LEARNING THROUGH PLAY

By Molly Mantree

An anthropologist friend of mine told me, years ago, that most indigenous cultures do not have a word for “work” or “play” in their language. He surmised that this was because they lived and enjoyed their lives without dividing it into categories of what they want to do (play) and what they have to do (work). I find this pre-colonized, pre-civilization view of life as applicable to my family’s homeschooling philosophy.

I have found it interesting that most learning activities in our culture are called “work”. This includes “schoolwork,” “homework,” “workbooks,” and “worksheets”. The goal of this educational program is so one can grow up and join the “work-force.” I began to wonder what the word, “work” means. Webster’s defines it as “tedious labor”. That doesn’t sound like the way I want my children or myself to learn. I have made a conscious effort to not use the W-word in reference to our educational activities, which happens to be pretty much all our activities. Besides discarding this word, I have also attempted to let go of the “work ethic” philosophy and replace it with the “play ethic philosophy.”

The word “play” is much more appealing to me and applicable to our homeschooling. The definition for “play” is, “to occupy one’s self in amusing or diverting activities.” I was curious as to what “amusing” was defined as and discovered through my friend, the dictionary, that it means “entertaining or pleasing; arousing laughter.” Now that sounds like how I want my children to learn and live. I have found that most everything my children have learned, are learning or want to learn can be learned entirely, or at least, partially and reinforced through playing.

When I share my “learning through play” philosophy, I usually get one of two responses. The folks that are still completely under the delusion that institutionalized schools are the way to education, respond with totally disbelieving eye-rolls at my “naive” beliefs. The second common response, often from other homeschool parents, is to partially agree with me. They see the effectiveness of playing learning games with their kids but then they draw a line, saying something like this: “Some things a kid will never want to learn because it will always be boring and tedious, and a responsible parent must force them to learn these things because they need to learn it.” My response to this may seem radical, and yet the longer I homeschool the more I see evidence of its truth. Here are three key points in my philosophy:
1. All learning can be fun or enjoyable when we are learning what we want and how we want.
2. Self-motivation is the foundation for enjoyable learning.
3. If not coerced or forced, children and adults will want to learn everything they need to learn to accomplish their goals, in their own time.

In our family we allow our kids to decide when, and if, they want to learn something. All children and people are interested in something (usually many things). This natural interest is our guide to custom fit curriculum for our children. There are many ways that lead to our children discovering their interests and parents can be a huge help in this. We live in a world with unlimited subjects to learn about. The more we expose our children to aspects of our world, the more they can find their interests and passions. Once our children want to learn something, we again can be a great help and support by finding effective, fun, enjoyable ways for them to learn it. Many times this will come in the form of play. Understanding your child’s learning style will help you find ways that are play for them.

I have found that in the early years (say, up to age 10) my children have, and still are, learning virtually all of their basic reading, writing and math through playing games and other fun activities. They haven’t consciously been aware that they are learning, any more than a baby realizes he/she is learning to walk. Instead, through playing games they are just having fun, enjoying their day and the natural outcome is that they are also mastering basic skills necessary in today’s world. Of course, during these early years, they are learning more than just the 3 “R’s”. They learn a tremendous amount about a myriad of subjects through spontaneous play within our family, with friends, by themselves and being in nature. Besides playing, other enjoyable activities through which they are learning include reading books, watching movies, field trips, homeschool group activities and helping with the household and homestead.

As the children grow older and begin studying subjects they are interested in more formally, they still keep the element of playful enjoyment in it. Probably because they are choosing to study it and they have the experience of finding ways to learn things that are fun and effective for them. We know how to make a game out of learning anything. Following is a list of some of our ways of keeping our homeschool playful.

CARD AND DICE GAMES: Virtually all standard deck-of-card games and all games with dice teach number and math skills. These types of games are at least 90% responsible for my kids’ learning basic math. Our favorites card games are match up numbers or suits and War for young beginning players. Speed, Knock on Wood, 9 Patch, Solitaire, Gin Rummy, Uno, and Crazy Eights, for older players. For dice games we have enjoyed Chutes and Ladders and Candyland for the youngest. For older kids Backgammon, Yahtzee, Parcheesi, Monopoly, and S’math have been thoroughly played and enjoyed in our household.

LETTER GAMES: Our favorite Go Fish deck has two cards for all 26 letters of the alphabet. Each card has a picture of an animal that starts with that letter. One card has the uppercase with an adult (mama or papa) animal and the matching card has a lower case letter with a corresponding baby animal. My kids have loved this set and playing with it was key to their learning letters and their sounds. Our old beloved deck recently wore out and we gave our fifth child a new deck for his 3-year-old birthday. It is his favorite game to play with any family member right now. For older kids they have enjoyed Scrabble Jr. and Scrabble.

