‘Just ‘tend that I’m the dolphin mum, and I say you can’t swim outside the sandpit.’ ‘Yeah! And just ‘tend, that I go anyway, and I swim out here on the grass.’

‘Yeah, and just ‘tend, that I get this shark to come and bite you because you won’t stay in the sandpit.’

‘Yeah! And just ‘tend that actually I can fly and so I fly out of the ocean and kick the shark in the head and you don’t know what to do.’

‘Yeah!’

This, and many other similar games of pretend – or ‘tend, as was the lingo in our house – were a daily occurrence in my backyard sandpit when my kids were about 5 and 6 years old. I was a fascinated eavesdropper, particularly with the ‘meta’ aspect of their running commentary about the intentions, motivations and actions of their pretend characters.

Here in the sandpit, they were learning about problem-solving, negotiation, consequences and flexibility, but for them it was just play – just ‘tending.

We all know that young children learn through play, and play-based learning underpins most modern day pre-school programs. But when kids hit primary school, play-based approaches generally take a back-seat to more formal, teacher-led approaches. Similarly, when working therapeutically with children, we often feel driven toward increasing structure and achieving learning goals in sessions. It sometimes feels that a session full of play may not be ‘real therapy’.

Not so, says research published just this month in Child Development. A wide ranging meta-analytical study has challenged our reliance on traditional teaching approaches in early primary years.

The University of Cambridge’s systematic review of 39 studies, which included nearly 4000 child subjects, looked specifically at the effectiveness of guided play in achieving learning outcomes.

Guided play essentially refers to playful educational activities that allow children to explore their learning goals in their own way, with gentle adult guidance such as prompts and open-ended questions.

The study showed that in children up to 8 years old, guided play can be just as effective as more traditional methods of classroom instruction in the development of key literacy, numeracy and social skills, as well as in the acquisition of executive functions.

It’s the first systematic attempt to examine the effects of guided play (versus free, open- ended play) in learning. The idea is that an activity is built around a learning goal, but the child develops the activity and tries it out for themselves. In practice this may look like imagination-based games that encourage the utilisation of skills, or specifically incorporating target skills into play. In the therapy room, this might look like role-playing, story-making, or craft activities that require cooperative effort and problem-solving – just to name a few.

Among the positive findings of the Cambridge study was that guided play supports the development of children’s logic and reasoning skills, and cognitive flexibility. The researchers suggest that the mental ‘work’ a child does during guided play (rather than just being ‘taught’) may be a particularly effective way to teach children to work through

logical, problem-solving type tasks – skills that underly academic skills like maths, but also key social skills like resolving conflict. They also suggest that the hands-on element of play creates more effective learning, by allowing concrete representation of abstract concepts.

Overall, the evidence indicated that guided play is at least as effective as direct instruction on achieving learning outcomes, and that guided play actively enhances learning and development.

For therapists working with children, this is a key finding. It suggests that embedding therapeutic goals into guided play is an effective way of increasing awareness, knowledge and skills across a range of areas. Creating opportunities for a child to explore and make their own way to these goals is likely to be effective, potent and importantly, fun. Play is real therapy. So, just go ahead and ‘tend.

Reference:

Skene K, O’Farrelly C, Byrne E, Kirby N, Stevens E & Ramchandani P, Can guidance during play enhance children’s learning and development in educational contexts? A systematic review and meta‐analysis. Child Development, 2022; DOI: 10.1111/ cdev.13730