Purposeful Play

One of the most important aspects of teaching kindergarten is developing the social skills required to be successful in school (and life).  In the past few years of teaching kindergarten, in order to teach these skills we utilized various social and emotional curriculums.  These programs are wonderful in order to introduce big concepts such as respect, empathy, problem solving, self-regulation, and teamwork.  However, due to the half-day kindergarten program, we had difficulty giving students the time to apply these skills in an unstructured setting.  In a half-day, there are so many academic skills to teach that recess and play quite often did not exist.  This year we have moved to full-day kindergarten!  Fortunately, the district believes strongly in the social and emotional development of students, so instead filling all of the additional time with academics, we focused much of our time and resources on adding purposeful play. 

Purposeful play is the period of our day that students get to just play.  This time is free of academic restrictions and adult guidelines or plans.  Children get to decide how to spend their time.  During play, students are able to apply the social skills that they have been taught during our social and emotional curriculum lessons.  They also can learn social skills through trial and error.  In this unstructured time with five year olds problems arise. These mini conflicts over sharing a popular toy or deciding who gets to take the role of cashier at the grocery store teach children so much about how to handle conflict and develop these social skills.  So far this year, purposeful play has been many students favorite part of kindergarten.  While I sometimes wonder how the academics can compare to the fun they have during play, I know that the value of the social skills they develop during play will be very beneficial to the independence and problem-solving students will use throughout their life.  I am so thankful for the extra time that allows students to develop their social skills and have fun in kindergarten!

Grocery Store

Blocks

Sensory Bins

Play-doh