Lean Into Play

By Sarah Gould-Houde, QUALITYstarsNY Quality Improvement Specialist, Capital District

Children’s play is an essential place for their brains to have a variety of experiences that support their growth and development. Children are driven by their excitement and curiosity about the world. They naturally want to experiment with what is around them. Infants will turn their heads to see things from different angles. Toddlers might throw a ball to see how it moves through the air, where it will land, and how it will land. Preschoolers might build a block house for a cow figurine to live in. All these types of play can be self-driven and provide endless opportunities for the joys and complexities of learning. Family child care provides a loving space for children to experience the magic of play. It can provide them with the opportunities to build the foundational skills needed for continued and more finite learning as they grow older.

One of the best and more challenging aspects of family child care can be having children of differing ages learning and exploring at the same time. Providers have the opportunity to set up safe play areas with carefully procured toys that lend themselves to open-ended and child-led play. When children are given the choice of what they want to play with, their developmentally appropriate engagement with the materials and their peers is strong. While children are playing, you will have time to support them with their individual learning and developmental needs. 

I recently met with Patrice Howard, a family child care provider who has had her program for over thirty years.  We were talking about how few behaviors she tends to have with her children. While we were talking, I was trying to figure out how it could be that she has had such few behaviors, and then I realized why. Every time I see her with the children, she is on the floor playing and laughing with them. I can see a child making a block structure, a couple of children looking at a book in the cozy area, while she might be playing a hands-on sound game with two others. They are all in the same room in different play centers, such as science, library and manipulatives, and coming and going as they please. They are all smiling, laughing, asking questions, showing each other materials and talking the entire time. This is what reciprocal relationships and play can look like. This picture paints children from one to four learning at their own pace and growing the skills they need at that moment in time. They are learning across multiple developmental domains, including social-emotional, communication, language and literacy, approaches to learning, fine motor, and cognitive development. The provider is differentiating through her interactions, and that is what teaching multi-age children can look like.  

With a carefully crafted care space that includes open-ended, developmentally appropriate materials and toys, and the support of an enjoyable, trusted adult, children’s play has limitless learning potential. There is a lot of research and data that has proven that when children are provided with ample amounts of child-led and provider-supported play, they and their providers are happier, there are fewer behaviors, and the experiences will have a positive impact on a child’s development.