The Pedagogy of Play (aka Elephant Toothpaste)

June 10, 2024
Early Childhood Primary Whole School

The Pedagogy of Play (aka Elephant Toothpaste)

June 11th will be recognised as the official International Day of Play by the United Nations General Assembly. Play is deeply reflective of our humanity – imagination, mastery, perseverance, risk taking, challenge, collaboration, problem solving and innovation – these are a few valued skills developed by play.

**What do we mean by play?**

For such a simple word ‘play’ is indeed a complex subject, encompassing a multitude of activity and human experience. Observing children at play we can attempt to categorise it into ‘types’ or forms of play based on the observable features such as make believe, locomotor, risk taking, rules based etc – although in truth, most playful activity involves a mixture of these.

Current research recognises core elements that contribute to the sense of ‘playfulness’ and includes qualities such as:
– the amount of choice or self-direction in decision making
– the experiencing of positive emotions such as joy, delight, challenge, curiosity or wonder
– the meaningfulness of the activity to the person

These characteristics of play are in stark contrast to the traditional ‘industrial’ models of schooling where a standardised input of ‘one size fits all’ didactic pedagogy allows for little choice, delight or personal meaningfulness.

While play is not the only pathway to learning, it is indeed a powerful ally of learning, just as a sense of playfulness is to creativity and innovation. This is why a pedagogy of play is a fundamental element of our approach at Bold Park.

We are very proud to offer a School environment that allows educators freedom to be innovative in their pedagogical practices. To allow educators to keep alive the choice, wonder and meaningfulness in ‘schoolwork’.

We recognise that it is not always easy to find the balance between the expectations of ‘school’ and embrace the vitality of children’s expressions and responses, but it is a tension we fully accept and one that our educators readily lean into.

However, by reflecting on all these characteristics it becomes clearer how a level of playfulness can be accomplished by embracing pedagogies that allow for diversified decision making, for the emergence of unexpected possibilities and for learners to have some control and direction on their learning.

Play is deeply reflective of our humanity and a predominant learning strategy for young children.

However, while most people are comfortable with the notion of young children learning through play, for some reason, the thought that play can continue to be a useful pedagogic tool with older children or adults is less common.

Perhaps the challenge is in picturing how we can harness something as free-wheeling and individualised as play, to reach prescribed learning outcomes of the schooling curriculum.

David F. Bjorklund, Why Youth is Not Wasted on the Young: Immaturity in Human Development (2007)

Elephant Toothpaste

The recent Pre-Primary science class discussions have been around how different ingredients can react with one another and also how Scientists ask lots of questions and make observations.

For one particular experiment, some friends wanted to learn how to make “Elephant Toothpaste”.

The class brainstormed, shared ideas and came together to watch this exciting experiment come alive. What joy and excitement was had when we watched the foam ‘explode’ out of the bottle (as per the video at the end)!

Creating our "foaming" elephant toothpaste

Science Play in Pre-Primary

Part of these Science discussions, we encourage and invite students to document the learning process through taking photos. Through chatting about properties of the ingredients and materials we use, the elephant’s trunk could be noted as the bottle represented (and the vessel in which we conducted the experiment).

A large portion of learning about Science is recording our observations, reflections and thoughts about the experiment, so the Pre-Primary class have begun a collaborative journal which we will add to each time we conduct an experiment or science discussion.

We saw the awe and wonder our students felt when participating in this playful experiment – it was a great feeling!