LOGIC GAMES: These games are excellent for learning logic and strategy: Checkers, Chinese Checkers, Mancala, Chess, Clue and Battleship.

ALL-PURPOSE HOMEMADE GAME BOARD: My kids have loved to make their own game boards. This has basically been a big poster-size paper with a “Start” and a “Finish” and a chain of circles or squares connecting one to the other in snake-like fashion. They add some artwork, such as short-cut bridges, trolls, berry patches, and whatever else their imagination comes up with. Then they put a letter and a number on each space. The letter might be an “R” for reading or a “G” for Geography, ”Y” for yoga or whatever other subject they choose. Usually there are at least four different subjects. The number on the space tells how many spaces your playing piece (which could be anything from a coin to a clay figurine they made) gets to move ahead if the player can answer a question or perform a certain task relating to the subject. If the player cannot answer, then they don’t get to move ahead.
They have always played this with me and I have come up with what they must do to move ahead. We have played with many ages at once and I custom fit the question or task to fit their skill level. For instance, I may ask my five-year old to count by 5’s when she lands on “M” for math and then give my 13-year-old a mixed-fraction multiplication equation to do when she lands on the same. We have had a lot of fun with this. Half of the fun is from making the game itself and the other half comes from playing it.

HOMEMADE CARD GAMES: We have made these types of card games to reinforce or help us memorize something we are learning. We have two main ways we make these: One way is when we are memorizing definitions or learning another language. We make a card with the word and a corresponding card with the definitions or a card in English and a corresponding card in the other language (so far that has been Spanish and Hawaiian). Then we play a match-up game, either like the game of Concentration or where we put the word cards in a stack in the middle and take turns picking one card and then looking thru the definitions until we find the correct match. This has been a fun way to make memorization more enjoyable and effective. A variation on this is to make Geography cards with the name of a place such as a mountain, lake, river, Country, State, Continent, etc., on each card and then take turns picking the card and finding the chosen place on the map or globe.

JUMPING GAMES: I could have called this “action games,” but it seems our favorite action games involve jumping. These are excellent for the kinesthetic learner but also seem fun and effective for everyone. Plus it is just plain healthy to jump. It gets our cardio-vascular system going, stimulates our lymphatic system and generally wakes us up and helps us feel happy. I notice lots of laughter seems to be a by-product of jumping games. We have three main jumping games. One is what we call “Around the world”. I sit in the middle of the room (usually nursing a baby) whilst the kids start in one spot. I then give them, in turn, a math or spelling (or whatever else is applicable that day) question. If they get it right they get to take one big jump. If they don’t know it or get it wrong they don’t get to jump (we bend this rule a lot and I give them hints or clues to help them find the answer and then they still get to jump). They win when they get all the way around the room back to where they started.

Sometimes we go for speed and use a stop-watch to record how long it takes them to get “around the world”. Then they have their record and can increase their speed to break their old record. Sometimes they compete against each other to see who gets all the way around first. This can be dangerous and I discourage it. When my children really have a desire to play competitively I ask them to agree to not being devastated if they lose or gloating if they win; otherwise, we go back to a non-competitive way of playing.

The second jumping game is jumping rope, which is a delightful activity all on its own. We like to make up songs and rhymes to go with it to memorize things. This can be totally made up by us or we have used educational rope jumping verses we’ve learned from a friend who finds them on the Internet.
The third bouncing game involves my favorite homeschool tool -- the trampoline. This invaluable asset to our lives keeps us happy by bouncing. My middle son invented a game we play on the trampoline, where I throw soft balls at the kids whilst they jump, laugh and try to dodge it. When I hit them, they must answer a question. I have mostly done this with math and spelling. It really bounces the information into their brains and they love it when we switch roles and they get to throw balls at me and ask me questions.

I hope this gives you some inspiration and new ideas that you can incorporate into your homeschooling. It is my wish that we all have more PLAY in our lives. Let us spread the concept of learning through “entertaining, pleasing activities that arouse laughter” with our families, friends, neighbors and the world!!!!!
Molly has five children aged 3-20 years old. She has been playing and homeschooling with them from birth. She currently plays (lives) on the Big Island of Hawaii with her husband and four younger children. She enjoys receiving questions or comments at: mollynaturalmama@yahoo.com