Play is the answer. Every time.

The implementation of curriculum marketed for school readiness such as rote learning, whole group instruction, and push down academic practices have created early childhood spaces that are indistinguishable from school settings. The objective is to promote their learning environment as one that values school readiness. The more that early learning settings mirror schools, the less value is placed on play. This impacts children living on or below the poverty threshold more as they are seen to be at a disadvantage. Skill and drill tactics, work sheets and rote learning increases in order to influence educational outcomes and the social, emotional, and cognitive skills once discovered in early childhood, take a backseat to prepare children to learn. The Problem? Play is learning.

 Play is a highly structured, kinesthetic, way that a child uses to process the  world around them. When children are following play rules, they are constructing meaning  for the cacophony of sights, sounds, and desires they collect throughout their every day existence. 

Unstructured play, meaning play that is not organized by a grownup, encourages divergent thinking and divergent thinking lends itself to the kind of awareness that fosters cognition 

Play is a change maker: it changes outcomes, it strengthens a child's brain structure; play improves memory. Play heals. 

Our children don't require a curriculum for school readiness. Our children are the curriculum. It's time to fight for the right for children to be seen as more than deficits and outcomes. It's time to defend childhood. It's time to defend play.