When we watch children play, we are often struck by their intensity and captivated by their engagement. Children experience delight in playing games and creating imaginary worlds. Whether inside a cardboard box teaching their teddies, sailing the ocean on a cushion, or chanting while playing ball games with friends, they are present in the moment and not thinking — as scientists do! — about the benefits of play. Children simply love to play.

The PALS group (Play and Learning Scholars Around the World) invited 400 five- and seven-year-old children (and mothers) in five countries (Argentina, Denmark, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and the United States) to share their views about play and learning. First, in a card-sorting task, children were asked to put cards into two groups: activities that included play and those that did not. Children sorted the same cards again, this time separating cards into activities that included learning and those that did not. Children were then invited to teach a puppet from another galaxy how to play, and how it might learn something. Finally, the scene was set for the key question: ”Can you play and learn at the same time?”

Mothers in the five countries recognized that play and learning occur simultaneously, like a rope that is continually intertwining. But what do children think? Do they think that play and learning are separate or are they already thinking, like adults do — including the scientists behind this research — that play and learning co-exist?

Children’s responses were enlightening. Many children experienced play and learning as distinct activities. Sometimes they also argued that learning was determined by their teachers, but that they controlled what happened during play. As a five-year-old girl from Denmark noted:

“When you have classes, there you are learning. And when you have recess, then you are not learning. …when you are playing, then you decide yourself what you are doing, but when you are learning something then it is the teacher that decides.”

Or as another five-year-old boy from Hong Kong replied, “We can only play after learning,” reflecting his culture’s emphasis on knowledge acquisition.

Nonetheless, children across the five countries reported that the worlds of play and learning overlapped in various ways. Many were aware of the learning that occurs in play. A seven-year-old boy from the United Kingdom astutely commented:

“When you are playing, you are actually learning at the same time, what the animals are called, what they do and what goes where and what lives in places, so, like, say you were playing with horses and cows, they go in pens or in stables. When you are playing, you actually think that your brain’s off but it isn’t – it is still on.”

Learning How to Play

Children recognized that board games such as bingo require them to grasp a set of rules, as a seven-year-old girl from Denmark stated:

“Because you can play and then learn how to play a game. So, like, if you’re playing bingo, you need to learn how to play it at the same time.”

In addition to learning rules, the children highlighted that playing requires the acquisition of skills. One seven-year-old boy from the UK commented, “When you go to football training, it is learning and playing at the same time.” Activities like skipping rope or using a hula hoop require children’s sustained engagement as they work toward mastery. A seven-year-old girl from Argentina told us that “when I used to try to skip with a rope, I couldn’t do it, so then I had to see if I could do it, and at the same time I was learning to skip with a rope.” Play allows children to learn to persevere as they learn new ways to move their bodies.

Playing Affords Learning about their World

Some children not only understood that they need to learn rules and skills to play, they also recognised that play offered opportunities to learn new things about the world. “If we were playing something about animals, you would learn about animals a bit more,” said a seven-year-old boy from the US. And a seven-year-old child from Denmark commented:

“It is a game for me to play – soccer. But I also learn from that at the same time. … If you put the two together, then you are playing when you are learning! For example, the first time I played FIFA it was a game to me, but I learned something as well.”

A seven-year-old girl from Hong Kong commented on learning to engage in emotion regulation during play. She said:

“When you play, you learn that you cannot just cry but also have to cheer others up when they lose. Cheering others up is what you can learn.”

Some children recognized the social nature of both play and learning. As a five-year-old girl from Denmark remarked, “Trinne and Hanne just ‘learned’ ‘me how to do it, then I could do it myself because they taught me.”

Hearing Children’s Voices

Children’s voices indicate that they appreciate the need to learn rules and new skills to play and that playing affords learning about the world around them – animals, numbers, and even how to accomplish the kind of learning they do in school, like math. Speaking of playing educational games, such as math games, one seven-year-old girl from Denmark explained:

“We have a game where there is both maths and play things , that is also to play, but it is also to learn because there are those dots on it, because you know that there is five, and then there is six and then seven, eight, nine.”

