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In From Practice to Play: Connecting Teachers' Play to Children's Learning, the authors point out why it is so important for teachers to experience play first hand:

"As Piaget notes, active learning involves both the physical and the social contexts.  For adults, the social context refers to opportunities to play cooperatively with other adults, engage in conversation, express emotions, and share, work, and interact with one another.  Opportunities to explore, invent, discover, to engage with peers, and to listen to alternative points of view are critical to achieving an understanding of the play process and how it relates to teacher competencies and subject matter.

"...As we have stressed, teachers of young children greatly benefit from the opportunity to learn through direct hands-on, personal experience that helps them to understand, value and provide meaningful play experiences for children.  The problem-solving act of transforming concrete objects into unique organized designs, physical patterns, and orderly three-dimensional systems is a creative intellectual process engaging the whole individual - hands, heart, and mind."

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How do we help teachers deepen their understanding of the importance of play? How do we strengthen teachers' ability to skillfully and intentionally guide children's learning through play?

When teachers engage in creative, open-ended play experiences, they learn firsthand the power of play. They also become more knowledgeable about the purposeful use of materials and intentional teaching strategies they can use to help children engage in open-ended play.

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