In some cases, criticism even comes from fellow educators. When the director of a private elementary school recently visited Hollingsworth's school, she commented, "I don't see any learning going on here. All they do is play."
Hollingsworth pointed out that she wove math throughout the day's activities, from tracking days on the calendar to counting crackers and carrot sticks during snack time. "That's not math," the private-school teacher sniffed. "I wanted to say, 'Time out for you,'" Hollingsworth laughs.
"This is an era of accountability, and parents are rightfully nervous," says Jerlean Daniel, deputy executive director of the National Association for the Education of Young Children. "A high quality program can include what people think of as academics in a playful way. There's a real richness when you use a play-based approach."
Take literacy. Around the time I was worrying about Clara's inability to write lowercase letters, she came home with a story that she had dictated to one of her teachers. I thought the project was nothing more than a way to encourage imaginative thinking. What I didn't understand until much later was that this exercise was a crucial step in preparing Clara to read.
"It's very important for young children to understand that what they say can be written down," Daniel explains. "Think of what it means from a child's viewpoint: An adult is paying attention, writing down what I say. What I think and say is important. That's a powerful incentive for learning."
A purely loosey-goosey approach doesn't work either.
Or consider the play kitchen, where I feared Clara was merely re-enacting the domestic drudgery generations of women have endured. "When children are taking on roles, planning scenarios, changing the script — all that requires a high degree of self-regulation," says Daniel. "Dramatic play gives all kinds of opportunities for problem solving and decision making."
Those skills go beyond any one academic subject; they affect how a child learns from then on. A four-year-old who is trained to sit and practice specific drills may well be reading by kindergarten, and her math scores may be ahead of the curve in second or third grade. But studies have shown that children who haven't had to make their own decisions — using that all-important self-regulation — have a harder time in later grades, when independent thinking becomes more critical.
"Children with good social skills know how to get what they need from a teacher or their classmates," says Daniel. "They know how to make their way in a group setting. They've had practice negotiating. In any group situation, children who have self-regulation do better."
Research has also shown that a purely loosey-goosey approach doesn't work either. An influential study by Greg Duncan of Northwestern University found that math skills were the single most important factor predicting which preschoolers would go on to do well academically.Widely publicized under headlines such as "Preschool Math Skills Predict Success," the study sent a whole new round of parents reaching for the flashcards.
©2009 Elizabeth Blackwell and Babble
About the Author
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Elizabeth Blackwell is a freelance magazine writer and the author of Frommer's Chicago guidebook. She lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband, three children and a vast collection of long underwear.
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