What Do Children Actually Learn Through Play-Based Learning?

When parents think about learning, they often picture children sitting at a table practicing letters, numbers, shapes, or colors. Those things are important, but some of the most meaningful learning happens when children are simply playing.

After working with young children for many years, I have seen just how much they learn when they are given the opportunity to explore, create, pretend, build, and play with other children.

Play Is Learning

To a child, building a tall tower with blocks may just seem like fun. But while they are building, they are learning about balance, size, shapes, problem-solving, and cause and effect. When the tower falls down, they figure out what happened and try again.

That is learning.

When children put together a puzzle, play with playdough, string beads, paint, or pick up small objects, they are also strengthening the muscles in their hands and fingers. These fine motor skills will eventually help them with things like holding a pencil, using scissors, getting dressed, and becoming more independent.

Learning How to Play With Others

Some of the most important skills children learn don't come from a worksheet.

Playing with other children teaches them how to share, take turns, communicate their ideas, solve disagreements, and understand that other people have feelings too.

These skills take time. Young children aren't expected to automatically know how to share or work through a disagreement. They learn by having opportunities to practice those skills over and over again.

Play-Based Learning Through Pretend Play

A play kitchen, dolls, dress-up clothes, cars, animals, or even a cardboard box can lead to an incredible amount of learning.

Children use pretend play to make sense of the world around them. They recreate things they have seen at home, at school, at the grocery store, at the doctor's office, and in their community.

They are also building vocabulary, using their imagination, learning to communicate, and creating their own stories.

Learning Through Everyday Experiences

Young children are naturally curious. They want to touch things, investigate them, ask questions, and figure out how things work.

Playing outside, digging in the dirt, looking for bugs, pouring water, blowing bubbles, building with blocks, doing art projects, singing songs, and helping with everyday routines can all become learning experiences.

Not every activity needs to have a complicated lesson behind it for children to learn from it.

Play and School Readiness

Preparing children for school is about much more than knowing letters and numbers.

Children also need to learn how to listen, follow directions, communicate what they need, participate in a group, try something when it feels difficult, and become more independent.

Play gives children opportunities to practice all of these skills in ways that make sense to them.

Learning at Lisa's Wiggle Worms

At Lisa’s Wiggle Worms Preschool and Childcare in Beaverton, I believe play-based learning, hands-on activities, routines, and learning opportunities all play an important role in a child’s day.

Our toddler and preschool children are learning throughout their entire day—sometimes through planned activities and sometimes through moments they create all on their own.

One of my favorite things about working with young children is watching those little moments happen. What may look like "just playing" to an adult can actually be a child problem-solving, communicating, experimenting, building confidence, or learning something completely new.

Children don't have to choose between playing and learning. For young children, play is one of the ways they learn best.