nesting the object into its coordinating hole. Likewise, variety enriches lessons of all types for older children; hands-on learning goes much farther than simply breaking up the boredom.

Children learn from the moment they take their first breath, from learning how to express discomfort and that their expression results in someone’s attention to those needs, to observing how others around them eat, speak, walk, and draw pictures. Toy tools give early practice to the budding carpenters, just as toy kitchens help to prepare the future cooks. Puzzles teach problem solving, fine-tune motor skills, and improve observation and memory skills. Dolls offer children “parenting” opportunities, from dressing the baby to cuddling and comforting. Art and craft materials broaden a child’s ability to express his ideas, improve motor coordination, and satisfy the grandparents’ need for something to put on the refrigerator door. Stop for a moment to ponder the educational gaps in the child who grows up without any of these “playtime” skills.

It has been said that “play is a child’s work,” and there are many aspects where that is true. Children work hard at their playtime, often becoming physically exhausted through their efforts and needing a rest from playtime. We should also expect that they will experience mental fatigue when they have been engrossed in play tasks that require thinking and problem solving, such as nesting the boxes mentioned above (for the littlest ones) or assembling a jigsaw puzzle (for somewhat older children).

Moms and Dads, although your family’s collection of playthings may never seem to stop growing and rarely seems to be out from underfoot, be assured that those toys are serving a very valuable purpose in your little ones’ lives. The more experiences you can offer your children with widely varied play activities, including problem solving concepts or art and craft materials, the better equipped your children will be when it comes time for them to delve into “real” learning experiences.

[See also Sorting Toys Is Algebra]

Filed Under: Encouragement for Parents, Encouraging Your Student, Family Unity, Learning Outside the Books, Preschoolers, Tactile Learning

Homeschooling the Neighborhood

September 16, 2005 by Leave a Comment

In my state it is not legal for me to officially homeschool children who are not members of my immediate family. However, we did sometimes include neighborhood playmates in our activities, particularly in the summertime when “just another day to play” can tend to be somewhat boring. We did not always do formal lessons through the summer, but we did incorporate fascinating, fun, and educational activities into the relaxed playtime of summer.

Summer was a time when I could devote more of my time to planning or preparing a study or activity for later use. I found that I could also give something a “test run” by trying it out on the kiddies — if they enjoyed a taste of it, chances are they would enjoy a more in-depth look during the school year, and perhaps even the children in our larger co-op group would be interested in it, too. So what do you do when your own children are not quite enough for the activity you would like to try out? Let the neighbors join in. Several times, I prepared a fun, yet interesting and educational activity for my own children to do on a boring summer day, only to find that their neighborhood friends were just as interested in breaking the monotony of swinging and bicycling.

Such was the case when I did extensive research and calculations to examine exactly what size an effective solar-system model should be. I have seen many of the science-fair-type of planetary exhibits made from Styrofoam balls, assorted fruits, or sports balls, but I had always felt that I was not seeing an accurate portrayal from those. While my children were spending their summertime swinging, roller-blading, or just relaxing with a novel, I was delightedly poring over scientific facts and punching furiously at my calculator — a welcome change for me from the usual Mom-fare of laundry and dishes. When I finally trooped outside with my notebook of figures, a large measuring tape, and crude signposts mounted on popsicle sticks, my participants were not merely my own offspring, but their eager friends as well, who jumped at the chance to be included in measuring our lawn and placing the markers for each planet’s orbit. Never was one of my summer projects met with an “I already learned that at school” or a “This is vacation — I don’t want to learn anything” response from the children who were not my regular students. Whenever we needed some extra “classmates” for our learning games, there were always ready and eager volunteers.

One day I prepared the “geeWhiz Quiz” for my children, intending it to double as both a math activity and a scavenger hunt. I also secretly hoped that their time spent searching through the game closet would spur some interest in long-forgotten table games and interest them in playing a few of those again. I explained the process of the activity to them while a friend from the neighborhood was present. She seemed deeply disappointed that I expected my children to do this activity later, after she would have returned home. I quickly copied another worksheet for her, and all three children happily spent the entire afternoon in arithmetical computations. My anticipated bonus also paid off: the trio did find several games that piqued their interest, and they kept themselves occupied for many days afterwards.

