The Ministry of Higher and secondary education of the Republic of Uzbekistan

UNDERSTAND CHILD DEVELOPMENT

Understanding how play supports learning means understanding how children learn. Just as a tree’s roots form a foundation on which the tree can thrive, our teaching must have roots in child development in order for children to thrive.

Once my students had experienced play-based learning, they were more focused, motivated, and purposeful. Most important, they were happier. Bringing play-based learning to my classroom created balance, deepened our learning, and defined our classroom community as a place where we could learn and grow together.

1.2 Play -based learning

Literacy development is a vital part of your child’s overall development. It’s the foundation for doing well at school, socialising with others, problem-solving, making decisions, developing independence, managing money and working.

But before children can learn to read and write, they need to develop the building blocks for literacy – the ability to speak, listen, understand, watch and draw.

And as children get older, they also need to learn about the connection between letters on a page and spoken sounds. For this to happen, your child needs plenty of experience with:

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  pictures and objects – how you can use words to talk about them
  
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  letters and words – how they look and sound, and what they’re called
  
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  sounds – how words can rhyme, begin and end with the same letters, be broken up into parts like syllables, be formed by blending different sounds and so on.
  

You can help with all these areas of your child’s early literacy development by:

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  communicating with your child
  
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  reading together
  
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  playing with rhyme and other sounds with your child.
  

And the great news is that you can do this in ways that are fun for both of you.

The language experiences that children have before they start school form powerful brain connections. These connections are used for language, thinking and understanding. Without activities like talking, singing and reading, the brain doesn’t develop these important connections.