If you have boxes available from deliveries or a new appliance, save your boxes for potentially hours of imaginative play both indoors and out!
Imaginative play is essential for helping young children make sense of the world around them. When child-directed play is supported by thoughtful adults it can have a big impact on a child’s motivation and engagement with academic learning, especially in the school context. Designing learning environments that are prepared for imaginative and creative play can be as simple as adding some empty boxes!
Play should not have to be justified by the mountain of evidence that supports what generations of play scholars have said all along: Play is how children learn and play is essential for healthy child development. But it is worth a reminder that, increasingly, school is where many children have the most equitable access to unstructured play. A global body of research reports that children can experiment with limits, practice social behaviour, and work through their frustrations and worries experienced in the adult world through imaginative play at school. And it is my experience that anchoring this sort of play to connected mentor texts sparks motivation and engagement for connected written tasks, especially when children begin to write like a reader using their play experiences to animate their own words.
Ultimately, for many families and children, the world feels increasingly uncertain. If your classroom is struggling to self-regulate and anxiety is at an all time high, lots of time for unstructured play (especially outdoors) can help set the table for engagement with required academic learning.
For this activity, select a mentor text from the list below. Read the book aloud inside or outside, depending on which instructional routines for outdoor learning you have already in place. Co-create some guidelines for how resources and materials will be accessed and shared and then step back to allow your class time to imagine and play with ideas and invitations the following stories can provoke.
Recommended Mentor Texts
Not a Box by Antoinette Portis
Not a Box City by Antoinette Portis
A Box Story by Kenneth Kit Lamug
What To Do With A Box by Jane Yolen
My Rainy Day Rocket Ship by Market Sheppard
The Cardboard Kingdom by Chad Sell (a series of graphic novels)
Required materials
- a box or multiple boxes per child or small group
Optional materials
- scissors
- crayons, markers, glue, tape, paint and brushes
- loose bits and crafty pieces to embellish your box (think junk drawer items)
- A Makedo kit
The benefits of imaginative play
In the curricular area of language arts, research reports imaginative play can improve vocabulary, language comprehension, imagination, and understanding of story elements and structure.
When we think about our core competencies for learning, (which in British Columbia includes communication, personal and social responsibility, as well as thinking skills, like creative, critical and reflective thinking) we can add to the list of benefits from imaginative play: increased attention spans, enhanced imagination, impulse control, curiosity, problem solving, cooperation, empathy, and group participation.
In my experience, one of the best features of imaginary play is the endless opportunity for children to interpret, problem solve, and role play in a way that reduces the anxiety and frustration of their daily lives. You might be surprised to see how therapeutic imaginative play can be for your class!
References
I try to keep my blog posts accessible for all readers. If you are interested in learning more about the theories and research that influence my thinking please explore the following citations.
Bergen, D. (2002). The role of pretend play in children’s cognitive development.Early Childhood Research & Practice, 4(1).
Bodrova, E., & Leong, D. J. (2003). The importance of being playful. Educational Leadership, 60(7), 50.
Douglas, S., & Stirling, L. (2016). In Douglas S., Stirling L.(Eds.), Children’s play, pretense, and story: Studies in culture, context, and autism spectrum disorder (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315817835
Pyle, A., DeLuca, C., & Danniels, E. (2017). A scoping review of research on play‐based pedagogies in kindergarten education. Review of Education, 5(3), 311-351. doi:10.1002/rev3.3097
Vygotsky, L.S. (2004). Imagination and creativity in childhood. Journal of Russian & East European Psychology, 42(1), 7-97. doi:10.1080/10610405.2004.11059210