The Skills That Matter: What Young Children Really Learn Through Play
By Jacqueline Schaefer
Director of Pedagogy and Program Development at The Harmony School at Beth David
When families begin exploring preschool options, they often have a list of things they hope their children will learn: letters, numbers, shapes, colors, and perhaps even the beginnings of reading and writing. These are understandable hopes, and families often reach out to me wanting to better understand our approach to teaching our youngest learners. I always start these conversations by stating what I think we can all agree on: we want our children to enter kindergarten feeling confident and prepared.
But what does it actually mean for a young child to be ready to learn?
Research in early childhood education has helped us understand that children learn through relationships, meaningful experiences, sensory exploration, and play. At The Harmony School, we don't see play as something children do before the real learning begins. Play is an important part of how learning happens.
Looking Beyond Academic Skills
When we think about early academic learning, it's easy to focus on what we can measure. Can a child recognize the alphabet? Count to twenty? Identify shapes? Write their name? These skills have value, but being able to recite information isn't necessarily the same as understanding it.
Consider a child building a tower with wooden blocks. As they add and remove pieces, compare sizes, experiment with balance, and count how many blocks they've used, they're exploring mathematical concepts through firsthand experience. They might not describe what they're doing as mathematics, but they're developing an understanding of quantity, spatial relationships, and cause and effect.
In their 2018 research overview, Defining Play-based Learning, early childhood researchers Erica Danniels and Angela Pyle describe playful learning as an intentional pedagogical approach that supports children's cognitive, social, emotional, and academic development. Through play, children encounter problems, experiment with solutions, construct knowledge about the world, and negotiate relationships and rules with others.
This connects to an important area of developmental research known as executive function, which includes the abilities to focus attention, hold information in mind, adapt to new situations, and regulate behavior. Imagine a group of preschoolers working together to build a bridge across a pretend river. They must remember their goal, communicate ideas, respond when their structure collapses, and decide what to try next. What looks like a morning of block play is also an opportunity to practice persistence, problem-solving, and collaboration.
These developing abilities are important foundations for learning, both inside and outside the classroom.
A Literacy-Rich and Mathematics-Rich Environment
One thing I always want families to understand is that a play-based education doesn't mean children aren't being introduced to literacy and mathematics and more broadly, all STEAM subjects. In fact, a thoughtful early childhood classroom should be rich with opportunities to explore all academic subjects.
A literacy-rich environment is one where children are surrounded by meaningful, diverse, and inclusive language. Books are accessible, stories are told and retold, songs and rhymes become part of everyday routines, and writing has a purpose. Children might dictate a story to a teacher, recognize their names on their belongings, or create signs for a pretend restaurant they've built with friends.
These experiences help children understand that language and print communicate ideas. Long before a child reads independently, they're developing vocabulary, listening comprehension, an awareness of sounds in language, and an understanding of how stories and written communication work.
The same is true of early mathematics. Children explore patterns, quantities, measurement, shapes, and spatial relationships through experiences that naturally invite mathematical thinking. Baking challah offers opportunities to measure ingredients, compare quantities, and notice changes. Building with blocks invites children to explore geometry, balance, and size. Outdoors, children might sort natural materials, compare the lengths of sticks, or investigate how much water different containers can hold.
And these experiences are intentional. Educators introduce language, ask questions, offer materials, and help children make connections between what they're doing and the concepts they're discovering.
The goal in progressive early childhood spaces isn't to avoid academic learning, we’re making that learning meaningful.
The Whole Body Is Involved in Learning
Another important consideration, particularly when we talk about school readiness, is physical development.
Writing, for example, is much more complex than simply learning how to hold a pencil. It requires coordination between the eyes and hands, finger dexterity, postural stability, and the ability to control increasingly precise movements.
These abilities develop over time, and young children need opportunities to strengthen and coordinate their bodies in many different ways.
When a child squeezes, rolls, pinches, and manipulates clay or play dough, they're developing hand strength and fine motor coordination. When they paint at an easel, thread beads, tear paper, or experiment with different drawing materials, they're practicing movements that contribute to later writing skills.
And this development doesn't happen only at a table.
In an outdoor playscape, children climb, balance, crawl, carry, dig, and navigate uneven surfaces. These experiences engage their larger muscle groups and support balance, body awareness, and coordination. They also provide opportunities to develop the postural control that helps support more refined movements of the hands and fingers.
I think it's important to recognize this when we talk about what young children should be doing. There is no developmental benefit in expecting every three-year-old to demonstrate a mature pencil grip or produce neatly formed letters before they're ready. Pressuring children to meet uniform handwriting expectations can also take the joy out of drawing and early writing.
Of course, children should have access to crayons, pencils, paintbrushes, and opportunities to experiment with writing. Some three-year-olds are excited to write their names, while others are still exploring the marks they can make on paper. Both deserve encouragement and experiences that meet them where they are.
At Harmony, we want children to develop the physical foundations for learning through meaningful experiences, not just through tasks designed to demonstrate a particular skill.
