Learn Through Play | How Kids Learn Series

Today we're going to jump in with an episode on, ‘how children learn and what we should value in our children's education’. 

Academic vs. Intellectual Goals

So, we're going to talk about two different types of learning and specifically, I’m talking about for under kindergarten age level right now, but this will apply for all age levels. So, there are two different goals in learning that I want to talk to you about. The first is academic and the second is intellectual. 

• So, academic goals focus on the mastery of facts. So, memorizing the alphabet, practicing drills, worksheets and other kinds of exercises that prepare children for the next level of numeracy and learning. So, in older grades this would be you know, the things that we have to know the facts for to memorize for a test history information that kind of stuff. 

• Okay intellectual goals, emphasize reasoning, hypothesizing, posing questions, predicting answers to questions, developing and analyzing ideas and then trying to understand something. 

So, we need both goals when it comes to learning. However, much of the early curriculum in non-accredited programs focus on the academic goals before the intellectual goals. Academic learning will happen without a doubt in kindergarten first grade and second grade, but research argues that preschoolers and toddlers actually will do better academically if they have the executive functioning skills which include self-regulation, organizing and planning, and flexible thinking before those academic goals come.

So, this is something I’m super passionate about and why I always say children learn through play and play as a child's work because in these situations children are learning those problems solving, they're learning critical thinking for themselves, they're learning how to be flexible when something doesn't work how it's supposed to. If we're just giving kids directions and saying build this exactly how it says here then all they're doing is, rote memorization, they're looking at it, they're spitting it right back out. If we say okay, what letter is this it's a flashcard, they've memorized it and they're spitting it back out, but if we can say, hey this piece doesn't look like it belongs where should we put it and it could go on the head, it could go on the back, it could go, there are so many places it could go but it gives them the chance to critically think about it and be like I think it would be best here because and they don't even have to say those words out loud but that is what their brain process is doing. 

So, giving them these abilities to have these intellectual thinking processes that happen inside their heads is so valuable in early childhood. So, true education cannot be forced upon a child, a child has to want to learn. It's our job as parents and teachers just to discover their desire to learn and encourage it, but how?

Learn through Play

Okay so, the how is here, learn through play. If we say, okay I need my kid to learn this and this before kindergarten, we sit them down, we say, okay do this workbook. I was at Walmart the other day and I saw so many like pre-k coloring sheets like color of the alphabet and so much of just commercialized America and just misinformed people are putting so much merit and education and resources towards learning the alphabet before preschool etc.

I am not saying it's bad to learn the alphabet before preschool, but I’m saying is there's so much more we can do for our kids to prepare them, to learn the alphabet in kindergarten. So, here are some things we can do. First of all, let the child lead the play. Learning is what happens as they problem-solve. So, have you ever seen like your child trying to build something and their grandma will just come and be like, no this goes here, no move it and they just like kind of take over the play or the dads do that or you do that or a sibling does that. It's taking away from the opportunity for the child to figure out, oh I’m going to fumble with this piece for a few minutes and maybe longer than most people would fumble with it but I’m going to learn on my own that it doesn't work and then I’m going to insert the piece that does work after I figured that out for myself. If we just go in and say, oh no that's right put that one here, then we're taking away the opportunity for them to learn that on their own through play. So, when they play when the children lead when we really just follow their lead, then they think and they plan and they execute and they evaluate and they reflect and the best kind of learning usually happens when we have no idea what's going to happen next for them. We provide the opportunities and they create the learning. 

My Two-Year-Old’s Brain

Something that I’ve loved lately is, my daughter has decided to really make intricate things with the magnet tiles and the first day that we were playing with the magnet tiles, she got all of the square pieces and just connected them in a row flat and she went from one side of the room to the other and just created this entire pathway for you know the magnets to go, then as soon as she was done with that she picked them up and she stacked them and then as soon as she then was done with that, she like laid them out like tile pieces and licked it as a floor. I could have just been like melee here let's build a tower this is what we do but instead I just watched what she was doing with the play and if she needed any help, I would just provide her another square piece or I would just sit there and watch and I took pictures and it was the cutest thing ever, but what was so cool about this is I was able to kind of watch like I got so much joy out of watching her brain work and just waiting to see what she was gonna do next I had zero ideas what she was gonna do next because I was not in her brain and she wasn't communicating that with me, but I was able to see what her brain was thinking and the wheels were just turning and she's like, oh I’m gonna do this now. 

