Play or Math? Why not both?

There is a hot debate on amongst educators and policy-makers about the kind of learning that is essential in early childhood. A spate of articles discuss that early childhood education has a significant impact on success in high school and even later in life. This is not news. I have read about proficient 8th grade readers emerging from preschools not focused on didactic literacy instruction, math in early years being the greatest predictor of success later in life and the abundant evidence for the significance of play.

While we all work to sort out the research and arrive at executable conclusions, one idea amongst many others emerge as plain and simple to me. We need to get out of the mindset of this or that, math or play. Why not both? Children are born whole. They see the world as being integrated. They don't separate their understanding of the world into subjects — Math, Science, Art, Drama, Social studies and so on. To them, living and learning are two sides of the same coin, knowledge is whole and integrated. They naturally gravitate towards figuring it out as a whole. It is we adults who have compartmentalized learning into subjects — for the convenience of organization, to create systems that can be followed, for academic study but divisions are not real and natural. Life is not divided. So why learn about it that way?

Young children are learning all the time. They don't separate play from learning. We adults separate play and work. Heck, we even live that way. We go to work during the week and we play on the weekend. Our play is not our work. Our work is not our play. We associate joy with play and drugery with work. But children don't see it that way. Wouldn't be thrilling if to our children work and play were both as joyful? Well it is. Early in life, a child is just as excited about knowing the letter "L" as she is about jumping from a step. To her it is all integrated. In fact, she might see the shape of the letter "L" in the shape of a step.

We need to take our cues from our young children and see the world as wholly as they do. Most young children are not wired to sit down, sit still and learn intensely through didactic teaching methods. They are curious, busy beings. They learn through exploration and play. They are extraordinarily adept (unlike many adults) at piecing together pieces of information, picked up from flitting experiences into the coherent understanding of a concept. Take an example — You've likely seen a child fill and dump, right? Well, not only is the child learning fine and gross motor skills in this process, she is likely also developing an intuitive sense of volume and size in the process. If you give her four different cup measures (which she will also use while baking with you), she will intuitively learn the size of a cup versus half a cup and a fourth of a cup. This intuitive understanding is deeply essential for developing good number sense, to understand the relative scale of items. Now, is she playing or learning Math while doing fill and dump? You tell me. I can't tell them apart.

Such play-based learning, learning-based play does not come about by accident. The fact that the child in my example had four measuring cups was intentional, introduced by an observant educator. This play I am talking about is not passing superficial play. It is child-initiated play, co-created by children but in an environment that is carefully, intentionally crafted by expert educators.

Reflective, observant, caring, committed educators can see learning and living as whole just like the children they are with. They can co-create learning together with children, engaging in what is commonly called a "serve and return" relationship, of give and take between child and teacher, between play and learning, to the point where you cannot tell them apart, because they are not meant to be set apart from each other.