Ruby Tuesday

This blog post offers a visual analogy to capture some of my thinking about the connections between play and playful learning.  I am going to use Earth and its layers as a way to represent a child's world.  The core of the Earth helps us to consider how play is at the heart of a child's learning and in so many domains such as social, emotional, physical and cognitive development. Play is described and defined in many ways by so many including a process, an activity, a strategy, a state of mind, an opportunity... To be mindful of and to protect children's time to play each day (both indoors and outdoors) for a minimum of 2.5 hours each day in the Kindergarten class I teach, I hold onto Peter Gray's criteria for play which position children as the ones making the choices and directing their own play.  There are many different 'types' of play and educators may name and categorise these differently. Regardless of the type, there are no limits to what might happen. T...

I have been lucky enough to be part of Jo Fahey's online workshop 'The Power of Play' for the past four weeks. We explored many different types of play through various lenses, but I have chosen to focus this blog post on socio-dramatic play. Other types of play that might be synonymous or connected with socio-dramatic play include role play, pretend play, imaginative play, make-believe play, symbolic play, dramatic play and fantasy play. It is important to note that each intentionally use the word 'play' to allow children choice and to self-direct their learning, in contrast to 'drama lessons'.  Much has been written about socio-dramatic play being 'the most advanced' or 'the highest form' type of play. This is based on the idea that it combines functional play (playing with objects as they are), constructive play (playing to combine materials and making something new) and games with rules (playing with rules that are adopted, adapted or inve...