Now a week later, we'll go down and she will build a full-on tower with like these like triangle pieces sticking out and it's so much fun to see what she creates and how she just has on her own kind of built up those skills on her own. So, she started with just flat on the ground and then she stacked them and then she built a tile, but now she's putting them together like a cube and going to the next level, so she's figuring this out by just playing on her own.

Not on a Benchmark

The unstructured child-led play has enormous benefits for young children — these benefits are not going to show up on a benchmark exam. So, if children are going to learn to be creative and have creative thinking and be innovative problem solvers, then they have to use their own mental processes to explore the world. 

So, we can't just be like oh okay you ready for kindergarten okay, do you have critical thinking? Yes. Do you have to innovate are you an innovative problem solver? Yes. Do you regularly use your mental processes? No. There's no test that tells you, oh yeah, my kids been here. So, we have to give them the opportunities to learn these skills so that when they're sitting in preschool and they're like okay, I really need something like okay to say they need like I’m trying to think of a situation that might come up the first week of school maybe they're like oh I’m feeling really like worried because I don't know where my classroom is. So, if they don't have any critical thinking skills and they can't be like, oh I could ask an adult or oh I could like those are very simple skills to have but some kids like seriously just kind of shut down, but if they have these problem-solving skills and these flexible thinking and they've practiced self-regulation, then they can take a deep breath, they can refocus their energy they can be like okay I’m just gonna ask a teacher, and it's going to take away from some of that anxiety and that fear because they have these skills within themselves to be able to function in the classroom. 

That's just one example, there are so many things that critical thinking skills and these problem-solving flexible thinking all of this are going to impact our children in such positive ways. Textbooks do not tell us how to navigate change in hardships. They do not tell us how to solve problems. Okay so, we can read about other people's hardships and we could read about other people's problems, but if we really want our children to be able to solve problems without our assistance every time, then they need to play and explore, ask questions and solve problems without our assistance. Our job is to create engaging and interesting opportunities for them to explore play.

Just be creative and use your resources. 

We Rotate Toys by Theme

So, I’m going to talk a little bit about how we create these opportunities in my home. So, in our home, we have a playroom downstairs and every couple of weeks, I rotate the toys and do it around a theme. So, the reason why I do it around a theme is that it's easier for me to like switch the toys if I’m like okay, this week we're gonna like learn about flowers and gardening, so then I’m gonna get out my fake flowers I’m gonna get out the gardening gloves I’m gonna get out just like cardboard boxes and just random things it's easier for me to think of random things to throw into the play, but it completely changes the play.

So, if I leave the magnet tiles out but have this new gardening thing then maybe they're using the magnet tiles to build vases or maybe they're using the magnet tiles to create like a garden box, it's so cool because the play is still so open-ended, but when something in the toy rotation changes, it changes the entire structure of the play and I don't sit there and say, oh we're playing garden shop today or something like that but I put out the materials and the children create the opportunities. 

So, like for example, if my goal in my head is like, oh this week we're going to play zoo or something and I set up a zoo and then all of a sudden they're playing like jail or something, that's okay I’ve changed up the structure of the play by you know putting new materials out and then they can take it wherever they want it to go.

Children learn the very best of play and it brings them joy contentment and detachment from the troubles of the day. Every child needs the right to play. 

So, the other day, well actually way longer than the other day but like years ago with my son, I pulled out the blocks to build a house so that he could build a house I’m like look here are the blocks and I didn't say here build a house, but I was like oh like we're making something for this family that we have right here, so I figured he would just like build a house or build a tower. A few minutes later I see that he's just like lining them up next to each other kind of like my daughter did with the magnet house, he would just do one block and then the next to it and the next to it and my initial thought was oh man like he'll learn how to stack them eventually, at least he's trying to align them, but then I kept watching and I didn't interrupt and I realized he was building himself a balance beam like you have one expectation and they take it so much further. They're like I’m gonna look at these blocks and instead of seeing the house that my mom seems to see every time I see a boat, I see a bounce beam, I see you know there are so many things I can do with these open-ended toys and when they leave the play it can go so much further.

Xo Playtime

The way that we do this in my house is through something that I created a couple of years ago called Xo Playtime and it has more than 26 different themes and they're all play-based learning. So, in each plan, it's catered around a theme.

So, for example, I have a back to school theme and there are objectives for the theme, there are things to talk about in the theme, there are books you can read in the theme, but mostly it breaks it down by different topics, so there are reading and writing play activities, there are science play activities, there are gross motor play activities, social studies, sensory dramatic play, creative arts math engineering and technology and then a lot of times I add some supplemental like things like worksheets open-ended worksheets like little booklets they can create or whatever. 