The Intentionality Behind Play
One common misconception about play-based education is that teachers simply provide materials and let children explore without direction. In reality, thoughtful early childhood teaching requires close observation, planning, and an understanding of how children develop.
Danniels and Pyle distinguish between free play, where children direct their own experiences, and guided play, where educators intentionally support and extend learning. Both have an important place in early childhood education.
An educator might notice children collecting leaves outside and begin wondering alongside them. Why are some leaves larger than others? What happens when we arrange them by size? How might we represent their shapes through drawing or clay? A simple investigation can open the door to mathematics, scientific observation, language, and artistic expression.
The educator's role is not to provide every answer, but to recognize the thinking already taking place and offer experiences that help children deepen their understanding.
This philosophy is central to our Reggio Emilia-inspired approach at Harmony, where we view children as capable, curious participants in their own learning.
It also shapes how we understand the work of teachers. In Deepening Commitments to Playful Learning in Early Childhood Education, Lori Ryan (2024) explores the value of educators engaging in research and playful inquiry themselves. Drawing on the work of Shannon Pope and other researchers, Ryan describes how teachers can study children's experiences through observation, documentation, collaboration, and reflection.
Related research by Megina Baker and Gabriela Salas Davila explores Playful Participatory Research, an approach in which educators investigate questions about teaching and learning while inviting children to participate as co-researchers.
This idea has deeply influenced my own work. During my graduate studies through the University of Colorado Denver and Boulder Journey School, I collaborated with fellow educators to develop Illuminating Play in Early Childhood Learning, a research-informed toolkit exploring playful learning, pedagogical documentation, and advocacy for play in early childhood education.
That experience reinforced my belief that good teaching requires curiosity. We must be willing to observe closely, question our assumptions, and learn alongside children rather than simply deliver a predetermined set of lessons.
At Harmony, this means the curriculum will be shaped by children's questions and interests, supported by educators who thoughtfully introduce new ideas, materials, and opportunities for investigation.
What Does Kindergarten Readiness Really Mean?
It's natural for families to wonder whether a play-based preschool will prepare their children for kindergarten. We want children to develop strong foundations in literacy, mathematics, and communication, and those goals are very much part of our work. But readiness involves more than a checklist of academic accomplishments.
Children are developing the confidence to ask questions, communicate their needs, build relationships, navigate challenges, and approach unfamiliar experiences with curiosity. These abilities develop over time, through supportive relationships and opportunities to practice.
And this begins long before preschool. A baby discovers cause and effect through repeated interactions with a responsive caregiver. A toddler develops spatial awareness while filling and emptying containers. A preschooler explores language, social relationships, and symbolic thinking while inventing an imaginary world with friends.
As educators, our responsibility is to recognize where children are developmentally and offer experiences that challenge and support them, rather than expecting every child to reach the same milestones in exactly the same way.
Honoring Childhood at Harmony
There can be tremendous pressure to help children get ahead, particularly as kindergarten approaches. But the first five years of life are not simply preparation for what comes next. They are an important period of learning and development in their own right.
Ryan's work also reminds us that access to play is an issue of equity. Children's opportunities to engage in meaningful, playful learning are shaped by their environments, resources, and communities. Every child deserves experiences that invite curiosity, creativity, connection, and discovery.
At The Harmony School, we draw inspiration from the Reggio Emilia approach, the natural world, Jewish values, and research on early childhood development. We envision children investigating the world around them, expressing ideas through art and movement, developing language through storytelling, and exploring mathematical and scientific concepts through hands-on experiences.
We also believe that learning happens in relationships. Caring for one another, contributing to a community, asking questions, and recognizing that our ideas matter are all meaningful parts of a child's education.
When we think about the skills children need for the future, perhaps we should ask not only what they know, but how they approach something they don't yet understand.
Do they try again when they’ve failed? Are they resilient? Do they have the skills to navigate social situations like disagreements? These are foundations worth nurturing, not only because they help children prepare for school, but because they matter throughout life.
References and Further Reading
Baker, M., & Davila, G. (2018). Inquiry is play: Playful participatory research. NAEYC, Voices of Practitioners. https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/yc/nov2018/inquiry-is-play-playful-participatory-research
Danniels, E., & Pyle, A. (2018). Defining play-based learning. Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development. https://www.child-encyclopedia.com/pdf/expert/play-based-learning/according-experts/defining-play-based-learning
Ryan, L. (2024). Deepening commitments to playful learning in early childhood education. Exchange, Spring 2024, pp. 74–75.
Bakstran, S., Conner, J., Hurd, L., Schaefer, J., Rockaway, M., & Vejvada, S. Illuminating Play in Early Childhood Learning. https://sites.google.com/view/acalltoplay
Byington, T. A., & Kim, Y. (2017). Promoting preschoolers' emergent writing. NAEYC. https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/yc/nov2017/emergent-writing
National Association for the Education of Young Children. (2020). Developmentally appropriate practice position statement.
Yogman, M., et al. (2018). The power of play: A pediatric role in enhancing development in young children. Pediatrics, 142(3).
Harvard University, Center on the Developing Child. Executive function and self-regulation.