This Sunday’s NYT Magazine had a fascinating article on the use of play to teach young children emotional-control skills. I noted this:
In one experiment, 4-year-old children were first asked to stand still for as long as they could. They typically did not make it past a minute. But when the kids played a make-believe game in which they were guards at a factory, they were able to stand at attention for more than four minutes. In another experiment, prekindergarten-age children were asked to memorize a list of unrelated words. Then they played “grocery store” and were asked to memorize a similar list of words — this time, though, as a shopping list. In the play situation, on average, the children were able to remember twice as many words.
All I’ll say is this: sometimes playing something is the same thing as doing that thing. Playing factory-guard is a lot like standing guard. Playing memorize-the-list is a lot like memorizing a list. And thinking like a scientist is a lot like being a scientist.
