The Importance of Play
By Susie Stone, PCPI Advisor (http://www.preschools.coop)Studies show the young child needs a multisensory experiential approach to learn through play:
- By doing
- By testing
- By making mistakes and correcting for them
All the time spent playing is, in fact, preparing the child for kindergarten and a lifetime of loving to learn. A child of two or three is making sense of the world and his or her place within it. The more varied the materials the child has to experiment with, the rich-er will be the experience. Sorting, matching, discriminating (sizes, shapes, colors, sizes, similari-ties and differences) and gradations of the above with actual touching, tasting, smelling, feeling, hearing and seeing will help the child understand and appreciate placement in the relationship of each to the other. This all leads to a strong founda-tion on which to base Language, Literacy and Math-ematics taught in school years. You could explore an actual sensory experience by squishing in the mud with hands or feet and think-ing about warm or cool, smooth or gritty, dirty or clean, dark or light, and as an adult appreciate the compulsion a child has to paint the entire body to get more of the experience. You try it and you'll understand better. In Parent Cooperative Pre-schools we teach the parents to work with their own children and come to this understanding in the classroom...and then take it to their homes and their communities as they continue to be involved in volunteer works which benefit ALL children.