Purposeful Play

What is Purposeful Play?

Play is the primary way our children explore their surroundings, ranging from free play to structured play. Play fosters the development of executive function skills (ie: working memory, cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control), emotional regulation and age appropriate social skills. Purposeful Play involves the intentional planning and facilitation of children's play to achieve intended learning outcomes - including social and cognitive development, emotional growth and gaining self confidence to engage in new experiences. 

We use purposeful play to target child specific, early childhood education goals: 

1. Speech and Language Goals

2. Fine Motor Goals

3. Gross Motor Goals

4. Play and Social Skills Goals

5. Multidisciplinary Goals

A train table isn't just a place to play trains, it is intended to work on the following skills: 

1. Gross motor by kneeling in a way to work on core strength and balance

2. Fine motor by manipulating pieces

3. Speech and Language Development by working "s blends" (ie: "start" and "stop")

4. Social Skills by creating language between peers, learning to share trains, working together to create an imaginary play scenario

5. Problem solving in regards to math - which train is longer/shorter, how do we make the shorter train longer? Counting the train cars, etc. 

6. The sky is the limit, our teachers help to guide conversations, based on their lesson plans and the intentional goals they have for each child!