FROM THE NEWS DESSC | KEYNOTE
THE IMPORTANCE OF PLAY
“C
Yvonne Sewnauth | Phase Leader Foundation Stage, DESS
an I go play now?” As a parent, how many times have you heard your child ask this? Several, I am sure, and that is due to the simple fact that play is fundamental to a child’s development and is indeed, as Maria Montessori famously quoted, “the work of the child”. But what exactly is play? In ‘Learning Through Play’, Peter K Smith and Anthony Pellegrini describe it as “an activity done for its own sake, characterised by means rather than ends (the process is more important than any endpoint or goal)” (Smith and Pellegrini, 2013:2) By engaging in active and play-based learning, our youngest students here at DESS are experiencing a whole range of skills that enable them to make sense of the world around them, as well as opportunities to experience setbacks and failures, which, in turn, allows them to develop problem-solving skills, emotional resilience, confidence and self-esteem. Play also teaches them ‘how’ to be a learner; during free-play sessions, children’s brains are filled with new information, thus they become completely engrossed in an activity. At this point, they are processing everything that they have experienced and figuring out how it can work for their lives.
also assists in laying the foundations for Literacy, as they learn to explore new sounds, attempt new vocabulary and exercise their imagination through storytelling. Learning through play is more than simply learning academic skills, such as letters and numbers, indeed, it is providing our children with life-long skills essential for the 21st Century: collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity. Prior to the 1960s, the brain was considered by scientists and medical professionals as unmalleable, thus resulting in a fixed intelligence. However, Marion Cleeves Diamond, one of the founders of modern neuroscience who studied the brain of Albert Einstein, also conducted a landmark research experiment in 1964. Studying rats in boring, solitary confinement versus those in an exciting, play-filled environment, Diamond uncovered that the ‘enriched’ rats had thicker cerebral cortices (bigger brains!). In addition, these rats were smarter and more able to navigate their way through mazes quickly too.
“
Not only is play essential to cognitive, physical, social and emotional wellbeing of children, it 6
FROM THE NEWS DESSC
Playful behaviour has extremely powerful and positive effects on the brain.
With 90% of a child’s brain developing before the age of five, it is vital that children have ample opportunities for free play to enable their pre-frontal cortex (the brain’s executive control centre responsible for regulating emotions, allowing decision making and problem solving) to enlarge and operate at a faster rate. Interestingly, and on a side note, the pre-frontal cortex also grows with love, and when children feel praised and celebrated, they in turn are developing larger brains too. This research by Diamond provided resounding evidence that playful behaviour has extremely powerful and positive effects on the brain. So powerful, in fact, that the amount of play a child does has a direct correlation to their ability to learn. Whilst the brain grows with free play, the pre-frontal cortex can actually shrink and diminish with
