LEARNING THROUGH PLAY

‘Play provides opportunities for children to learn as they discover, create, improvise and imagine. When children play with other children they create social groups, test out ideas, challenge each other’s thinking and build new understandings. Play provides a supportive environment where children can ask questions, solve problems and engage in critical thinking. Play can expand children’s thinking and enhance their desire to know and to learn. In these ways play can promote positive dispositions towards learning. Children’s immersion in their play illustrates how play enables them to simply enjoy being’ (EYLF, 2009, p. 15).

Play at Surrey Hills Day Care Centre is an opportunity for children to enhance their development through spontaneous experiences. We strive to provide our children with a relaxed environment in which they can initiate their own play and participate in a range of activities that support the development of physical, creative and life skills. To emphasis a play based learning approach within the curriculum we provide open-ended learning areas for the children to engage with, such as: Sensory Play (learning through senses), Exploratory Play (learning by finding out), Manipulative Play (learning by touch/feel/manipulating), Dramatic Play (learning by role-taking/pretending) and Creative Play (learning by creating). From these spontaneous learning experiences educators often observe fantastic learning opportunities taking place and significant teachable moments; we can then use these to forward plan and include these interests in the program to extend upon.