Hello and welcome to Blooming Curious, a podcast that's all about
nurturing that natural curiosity in our early years kids and students.
I'm Edwina, your host from the Ed Lessons blog, A passionate advocate for
play and inquiry, and on a mission to keep children curious and questioning.
The days of talk and talk are over.
We're diving into the world of integrated.
Inquiry and nature-based learning and exploring the strategies
that create lifelong learners.
So if you're a classroom or homeschool educator or even a curious parent,
then this is the place for you.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Blooming Curious.
I feel I must warn you that today's episode is one that
gets me pretty fired up.
We're going to be talking about lay.
There is so much evidence all over the internet from different researchers
reporting the benefits of play for children's social, emotional,
physical, and cognitive development.
The hedging a Report, which is a nonprofit newsroom, reports and education.
They discussed the work of a psychiatrist by the name of Dr.
Stewart Brown, who in 1966.
Led an investigation into what sparked a Texas student, Charles
Whitman into killing 12 people.
It was one of America's first mass shootings.
When Dr. Brown started investigating, he found that this Whitman and other men
incarcerated in Texas, Huntsville prison for homicide, had one thing in common.
These men were all deprived of play as children.
There was a suppression of normal play behavior while growing up.
While play deprivation on its own was not the cause of the homicides committed
by these individuals, the deprivation of play did shape their development.
Allow me to quote Dr. Brown.
He said the presence or absence of play, particularly in child development, has
a great deal to do with competency.
Resiliency, emotional health and brain size.
Brown said play is not frivolous, and not just for kids, but something that
is an inherent part of human nature.
As early childhood educators, we learn about the benefits of play and how to
teach with play and make learning playful.
And right now there's a small but active movement to bring
play back into classrooms.
But here's the rub.
Although we all know the importance of play and its positive impact on
children's development and learning, there is still not enough provision
made for play in our schools.
With bureaucratic pressures on teachers for testing and face-to-face
teaching time, we know full well that children learn while they are playing.
Yet, children are still not afforded enough time to play.
We also know that parts of a child's brain that most actively develops
in the early years are those parts that respond to active experiences
when they're actually doing things.
Children's brains are structured to learn by doing first, not by watching
screens or listening to us, lecture them.
We know that children's brains learn by developing schema, and
schema is built through experiences.
And I'll link to a blog post in the show notes where I have discussed the
development of schema in a previous post.
And when we look at statistics around play, they are quite staggering.
Appalled by the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne, they found 94% of parents
recognize the importance of play on children's physical and brain development.
Yet only 45% of children play outdoors on most days, and 32% of parents say
that risk is not a good idea in play.
Just about everyone everywhere recognizes the importance of play
for children's, social, emotional, physical, and cognitive health.
Yet children's access to play and play experiences are changing in
our increasingly organized and technological society, and with
even fewer children having access to unsupervised free play nature.
And of course COVID, that was a major disruptor of play, and so many children
are still feeling the effects of isolation and the inability to socialize
and play freely outdoors with friends.
Another alarming fighting in this report is that less than half,
that's 45% of children play outdoors.
31% of children play outdoors at home, and yet the most common
type of play was any takers.
Digital with a whopping 54% of children being on some kind of a device.
Digital play was the most common form of play among teenagers, a whopping
70%, 57% of primary age children, and 27% of toddlers and preschoolers.
27% of toddlers and preschoolers were on a device.
Am I the only one that finds these statistics worrying?
So what are the implications?
And as I said before, we already know that plays vital to a child's learning
and development in early childhood play is the strongest form of learning.
This has been found to be true in study after study.
Not only does play allow children to develop their skills around language,
problem solving and collaboration and critical thinking and investigation,
but it also allows children to express themselves creatively through their
curiosity and imaginative play.
And they learn to interact in socially acceptable ways with others.
And when it comes to risky play, our society has become
increasingly risk averse.
There's often confusion when it comes to finding a balance between keeping kids
safe and allowing them to take risks.
Risk is an important part of play and growing up, once read to study somewhere
that said that the reason that so many teens and young adults take massive risks
that lead to terrible consequences, just think about driving or jumping off high
cliffs that can be attributed to them.
Never having access to small risks as children.
The kind of risk I'm talking about here is managed risk.
Children love to climb, for example, they like to build forts.
They like to be high.
They love flying foxes.
I think as adults it doesn't help a child when we ban things or certain
play equipment, when we are providing play equipment, it's just our job to
ensure that it's safe and that children can't cut themselves, for example.
To provide the appropriate surface.
