The Power of Play: An essential learning tool in an essential learning phase

While play may seem like just fun and games, research clearly demonstrates why play-based learning is vitally important in early childhood education.

Play cultivates foundational academic and cognitive abilities in young children with studies demonstrating that play-based learning boosts early literacy, numeracy, and language development. As children dramatize stories, count pieces in a board game, or articulate ideas, they iteratively build learning skills. (Allee-Herndon, 2022).

“Play is not a break from learning, it is learning in action. Freedom, imagination and social interaction are essential ingredients.” Pasi Sahlberg.

Equally importantly, play teaches essential social-emotional skills. Cooperative play invites perspective taking, communication, and conflict resolution. Imaginative play encourages self-regulation as children learn to take turns and control impulses. Studies chronicle how play fosters empathy, resilience, and executive function (Egert, 2022).

Play is also a key means by which children make sense of the world. As they recreate experiences through role play, build a block tower, or push a model car down a ramp, children are learning how the world works. Play enables experimental learning and gives young minds opportunities to test theories (Grob, 2020).

Physical play is also crucial for young bodies and sensorimotor development. Running, climbing, balancing; active play hones fine and gross motor skills as well as supporting healthy development (Milteer, 2021).

Play quite literally changes the architecture of the brain. Neuroimaging reveals play stimulates neural connectivity and integration in key regions linked to executive function and emotional regulation (White, 2022).

Perhaps most importantly, play sparks joy. Unstructured play creates opportunities for wonder, curiosity, and fun, building the foundations for a lifelong love of learning (Ginsburg, 2007). In today’s high-pressured academic environment, preserving play as the engine of early learning is essential as play is learning in its most exuberant form.

At South View School, whilst closely following the UK curriculum, we embrace the Finnish philosophy that purposeful play cultivates curiosity and enables children to construct their own learning. Our Early Years Centre is intentionally designed to spark this self-driven learning through exploration.

Rather than passive recipients, children are active participants shaping their environment. Diverse classroom areas and communal spaces like our learning garden provoke inquiry through natural materials and open-ended activities. With low teacher-to-student ratios, educators can observe and thoughtfully respond to guide discovery.

Yet children chart their own course, asking questions, testing theories, and making meaning through dramatic play, building, creating and outdoor adventures. Learning emerges through experience, not instruction. Teachers are co-collaborators, not transmitters of predetermined content.

While following the EYFS curriculum, our approach is learner-centred, not standards-driven. Children integrate concepts like numeracy and literacy intrinsically through play. Documentation helps teachers identify connections to extend learning, while portfolios provide meaningful assessment.

What matters most is sparking the intrinsic motivation at the heart of lifelong learning. Curiosity, engagement and meaningful collaboration with teachers, peers and families instil this self-confidence and agency.

Our EYFS Centre nurtures the whole child so they actively shape their learning journey. Through the freedom and wonder of play, children develop the skills and mindset to question, create and thrive.

Come and visit us and see learning through play in action:

https://www.southviewschool.com/admissions/visit-us