All Work and No Play…
Students now more than ever are expected to meet certain academic standards. These accomplishments are primarily measured through testing and both students and their teachers feel the pressure to prepare young people for these assessments. In fact, the most recent research indicates that during a typical school day, students spend four to six times as much time receiving literacy and math instruction and taking or preparing for tests as they do in free time. In other words, for every hour of instruction, students receive 10-15 minutes of unstructured time.
The “students” referenced above are in Kindergarten.
A recent report, Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in Schools, published by the Alliance for Childhood, sees this shift away from creative play time towards a more structured academic focus in young children as problematic. While they do not advocate for “chaos” in the classroom, the authors of this report recommend that schools “Restore child-initiated play and experiential learning with the active support of teachers to their rightful place at the heart of kindergarten education” (p. 13).
What are the benefits of play? According to the report, studies have shown that children who engage in creative play develop higher levels of thinking, better social skills, and more empathy. They are also less stressed and aggressive, and show more self-control. In other words, children who are able to engage in creative play have better mental health outcomes.
Questions for Discussion:
- In what ways do you think Kindergarten has changed since you were a child?
- What do you think are the benefits of creative play?
- Some testing and assessment of young children can be beneficial in order to identify learning problems. How do we know when we have stuck the proper balance?
Your thoughts…
Comments:
 This is the result of putting Early Childhood programs under Departments of Education. Teachers are trained to offer curriculum based information. Schools are set up to run in planned time intervals in structured enviroments. This is the opposite of what young children need.
Programs for young children need to have a rich variety of materials available, to expose the child to many enviroments, and to encourage the child to create and experiment on the child's schedule.
Non school enviroments like health departments and social service programs do a much better job at understanding what young children need. Posted Thursday, May 14, 2009 by a reformed teacher at 01:48 PM
There needs to be a balance of both. Kindergartners need the academic piece as their brains are like sponges. However, I agree it needs to be incorporated into creative play, which tends to be lacking. Recess is such an important part of the school day. This is a great time for kindergartners to utilize their creative play. Too many schools are using recess as a consequence for behaviors. I would like to see more discussion on this topic. Posted Thursday, May 14, 2009 at 06:31 AM
The Migrant Head Start programs are a great example of the child iniated learning and play.
Thank you.
Sinecerely,
ST.Mc Posted Wednesday, May 13, 2009 at 10:52 PM
What we need to do is plan "academic goals" and implant them in the games we provide for our children at school, so, as they are playing, they are actually learning, and the teacher takes part of those games, guiding the learning process. Kids have tremendous capabilities to learn anything, we just need to make it fun, engaging, atractive, and they will love to learn anything and everything. Posted Wednesday, May 13, 2009 by Monica Pujol-Nassif at 03:42 PM
Play is the "work" of childhood. "Too much work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy". What type society are we creating when children don't know how to play and use their imagination? Posted Wednesday, May 13, 2009 at 08:21 AM
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