Not going to install monkey bars in a concrete slab.
Are you?
You want to encourage children to climb and be able to run and ride
bikes and experience speed like rolling down a hill, or balancing
on stepping stones or tree stumps.
What about the sheer enjoyment of a swing?
Falling off?
A swing might result in a broken arm, but broken arms can heal.
So perhaps conclusion is not banning swings, but.
Perhaps placing them appropriately or perhaps installing those platform
type ones where multiple children can enjoy the ride simultaneously and still
experience that exhilaration of speed.
Then there are tools.
If we want children to experience tools safely, we need to expose them to it.
Children love building things like forts and dens.
They use wooden poles and sheets and rope and all sorts of materials to
construct really complex structures.
In fact, it's not uncommon to see children in Norwegian settings using real
tools to construct their dens, things like real hammers and saws and nails.
You can just imagine how the experience of using real tools gives
a whole new realistic dimension to children's play experiences.
And what about the incredible skills they're requiring?
So often we avoid the use of tools because we are worried
about children being injured.
But I truly believe that if we expose them to real child friendly versions early
on, children become adept at using tools.
Heat and fire also fall into this category, which
includes things like cooking.
So depriving children of the experience is not the best way forward.
We rather need to find imaginative ways to expose children to risky
situations and teach them through well thought out experiences, how
to manage risk for themselves.
That brings me to a bit of exciting news.
In the coming weeks, I will be interviewing Nature Pedagogist, Dr.
Claire Warden, who is my mentor when it comes to play, and strategies for
recording and planning, children's play experiences, curiosities and wonder.
Another exciting guest coming up is Victoria Hackett from
the Outdoor Classrooms.
So that's two upcoming episodes that you won't want to miss out on, so
make sure you follow subscribe so you're notified when those episodes
are published because you seriously won't want to miss out on those.
So I've chatted about the importance of play on children's overall
development and how the element of risk enhances the play experience.
Just for a moment, I want you to think about your favorite
childhood memory around play.
Cast your mind back to happy memory where you were playing.
What was it?
Were you alone playing with siblings or friends?
Now for a moment, I want you to hold onto that thought.
We're going to come back to it.
So I'm going to have a look at different types of play now.
So first, if there's pretend play or imaginative play.
This is when children are playing with their toys and they're
pretending to take on a role.
For example, they could be playing mummies and daddies or setting up a shop or a
restaurant or vet, or as I've seen many a child take on the role of the pet dog.
This is imaginative.
It's not real, but it is crucial for children to develop
their creative thinking.
Just because they say they're a dog, it doesn't mean they
actually want to be a dog.
It's just part of pretend play, and it's a very healthy part
of children's development.
Imaginative play would include things like dress up, so provide costumes or
even just hats and links of fabric will do the trick so that children could
actually invent costumes for themselves.
Children only know how to be the vet, by the way, when they
have seen a vet in action.
So they'll need to go with you when you take your pet to the vet, or
they'll need to get the knowledge from a movie or a storybook.
And this is what we in education called building schema.
To build schema, you will need to provide some input, some experience when
children are engrossed in pretend play.
And when they have that schema built in, they will be using language
to express themselves, including the appropriate vocabulary.
They're also learning social skills, like taking turns and how to compromise
all vital skills and attributes that children need for collaborative learning.
An added bonus is that you don't have to be there supervising or playing
along because they'll instinctively know how to play structured play.
We, you, the educator or parent, are putting out specific things that you
want the child or the children to engage with to teach a specific skill.
You might set up some sand toys, buckets, and spades in a sandpit
because you want them to experience the quality of various materials or
that the containers hold sand and water and what happens when sand gets wet.
And to discover that whatever you place in that container takes the
shape of the container or this.
Might also be intentional learning when you might put out a game for children
to play, to learn, or to reinforce a particular skill or concept, which could
be anything from word games, memory games, dominoes, spinner games, matching games.
The list is endless.
The point is that you as the adult or intentionally structuring the type of
play you want children to engage in.
Then we come to unstructured play.
This is free play and it's by far a child's favorite type of play.
This is when children engage in play spontaneously with
whatever objects are around.
They invent their own play.
They invent their own rules.
The best unstructured play does not require an expensive or fancy toys.
Some cardboard boxes, lengths of fabric, old sheets, tablecloths, towels.
Loose parts like pebbles or small logs or sticks or other natural objects
you have found on walks or at the beach, pipes and tubes, recycled
materials, just about anything.
If you wanna know more about loose parts play, check out episode 13 where I spoke
to loose parts expert at Sharp to find out just how fantastic loose parts play
is and how it benefits children's learning
creative play.
