Skills for holistic development

OK, so now we have a clear understanding of the five characteristics of learning through play, and we’re learning, that play is essential for human development. But I have another question. Paul, I’m going to put this to you. What specific skills are developed through play, that can help a child or anyone during a time of stress? Yeah Carly, that’s a really great question and Learning through Play for us is one of the key vehicles to help children and adults cope as well as to build upon their social and emotional skills. Learning through Play relays a vehicle for social emotional development and is really related to our five characteristics of play. So for example, one of those characteristics is being iterative.

Well, to be iterative, you need problem solving skills. You need creative skills. You also need to know how to manage your emotions when things get frustrating and how do you kind of back down and breathe and then move forward. Also, we have socially interacting which is a characteristic. That requires social skills, communication skills. That also requires us to potentially know how to solve conflicts and avoid conflicts. So it’s really they’re really all connected, and this is especially true during challenging situations. Bo, I’m curious, what else would you add to that?

I think it’s a really good description, because when we are in difficult situations it’s really about finding alternative ways of doing things, which is about iteration and being creative, but also physically express their frustration we’re in and share with others, and the best way to do that is actually trying it. So what if we should try an activity where we will try to show the skills that are developed through play?

We’ll try a little activity called “Chain Reaction”. So you have to find maybe two bricks you have around you, and what we’ll try to do is to make a reaction from a chain, almost. Like when you push one object it tumbles on the other one. Yeah like this. Let’s try it again. So I’ll tumble on mine and then the yellow falls. Maybe you’re going to start your so…

Yeah, so this is an open ended activity, with cause and effect. Let’s try to improve that a little bit. So that’s going to add two more bricks. See if we can expand the chain little bit. Let’s try this, so I’m going to hit my now. Yeah, but the longer reaction. Let’s try to find an everyday object, which we can add to the reaction here. Yeah, I’ll find a gluestick. Let’s see if that works. So I’m going to try. Oops, let’s try again. Let’s start here.

I’m going to start my. Yeah, it worked. So these kind of activities, actually you can expand in complexity by collaborating and using everyday materials and what you learn through these kind of activities are the broad range of skills that are supported by playful experiences. So when we are setting up these chain reactions, we are keeping attention, like deeply engaged and concentrating. We also collaborating because we’re sharing experiences and figure out what works and making suggestions for each other and be regulating our emotions because sometimes things doesn’t work. And you have to change materials, which is also about creativity. You know, what other ways can we do this?

And it’s inherently physical, like being active testing and trying out, building and making things. Researchers have studied these kind of experiences, to figure out how do playful experiences in childhood, develop critical skills at last for a lifetime. So for instance, keeping focus and attention is a critical part of keeping focus and attention to problems. Being able to learn in school and being able to keep focused attention in your workplace. But also creativity. Like figuring out what other solutions can I do. Come up with different ideas. When you do that in your childhood, it lasts in to adults, when you figure out new ways of dealing with your personal life or with everyday challenges in your workplace.

So these kind of skills are keeping attention, regulating motions, being creative and collaborating are critical parts of what we learn as children and what we also need as adults. And a critical part of that is social-emotional learning. And look at what happened with my chain reaction. I didn’t get it perfect the first time. It required to iterate. Have an emotional experience to get the support from my colleague. And ultimately I arrived at the chain reaction. And social emotional skills, these are really the foundational skills for all other skills and this is especially true in times of uncertainty. So while we play we’re developing our social and emotional skills. I like it. This is great. This is informative and it’s enjoyable.

So after this video we’ve left you instructions on how you can do a chain reaction at home. Then in the next step, we’ll be back with our experts, who will have some more tips and tricks for us.