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Not too many decades back, children’s libraries and museums contained books that the librarian had to retrieve from the stacks for a child to use or from glass cases of ceramic dolls and toys on shelves lined with Do Not Touch placards. For interactive activities, children might have been allowed to stand in line for a chance to sit in the old fashioned school desk with the lift-up top, festooned with a cylindrical inset called an ink well. In other words, hands-off! These were collections of grown-ups’ memories from their childhoods, which they felt worthy of memorialization assuming that the children would enjoy and learn from exposure to such displays. Thankfully, things have changed a lot in these non-classroom settings for the better, maybe more than in traditional educational structures.
When today’s young children enter the classroom, they are expecting a certain structure devoted to teaching them skills and knowledge which will prepare them for kindergarten and beyond. Curriculum, circle time, the “right way” to use materials and following the teacher’s instructions are designed to work together to achieve that goal. But this is not the only or, depending on the child, necessarily the best, setting for playful learning to work its magic. That’s why I have become a rabid fan of non-school settings as a supplemental or alternative pathway experience to playful learning that is truly effective. Child-directed learning has a better chance at success when the children get to choose what to spend their time doing; it’s harder to do in a classroom with 20 plus other children with similar appetites.
Helen Hadani, my colleague on the Goddard Educational Advisory Board, is currently a Fellow at the Brookings Institution. As a national expert on the learning experience inherent in children’s museums, she points out that museums with child-friendly programming have certain freedom not found in the classroom, which supports “risk-friendly” play under the supervision of the museum staff. The staff is trained safely to nudge or draw children toward the novel and to do something new with a wide range of material both familiar and unique. That might include a pre-schooler interacting with a 3-D printer or a laser cutter to explore new outlets for their curiosity. To them, it is play; to the grownups it has STEAM written all over it.
Finally, non-school settings invite, require and support high levels of planning, self-control and self-awareness in the child, something we now call executive function. Child-directed experiences inherent in museum and library settings are especially efficient at supporting such growth. When combined with thoughtful questions and reflections in interaction with the museum staff, STEAM content gets a special boost:
- Ask around for your community’s “playful learning museum” and library settings. Scout them out to see if these kinds of activities are at play. If so, bring your child next time. If not, keep looking;
- Prepare to spend your time at a respectful remove from your little explorers once they are comfortable and the museum staff has taken notice of their choices and interests. As our children’s first teachers, it is hard for us to pass up any chance to teach the right way to do something, but we know that child-guided experience is preferred by the growing brain because those are the experiences that are most meaningful to children;
- if intrinsic motivation is something you hope will take root and thrive in your children, sit back and let them screw up, try again, and again until it works for them. Non-school settings have a lot more leeway for this kind of learning then do classrooms. Enjoy the benefit
