LeapFrog Community

[#1]

A colleague recently sent me a Boston Globe article entitled "Pressure-Cooker Kindergarten" that tells the story of how educational testing pressure has trickled down to Kindergarten where it has essentially eliminated play as a legitimate form of learning.  Related scholarly reports cite similar concerns for pre-school classrooms and even our society’s approach to childhood (see references below).  As a developmental psychologist, I understand how child-initiated play drives children’s development and learning. Indeed, playfulness can be a powerful pedagogy in any setting.     

One way to understand the relationship between learning and play is along a continuum from relatively un-supervised freeplay to highly scripted instruction (See the “Kindergarten Continuum” in the Alliance for Childhood report listed below).  Between those extreme poles are two educational sweet-spots:

1) child-initiated play which involves only occasional adult input (e.g., providing a prop or suggesting a topic)

2) playful learning which is actively guided by an adult but includes significant freedom for the child to make choices and direct the activity (e.g., a parent reading and discussing book content according to a child’s interests, or making a new kind of paper airplane or art project together)

Digital media and learning technologies can be designed to support playful learning and its related alternatives.  Two examples come to mind from my own experience:  Lego Mindstorms developed originally by colleagues at the MIT Media Lab, and our own Tag Reading System.  I’ll describe each in terms of the play-learning continuum. 

Freeplay and Child-initiated Play

Lego Mindstorms takes the open-ended approach of the original Lego blocks and adds motors, sensors, and a programmable brick (miniature computer inside) to make a robot development kit.  Within the limits of how the blocks can snap together and the structure of the computer language, kids can build virtually anything as they play, explore, construct, and learn.  While Tag is not designed to be a construction kit, it can support very open-ended exploration.  In fact, I have seen children playfully touching words in apparently random order to hear a kind of rap-poem of their own creation, rather than the storyline printed from left to right on the page.  Each of these examples could be seen as freeplay or child-initiated play, depending on the level of adult supervision.   

Playful Learning

Tag is the ultimate playful learning tool. Like a knowledgeable teacher or parent, it guides children’s attention and activity on the path of a storyline or game structure.  Along the way, children are free to skip a page, repeat a section, or leave the activity and explore the audio hidden under the pictures.  Like its precursor, the LeapPad, Tag was first designed for this kind of educational fun at home, but has also been embraced by teachers who use it to provide a playful path to learning that relieves some of the pressures of the classroom.   

While Lego Mindstorms and related construction kits support freeplay, their use is often guided by adults or more advanced peers.  I recently purchased Lego Mindstorms for my nephew, who has since built an amazing array of creatures.  However, he did not start by constructing freeform from his own imagination; he saw a photo of an awesome, hulking robot printed on the box and was inspired to follow a detailed set of directions to bring it to life.   He did the same with other models in companion books, and has the option to go online and see what other kids have created. 

Scripted Instruction

Tag books can also be designed for more scripted instruction, where appropriate, as they have in Tag School book series like Phonemic  Awareness.  While these books do have a playful quality in the audio and graphics, the clear focus is on learning particular skills through a sequence of activities.  This approach within each book and across the series helps teachers fit them into the curriculum structure of their classroom.  Likewise construction kits of any kind can be used in a highly structured way, as when teachers would use the original LOGO programming language to make a stylized house that students would copy.  Lego Mindstorms could be used in a similar way to teach robotics.

Whether at home or in the classroom, child-initiated play and playful learning provide a fun and engaging way to learn.  I agree, we need more of both!

Parents…do you feel there is too much academic pressure in Kindergarten and preschool?  If so, how do you help your child cope?

References

Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School

Authors:  Edward Miller and Joan Almon.   Alliance for Childhood

A Mandate for Playful Learning in Preschool:  Presenting the Evidence

Authors: Kathy Hirsch-Pasek, Robert Michnick Golinkoff, Laura E. Berk, and Dorothy G. Singer

Play = Learning:  How Play Motivates and Enhances Children’s Cognitive and Social-Emotional Growth

Editors:  Dorothy G. Singer, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, and Kathy Hirsch-Pasek                  

Children’s Play: The Roots of Reading

Editors:  Edward F. Zigler, Dorothy G. Singer, and Sandra J. Bishop-Josef

The Power of Play:  Learning What Comes Naturally

Author:  David Elkind