Could be structured or unstructured play.
Creative play can also be seen as imaginative play, especially if children
are engaging in drama or using objects To create sound, you just provide the
materials for children to be creative.
Things like paints and chalk and Play-Doh, and water, and spray
bottles and paint brushes, sponges, just whatever you have at hand.
And then you give them the freedom to express themselves however they like.
I personally used to love those rolls of Ikea paper.
You just roll along length off and then let kids create.
And you know what I used to do with a paper once they finished painting on it?
I use it as wrapping paper for friends birthday gifts or kids
wrap gifts to parents in it.
How cool is that When we're talking about creative play, we
are including drama and music too.
So ensuring we're providing access to open-ended objects that can be
used creatively is necessary too.
So what's the takeaway here?
Play is learning.
Play is essential to the healthy development of children's brain, social
and emotional and physical development.
Play does not always have to be supervised or structured.
In fact, children's favorite type of play is free, unstructured, spontaneous
play without any adult interference.
So if you look back now at that moment, you were thinking about
earlier at your favorite type of play.
I bet that it was unstructured.
I bet you felt free.
I bet there were no rules imposed by adults.
You did things your own way, in your own time, and more than
likely, but not always, the experience was shared with others.
Because play allows children to make their own choices, gives them agency, and they
also in a very natural way, learn the consequences of their actions and choices.
Open-ended materials, like loose parts, allow children creative
expression and encourage problem solving and critical thinking.
And above all, play is fun.
If children don't feel an emotional connection, if they don't feel like it's
fun, then it's simply just an activity.
Like very often in the structured play experiences we prescribe to children,
play comes naturally to children.
It is through play.
The children learn impulse control.
And is that something that leads to success later in life?
And perhaps those incarcerated men, the Dr. Brown study that I mentioned at
the very beginning, perhaps if they had enjoyed unstructured play experiences,
they might have learned self-control and not ended up in the dire state.
They did just something that popped into my mind.
So armed with all this information and the benefits of play, which by
the way in Australia is outlined in the early years learning framework, I
still have this feeling that bothers me as a curious, passionate educator
whose main concern is the wellbeing and education of young children.
I cannot help but ask questions around the lack of play afforded to school-aged
children, especially in early childhood.
When we know full well the benefits of play, perhaps the onus falls with
education departments themselves and the ministers of education, and now
we see that governments think that we'll get better results if children
start earlier at three years of age.
Now we won't.
What we need to see is that children have more time to be children, to have
the freedom to play spontaneously.
So that their brains and bodies can develop healthily so that they will
be ready for formal schooling, which I would love to see start at age six.
I found a study, by the way, which I'll link in the show notes that found
that children that did start formal schooling at age six and I quote.
Are more likely to have developed the skills and competencies needed to
thrive in a formal learning environment compared with their younger peers who
start school in the year they turn five.
Well, nevermind age four and three.
With everything we know about the importance of play, governments
still can't or won't see that this overcrowding of the curriculum, which
not only contributes to teacher burnout.
I believe student burnout and cognitive overload needs to change.
We need to follow the early years learning framework guidelines, not only
in kindergarten, but right through to at least year two with a stripped down
curriculum that focuses on fundamental mathematical skills, daily, explicit
and systematic teaching of phonics, and then interest led inquiry-based
learning with play at the forefront.
And then maybe we'll see not only our academic results improve,
but children's social, emotional and physical competencies too.
I'll finish off by saying this.
The news and the media are full of wonderful work being done in Finn schools
and other Nordic schools and in Japanese schools, and yet we continue along the
same path, expecting a different result.
What did Einstein say again?
Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a
different result is insanity.
While I could not have said that better myself, I told you
I'd get fired up, didn't I?
I hope you do too, and it doesn't matter if you agree with me or not.
What matters is that we look critically at the evidence and make
decisions that benefit our children.
Because they are the future, and right now it ain't looking good for
anyone if we keep doing what we're doing because I don't believe that
the decisions that are being made are actually for the benefit of children.
Hey, I hope you found something interesting or worthwhile of
your time in today's episode.
If you did, then share it with someone you think might find it interesting too.
Just remember that in the next couple of weeks, I've got the
awesome Dr. Claire warden lined up and Victoria Hackett coming on.
So make sure you subscribe or follow so you won't miss out on their wisdom.
And check out the link in the show notes for all the links to the
studies I mentioned in this episode.
I'll see you next Tuesday and remember to stay blooming.
Curious.