At Kid E Nation, We Use Play to Help Youngsters Learn — and Grow to Love Learning

America’s Puritan roots have created a culture that puts a high value on work and pushes play off to the side as something frivolous and largely unnecessary. And while we sometimes play lip service to the need for play, it’s clear that work — or learning — are considered much more important.

But the truth about learning and play is much more complex than that, so much so that debate still rages in the academic community about the relation of one to the other and the importance of play in a child’s learning experience. According to The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), a professional membership organization that promotes high-quality early learning for all young children, “the tension between play and direct instruction during the preschool years is as puzzling as it is real. Many (including NAEYC) argue that it is a false dichotomy—that both direct instruction and play have roles to play in high-quality early childhood education.”

And that’s what rings true to us at Kid E Nation.

We work hard to keep up with what scholars and studies say about what is good for children when it comes to learning. But we also temper that with what we see for ourselves in our own children and the ones we care for every day. We consider that, over time, scholars sometimes change their thinking on these things.

Here’s what we know for sure: Children having fun while learning tend to want to do that for longer periods of time, giving them more opportunities to learn. That’s our observation and what anyone would think, using common sense. So at Kid E Nation, we do our best to make learning a fun and exciting event for the children in our care, while at the same time using benchmarks to make sure our charges are on track academically.

We want them to learn, but we also want them to love learning. This one thing will set them up for success because learning new things will be an adventure not a chore, and in a highly competitive world, knowledge is power and learning is how you get there.

We welcome questions about our program and how we help the youngsters in our care. Talk to us today about our approach to teaching and helping your child learn — and love to learn.