The Power of Play

08/18/2005

You are not born all at once, but by bits.
- Mary Antin

In her Exchange article, “Magnets Can Dance and Vanilla Smells Warm,” Alison Lutton talks about teaching math and science to preschool children through play. In one passage she observes:

“Through the ‘what will happen if . . . ‘ play process, children learn the method of scientific inquiry -- observing and exploring what materials can do, sharing their observations with others, imagining what might be possible, applying prior knowledge, challenging misconceptions, and solving problems. In play children use the science process skills of observing, communicating, comparing, and organizing. As Lev Vygotsky imagined it, ‘In play the child always behaves beyond his average age, above his daily behavior; in play it is as though he were a head taller than himself.’ "

Here is another story from [Richard] Feynman's childhood. His father often read to him from the encyclopedia. "It would be talking about tyrannosaurus rex and it would say something like, 'This dinosaur is 25 feet high and its head is six feet across.' My father would stop reading and say, 'Now, let's see what that means. That would mean that if he stood in our front yard, he would be tall enough to put his head through our window up here . . . but his head would be too wide to fit in the window.’ "

“Through this practice in visualization and spatial reasoning, preschool and kindergarten children become ready for the geometry of elementary school. Through imaginative play, conversation, and art they learn to create mental images of geometric shapes, identify and draw shapes from different perspectives, recognize shapes in their environment, and build and draw geometric shapes from mental images.”

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