By Jennifer Crowell
Do me a favor. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath and think back to your childhood. Go back as far as you can. Now, what was your favorite thing to do? You were playing, right? And chances are, it was something outside. I bet you can remember that feeling with clarity, the sights, sound, and smell. And I bet your hands, feet, face, and clothes showed the evidence. Now, hold on to that thought.
I am the owner and director of The Child Development Cooperative. We are a small play school preschool in the mid-city area of Baton Rouge and when I give tours to prospective families and tell them that children learn best through play and that is always a dirty endeavor, about half look at me as if I just cursed them out, think I’m crazy and go running for the door. “How can my child possibly be ready for school if all they do is play and get dirty!” Twenty-five percent pretend to agree with what I’m saying, shake their head in all the right places, ask a few questions here and there, and leave the center, never to be heard from again. The remaining twenty-five percent have read the research, know that children learn best through play, and want an authentic childhood for their child. And along with play comes the residue. When you enroll in my program, you have to have a great relationship with your washer and dryer!
Play is essential for all human beings and play is being systematically stripped from our children. True, authentic play is a dirty business. It includes mud, water, sand, paint, and glue. Through true, authentic play we learn about problem-solving, determination, independent thinking, impulse control, trial and error, innovation, vocabulary expansion, self-expression, creativity, critical thinking, resilience, motivation, perseverance, persistence, curiosity, enthusiasm, adaptability, self-discipline, empathy, compassion, initiative, leadership, courage, collaboration, humility, resourcefulness, kindness, optimism, fairness, perspective, confidence, cooperation, generosity, honesty, character, tolerance… yet preschools and elementary schools are spending all their time, money and effort in doing away with play and anything messy and engaging children in tasks that are beyond developmental capabilities. Research has proven that learning to read should be delayed until first grade. Most brains are not wired for learning to read at age 5 or 6 when today’s children are expected to learn yet this is the standard in pre-K and kindergartens across the nation. This isn’t happening just with literacy. It’s prevalent across the curriculum. Children don’t learn about mathematical concepts from flash cards or by filling out worksheets. They learn by building with blocks, knocking down those blocks, and building them back up again. They learn by digging to China in a sandbox on the playground and believe it or not, they learn by getting knocked down by the kid on the swing because they were standing too close. Children are capable learners but they must take an active role in what they are learning. Sitting at a desk or table filling out a worksheet or watching a computer monitor and tapping a few keys is not active. True, authentic play is active, and dirty, and involves all five senses.
If we want confident, creative, and compassionate children who crush those standardized tests then we need to make sure most of their day is filled with true, authentic, messy play. Only through this kind of play do our babies make sense of their world. Only through this kind of play do our toddlers learn about turn-taking. (Notice I didn’t say sharing? That’s a topic for another article!) Only through this kind of play do our preschoolers and pre-kindergartners gather the tools needed to be successful in a traditional classroom setting. Now, remember that feeling you had at the beginning of this article when I asked you to remember your favorite thing to do as a kid? Don’t you want that for your child too?