Play-Based Learning

Play based learning is an early childhood approach in which children build knowledge, social skills and a positive disposition toward learning through playful activity rather than direct instruction. Its theoretical roots run through Rousseau, Froebel and Dewey, who treated play as developmentally essential, through Piaget's account of children constructing knowledge across stages of development, and through Vygotsky's scaffolding and Bronfenbrenner's ecological view of how social and cultural context shapes a child's learning. In practice it calls for rich, varied learning environments, child directed exploration balanced with thoughtful adult guidance, and close observation of children's interests to inform that guidance, applied mainly from birth through the early primary years, a period in which the United Nations recognizes play as a specific right of the child.