Play is a cornerstone of childhood, driving cognitive, social, and emotional growth while fostering creativity, confidence, and problem-solving skills. Yet, despite its importance, playtime in schools is shrinking due to increased academic pressures.
Through play, children naturally expand their vocabulary and language skills by engaging with peers and adults. Play undoubtedly offers children essential learning experiences by encouraging children to make sense of what others are saying, pay attention to tone and gestures, and refine their talk by engaging with both peers and adults (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2021).
PreK teachers can easily enhance play centers to foster literacy and language development. For example, renaming play centers to reflect real-life professions can inspire imaginative role-playing, leading to rich, meaningful conversations.
Teaching children how to use books and other literacy resources in play centers helps children naturally integrate the use of print, writing, and new vocabulary into their natural flow of play.
Intentional Play: Setting the Stage for Learning
Integrating literacy into intentional play-based centers is more than simply placing books in the space; it involves thoughtfully selecting and arranging materials to create an environment that fosters language and literacy development through play. Here are some simple yet effective tips to set the stage for literacy-rich play in your classroom:
- Choose with care: Partner with school and public libraries to gather high-quality texts for play areas and ensure the books selected are diverse, mirror the children’s lived experiences, and accurately reflect the world.
- Less is more: Avoid overwhelming the space; a few well-chosen books can inspire meaningful play.
- Rotate often: Refresh books and materials when children’s interest fades to spark new ideas.
- Read and understand: Plan and share interactive read-alouds inviting conversation before placing books in centers. Highlight connections to materials in each play area and explore together how children might use these items to extend ideas from the texts.
- Be a guide: Suggest ways to use materials but let children’s creativity shape their play.
- Link to learning standards: Help others see how your efforts support your school’s learning standards. Most state standards call for young children to learn and use new vocabulary, ask questions, and respond to others by engaging in meaningful conversations (New York State Education Department, 2019).
- Engage and observe: Join in the play when it feels right to model language and literacy use or take a step back to observe how children naturally incorporate their learning.
Examples of Literacy-Rich Play
Here are a few examples of how you can intentionally enhance common play centers to maximize their potential for learning and fun.
Blocks and Building
Blocks and building centers are typically stocked with different building materials like wooden blocks, Legos, cardboard bricks, or various types of connecters. But what might children do if it was called the Community Construction Zone and included books about building, writing and drawing utensils, and paper? Children might:
- Explore books like Building Up, or How a House is Built for construction ideas.
- Use paper and drawing or writing materials to make a plan for their construction or draw their amazing creation on paper to remember how to build it again in the future. What an opportune moment to introduce concepts and vocabulary like blueprint or safety checklist!
- Use their plans to talk to friends and explain how to work together to construct.
- A million other things that we can’t even imagine, because children are geniuses!
Kitchen Area
If you have a kitchen play area in your classroom, you probably have seen children pretending to cook, eat, or serve food. But what if you and the children gave it a catchy name such as The Chef’s Kitchen and it included the following materials:
- Menus – Take a free menu every time you visit a takeout restaurant or collect the menus that come in the mail as advertisements for new local eateries to stock your classroom’s kitchen area. Children will love having authentic props to “read,” “write,” and order from.
- Cookbooks and recipe cards – Children can pretend to shop for and make a variety of recipes or write their own on a blank recipe card.
- Pads of paper and pens – Pads of paper look very similar to wait staff order pads or their families’ grocery lists. And using pens like they see at restaurants in the real world will bring their imaginations to life.
- A small chalkboard or whiteboard easel – What’s a restaurant without a few daily specials? Children can work together to communicate their kitchen specialties.
- Environmental print – Save extra napkins from donut shops and fast-food restaurants. Wash and save takeout containers, shopping bags, and no-longer-needed receipts. Anything that brings a sense of authenticity to children’s play will inspire talk, play with print, writing, and creativity!
Art Center
Imagine what children might do if they found an array of art supplies books about art, and pictures of artwork in the art center. They might make a piece of contemporary art like Yayoi Kusama or draw abstract line drawings like Keith Haring! A name change to something like The Artist’s Workshop might jumpstart their talk and creativity.
How-To-Draw books and books about artists and their lives and styles can inspire endless creativity in children’s own works of art. The simple name change, in addition to providing a wide variety of art supplies, might empower children to imagine themselves as capable and creative artists as they reference books and photos about art to create something special.
Literacy-Rich Play Centers
By thoughtfully integrating books, writing materials, and print resources into play areas, we can transform everyday classroom activities into rich, literacy-infused experiences. When everyday play centers are intentionally supplied with books, writing materials, and print resources, the seeds of language and literacy begin to grow.
We’d love to hear how you’re incorporating literacy into play. Drop a comment wherever you have viewed this post or share this post with colleagues to spark even more ideas!
References
American Academy of Pediatrics. (2021). Power of play in early childhood. American Academy of Pediatrics. https://www.aap.org/en/patient-care/early-childhood/early-childhood-health-and-development/power-of-play/?srsltid=AfmBOooA8fEdM0WBUBHucG9OJRiJdJf0bXZSF8MTUkoZhDn4aqGqP62E
New York State Education Department. (2019). Resource guides for school success: The prekindergarten early learning standards. New York State Education Department. https://www.nysed.gov/sites/default/files/programs/early-learning/pk-standards-resource-web-revised-2021.pdf
Interested in more PreK specific trainings?
Join us in-person at Lesley University or virtually for our 2-day workshop, Early Literacy Success: Building Language, Sounds, and Print Knowledge in PreK, on February 11-12, 2025. Register here!
