Cognitive Learning through Play
Preschool Play Leads to Real Life Cognitive Development
Through preschool play, cognitive development is nurtured and enhanced. Play also plays a large part in enhancing children’s school readiness. It is up to preschool teachers and daycare providers to offer the ideas, equipment, and environment which allow children to learn and explore.
What is Cognitive Development?
Cognitive development focuses on developing functions of the brain such as thinking, learning, awareness, judgment, and processing information. From the ages of 2-7, children are in the pre-operational stage. At this point they are learning to use symbols such as language to represent objects, and beginning to understand the concept of conservation. It is also the phase in which memory and imagination is developed.
Enhancing Cognitive Development through Play
Cognitive development is improved through play. Concrete learning and problem solving through play enhances higher thinking skills, according to Gale Kelleher, director of Rainbow Nursery School in New York.
“In pretend play, children use their imaginations and generate different ideas and images. This helps them to learn to think of different ways to solve a problem, either in a creativity task or in daily life,” says psychologist Sandra Russ [email interview, July 2008].
Normally functioning adults need at least 15 exposures to a new idea before it is committed to short-term memory, and 35 exposures to commit it to long term memory, explains Meghan McGinley Crowe, Executive Director of Literacy for Little Sprouts, Inc.
In addition, before a child can learn a new concept, he or she needs to have at least 60% knowledge of the topic already. For example, before a child can learn about glaciers, he or she must know about snow, ice, mountains, valleys, and rivers.
“Children build these exposures to new concepts through play. Each playful experience builds the cognitive development of learning a new fact and committing it to long term memory,” says Crowe.
Activities that Enhance Cognitive Learning
- Role playing activities in a dramatic play area. For example, through playing house, grocery store, or any activity where children take roles, children can learn about counting and mental and symbolic representations of objects.
- Singing songs that include number concepts. Jan Z. Olsen, OTR, creator of “Get Set for School”, (a Pre-K curriculum based on playful learning techniques) suggests simple songs and finger plays in order to build a cognitive sense of number quantities in a very personal way.
- Providing a variety of puzzles and blocks. Children can learn to classify, sort, and construct as well as explore relationships of objects in terms of small, big, and bigger.
Play allows children to learn using their natural curiosity about the world around them. Preschool teachers have a grand opportunity to facilitate this type of learning by offering play activities that foster creativity, imagination, and problem-solving skills like negotiation.