We often filled our front sidewalk with an extensive Dr. Seuss universe in colored chalk drawings or an ever-expanding circus train overflowing with acrobatic clowns and exotic animals (each new helper got to add his own train car). Our favorite cartoon book illustrations were faithfully copied over and over and over in sidewalk chalk creations. A cleansing overnight rain never brought disappointment, but instead it meant a clean slate for tomorrow. Time after time, the neighborhood children would see us sitting in the middle of the sidewalk and rapidly migrate to our front yard, picking up bits of chalk and asking what parts they could add to the growing mural. My children were not lacking in social contacts with age-mates, and they learned valuable lessons in teamwork and the sharing of ideas as well as supplies.

Being the only homeschool family in your area does not necessarily mean you will not have contacts with other students. We had many opportunities to share educational experiences with public and private school students who were eager to join us in doing things our way. The neighborhood parents knew they could expect our fun activities to have an educational benefit, and their children never seemed to mind it either.

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Homeschool How-To's, Kinesthetic Learning, Learning Outside the Books, Math

A New Approach to Spelling-Word Lists

September 6, 2005 by Leave a Comment

I despise the way spelling is taught. I managed to get through the spelling workbooks that I had in school only because I was a word puzzle aficionado. When it came time to teach spelling to my own children, I became terribly frustrated. They did not instantly share my fascination for words or word puzzles. In fact, they found spelling workbooks to be very confusing and incredibly boring.

I remember spending hours as an early reader compiling my own lists of rhyming words and noticing that foot and boot appeared the same, but did not sound the same, which generated more lists. Writing all the possible combinations of certain sounds led me to a deep understanding of phonics rules and their applications. Exploration of prefixes and suffixes took me even further.

The public school method of test and retest used in the books we tried simply did not teach how to spell. Over the years, we abandoned the workbook pages and came up with our own methods for a spelling class. I emphasized prefixes, suffixes, Greek and Latin roots, and spelling patterns. Too often, the published spelling curricula grouped together words with nothing in common, ignoring the obvious patterns to be found.

I think that focusing on those patterns is an excellent way to learn spelling. Public school teachers have been told repeatedly in their college training classes that there are too many exceptions to too few rules. I disagree. I found a marvelous book called The ABC’s and All Their Tricks, which shows the patterns, the words sharing those patterns, and explains the origins of those patterns. It is a wonderful reference work — which finally explained to me how “w” can be used as a vowel.

Your lists of words can follow phonics rules or come from pre-prepared lists, such as the weekly lists found in spelling workbooks or from grade-level-specific lists. Another possibility for the avid reader is to compile his own list of unfamiliar words from his regular reading. Encourage your student to look up those words in the dictionary for origin, meaning, and pronunciation, and then incorporate them into your own customized spelling and vocabulary study program. My son expanded his own vocabulary by routinely browsing through the dictionary looking for new words.

My personal preference for learning a list of words would be to print out the chosen list (the time period for learning the words should be based upon your student’s ability) and post it in a prominent place where it will be seen multiple times throughout each day. Study the spelling patterns and then use repeated observation to cement the correct spelling into the brain. The student can use those words as the basis for exploring various art mediums: alphabet rubber stamps, calligraphy pens, or paper collage (cut and paste letters from newspapers and magazines). Bring out the letter tiles and cards from various table games and assemble all of the words from the current spelling list. If you have students who share my love of word puzzles (bless them!), challenge them to create their own puzzles — making the puzzles will teach much more than simply solving a puzzle will.

Daily observation can teach much more than we realize. Frank Gilbreth, the real-life father of Cheaper by the Dozen fame (stick with the book or 1950’s movie), painted information on the bathroom walls for his children to absorb while they performed their daily bathing and brushing rituals. After completing Morse code charts, Dad painted silly coded messages in various places around the house, fully expecting his children to translate them — and they did.

Repetition and drill by themselves are painfully boring, but when used creatively can become an enjoyable way to learn without wasting endless hours in rote memorization. Use what you have around your house and come up with clever new ways for your students to study the words they are learning.

Filed Under: Auditory Learning, Homeschool How-To's, Learning Outside the Books, Phonics, Reading, Spelling, Tactile Learning, Visual Learning
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