Hello everyone!

We’ve spent the last couple of weeks exploring new places, including some of the various beautiful Historic Scotland sites which have reopened. As well as giving us plenty of opportunities to visit new locations and allow our imaginations and our feet to roam free around some stunning Scottish locations, it has also been a fantastic opportunity for learning through play.

Learning through play is a phrase you’ve probably heard being used at some point. It does what it says. Essentially, it’s about creating opportunities for children to learn and extend their knowledge through their play, whatever their play might be. Ultimately, it’s about infusing learning and teaching into the chosen play of the child.

But how can we do this as parents? There are of course, those activities which we can set up which are designed to stimulate learning through adult-led or designed activities. But what about teaching and learning through child-led spontaneous play?

Over the last few weeks, I have really enjoyed encouraging precisely this type of learning. The best thing about it? It’s completely natural and unforced. It also tends to be more relevant and meaningful, meaning that children have a greater chance of embedding this new knowledge.

All it takes, on our part as parents, is a willingness and the time to play, alongside keeping an eye out for opportunities when they present themselves. For instance, numbers and counting are a really easy type of learning to incorporate into play. You can count the steps as you climb, count jumps, count the number of toys you are playing with, point out the numbers on the sides of toys and so on.

Imaginative play also offers another fantastic opportunity, especially for language development. We can model phrases and vocabulary to our children as we engage in imaginative play with them. A play set in space, for example, provides plenty of opportunities to introduce new terminology and concepts. From counting down as the rocket blasts into space, to discussing the concept of gravity and even oxygen, as well as learning the names of the planets and using adjectives to describe what they can see in space.

This same approach applies to outdoor learning. If you go for a walk, talk about the different animals you see. What noises do they make? How do they move? Where do they live? If you come across a new type of tree or landscape, introduce new terminology. Our favourite recently was ‘reservoir’. It was lovely to see my son using it as part of his imaginative play days later.  

Of course, playing is also important for learning and developing various social skills. From learning to communicate with others, to sharing toys, taking turns and learning to manage our behaviour and feelings (especially when things don’t go our way), play is extremely important. Play is an opportunity for children to explore the world and test out their ideas safely.

So, this week, I hope you’ll enjoy spending some time simply playing, exploring and having fun with your child(ren). If you see an opportunity to sneak some teaching and learning into it, take it. If not, know that the very simple act of playing with your child is teaching them important social interaction, language and imaginative skills.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter! Leave a comment below or get in touch with me on Twitter @TalkMummy or Instagram @mummytalkcoffee. As always, please share this post!

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Activity of the Week

In the spirit of learning through play, engage in some imaginative play with your child!

Follow your child’s interests and create a mini-world to play in. One of the best things about imaginative play is that it actually requires very little in the way of physical objects. You can also use other objects to stand in for buildings, planets and so on. Of course, you can always draw/paint a set on some paper or card to create your own imaginative world.

Trains are a firm favourite in our house. They’ve been known to explore mountains, volcanos, travel through time to visit the dinosaurs and even blast off into space to explore new planets and see the stars. Apart from a physical toy train, the rest of the ‘set’ or locations were mostly pieces of furniture – the sofa, a chair, a ball or even the pages of a picturebook. We even created our own train tracks, using just paper and a pen.

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Featured Book

‘Simon Sock’ by Sue Hendra and Paul Linnet, illustrated by Nick East

This lovely book is all about an odd sock, Simon, who tries to find his matching pair. It provides lots of opportunities to talk about matching, as well as pairing making it a good book for anyone looking to extend some mathematical language and thinking. The illustrations are really colourful and fun, giving plenty of opportunities to talk about what children can see and to use lots of descriptive language.

Yet, what I most enjoyed about this book was its lovely simple message. Spoiler alert! Simon does find his pair, but it’s not who you might think or have expected. Sharing the message that anyone can be your ‘perfect pair’ or friend is a lovely and important one to pass on to children. It might even encourage them to make new, unexpected friends. Ultimately, this is also a fun and very enjoyable book to share with your child.