So, what I’ve created with this XO playtime plan is a list of 20+ learn-through-play activities. So, if you set up your toys to be like back to school so you put like school bus down there and some like kids going to school maybe you put a backpack, maybe you arrange the chairs so it becomes a school bus, whatever it is that you've created this open-ended structure for in your playroom, then there are some more directed learning activities that are still open-ended and learn-through-play activities to help children to expand their learning in these different areas.

Bee Plan

Okay, one of my favorite Xo-Playtime plans is my plan about bees, because I personally learned so much about bees, and now like my bees my honey bees out on my lavender bush they don't scare me at all — I love them because I know they're actual bees and not wasps.

Anyways so, when we do something with bees then maybe I’ll put like little bees out and maybe I’ll put a like a hat with like a thing down like what's it called, like mesh over the face so kids can pretend to be beekeepers or something like that, but if children really want to learn more about bees then I can pull out my XO playtime plan and we can do a fly swatter letter hunt and we can put the paper with letters all over the house and take our fly sweaters and go around and swap the different letters or we can put paint on the fly sweater and we can paint different letters.

If we want to learn about the nectar and we're trying to teach about that we can read a book or we can do these different things or in the XO playtime plan, there's a whole activity which is learning through play, about how bees use their proboscis and they collect the water or the nectar from the flowers and then they take it over to their hive and that's how they make the honey. So, it's so cool because you have these materials listed in here and it's usually household things, like a turkey base or a medical syringe and then you just get fake flowers or real flowers, water and you can dye it yellow or you can just leave it white and then egg cartons and you're learning about nectar through play instead of you just being like nectar you'll be like, this is what nectar is, and this is how the bees do it look at their proboscis. Okay, this turkey base just kind of like a proboscis where they can suck up the nectar, etc. 

I’m nerding out over here, but there are so many ways that we can take these lesson plans and continue the learning through play and I love it and it's so hard sometimes to be like, okay well, how would you teach about like changing the oil in the car through play? or how would you teach about eggs? Like, how would you teach about what animals come through eggs through play? or how would you teach about fish scales through play? There are so many different ways and that is what I’m like I feel like I’m an expert at is like finding these creative ways to learn through play.

So, I have all the materials for you and I’m going to be offering all of my materials all at the same time so previously I had a subscription where you would pay for the year or you pay by month and then every couple weeks you'd get a new plan, but because I value learning through play so much I’m going to open it up so that when you join XO playtime, you are a member for life and you will have access to all 27 of the plans plus a bunch of bonuses immediately. 

You truly can follow the child's lead, because you can be like hey here are some choices of what we can learn about this week what sounds interesting to you and when something's interesting to them, so say they want to learn about space and astronauts then you can be like okay my goal is to really get some letter exposure this week, so you can use their interests of space and astronauts and teach them all these things about meteoroids and all this kind of stuff, but also look at the reading and writing section of the plan and make sure you incorporate those letter activities, where they're getting exposure to numbers and letters and it's not just flashcards, it's not just memorization, they're really having the chance to learn in the context of what they're interested in about these things that they need to learn for later. 

And then there's so much critical thinking, problem-solving, flexible thinking that happens throughout all of these xo playtime plans. Fairly often, I will also put in like a sensory mix or some sort of thing that we love to do at our home, and I have included these in the xo-play time like database as bonus activities. I also have a screened eBook to kind of help understand passive and interactive screens and understand like some ways to navigate screen addiction in young kids. My son is one of these that is super addicted to screens whether he watches for five minutes or 20 minutes he always has a fit, so interactive screens is like not an option for us, so it's important to know kind of the difference there that eBook is included in the bonus activities and then as they come up and as I create them I’m also going to be adding my playroom art into this xo-play time membership. 

So, once you sign up you can either do a payment plan of nine different payments, three different payments, or a one-time payment. No matter what you choose you will have lifetime access to all of these activities, and you can start them as early as one year old and go all the way through to like second grade.

It's more interactive than screen time some of these activities so it gets them involved in a way that's actually fun and not so hard to encourage independent play. And last but not least, because I’m so passionate about learning through play and how children actually learn I’m going to be doing a podcast every single month, on how children learn, play-based learning, childhood play all these different things and so I’m going to go more in-depth in some of the things that I talked about today. 

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