Getting Started with Homeschooling
Practical Considerations for Parents of School-Aged Children
© Beverley Paine
Index
Homeschool
Australia
The Value of Play
(continued)
Toys and equipment which are especially useful in promoting creative play are those which encourage exploration and discovery. Given the opportunity children are naturally selective about their play equipment, and enjoy a choice ranging from simple, natural materials to highly complex and sophisticated manufactured items. The number of functions, quality, age appropriateness and safety are prime factors in the consideration of play materials for your children. Current fashions and trends in toys seldom last and can be avoided. Good toys are those which are perennially available on toy shelves, as are good toy companies. If you enjoyed playing with it as a child and it is still available, then it is probably a good toy. In the absence of toys children will always turn to the natural environment to supplement their games.
Play helps to reduce frustration and boredom in learners, whereas too much emphasis on academic and test performance, and a discouraging of free play, has been demonstrated to result in a squelching of creativity. There is a fine line between learning that happens during and from playing, and deliberately setting up playful learning experiences for the sake of learning a particular thing. Children soon learn to tell the difference between activities designed for fun and pleasure and those with a hidden (or more obvious) ‘learning’ value. Nothing destroys the love of learning more than this unwanted intrusion into the world of playfulness.
In recent years much of traditional learning has been replaced by ‘interesting’ and ‘fun’ activities, causing much confusion between ‘play’ and ‘work’ for children in schools. As a result learning is often inseparable from ‘entertainment’ in some curricula. This trend denies children the right to determine their own play, in which they learn what they need to at their own pace and in their own way. Given this freedom, and a range of materials and social situations, children learn very well. Involvement by adults in children’s play shouldn’t extend to controlling or taking over the direction of the play.
The following example illustrates one parent’s discovery about learning and play after feeling frustrated her children did nothing but play LEGO (small manipulative building blocks which click together), sometimes for days on end.
"Instead of continually feeling my children were wasting precious 'learning moments', I sat and watched a while, and had a play too. I brought all I knew about learning to the front of my mind and asked myself what was going on as we played.
Here are some of the things I discovered we were doing:
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"We were also, without knowing it, fully engaged in experiments in physics and mathematics, in the areas of space, measurement, motion, energy, speed, efficiency, safety, strength; and when we used the Technics bricks we were becoming competent with using technology such as gears, pulleys, levers, chains, etc. All this in 'just playing’!”
In a nutshell, the benefits to learning in all areas from valuing play, and from becoming involved in your children’s play, are immense!
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Excerpt from Getting Started with Homeschooling, Practical Considerations
© Beverley Paine, 1997