Some parents and caregivers may worry about whether children are falling behind academically during the pandemic. Perhaps one way forward for these parents is to offer children playful activities that encourage learning as well. Whether it’s doing a jigsaw puzzle together that strengthens their spatial skills, or a card game that invites them to count and do addition and subtraction, there are ways to have fun and learn at the same time.

As a seven- year-old boy from Argentina said, “Playing and learning together … is more fun than learning alone.”

We couldn’t have put it better ourselves!

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Thinking that it’s play versus learning misses the point; these are inextricably linked.

“I look for stuff to play and teach them all the time, like going on walks, teaching them about being thoughtful stewards of the environment, like I said, cooking, or we garden a lot, and I even have them play with Play-Doh and have them make shapes and all that kind of stuff, lots of playing overlapped with learning (US mother, 2018).”

With families living in lockdown, play seems more prominent than ever in children’s lives. Some parents may worry that children are just frittering away their time. To the contrary, caregivers may be reassured that numerous studies suggest that learning is a fundamental part of what occurs during play. As children play, they explore, learn and practice new language skills, and increase their social acumen. For example, during pretend play, children adopt adult characters such as teacher, doctor, or even king and queen, effectively rehearsing the roles of adulthood. Researchers who study play have known for many years that play fuels learning and that the learning gained through play with adults is likely to be even more enriching. Just as the mother quoted above noticed, much learning occurs as children play.

‘Can you play and learn at the same time?’

PALS (Play and Learning Scholars Around the World) asked this question to 200 mothers of young children from five countries (Argentina, Denmark, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, and the United States) two years before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our study was designed to uncover how mothers and children think about play and learning. Do mothers recognize—as researchers do—that play promotes learning, or do they think of it as “just” play? Do children consider play and learning to be distinct, given that they spend time in a special place—school—devoted to learning? The only way to answer these questions was to ask mothers and children what they thought.

“Playing and learning aren’t two different subjects … Children learn and play in everything.”

Mothers from all countries recognized that “playing and learning aren’t two different subjects … Children learn and play in everything”, as a mother from Argentina said. Many of them also explained that play is a privileged way of learning. As a mother from Hong Kong told us “I know that children in the course of playing are learning much more than from a book, from play they definitely absorb things easier, with more focus”.

Mothers also highlighted different types of learning that occur during play. For example, a mother from the UK described how children develop problem solving skills by saying, “If you’re playing a game you can still be learning; you can always learn new approaches or new ways to solve problems.” A mother from Argentina described the creativity that comes from playing with clay, noting that her son was “imagining things with that, he’s creating … He’s involved in a world of his own”. In Denmark, one mother focused on both the social and academic skills that children learn through play, saying, “When they play with their friends, they learn the social rules, and when they play in the kitchen … they get to learn about maths and ingredients.”

Clearly, mothers in the countries we studied were well aware that play promotes their children’s learning in many ways and in many domains.

The play and learning embedded in children’s activities

We also separately asked mothers and five- and seven-year-old children to sort 36 cards that depicted a range of activities. Some cards showed activities that represented play (e.g., dressing up as animals and hide-and-seek), some cards depicted school situations (e.g., children sitting at a table writing), while other cards depicted daily activities (e.g., brushing teeth). We asked them to sort the cards into two groups: activities that included play and those that did not. Children and mothers were then invited to sort the cards again, this time separating cards into activities that included learning and those that did not. This allowed us to see which cards mothers and children in these five countries selected to represent both play and learning.

As the figure shows, mothers tend to see learning in pretty much everything that children do; they recognize that learning is a major part of children’s lives and that much of it occurs during play. On the other hand, children make a sharper distinction between play and learning, indicating that activities like hide-and-seek and throwing a ball are exclusively play, while mothers see the learning possible even in playing with bubbles.

In Hong Kong, however, a society known for emphasizing school achievement, children and mothers saw fewer overlaps between play and learning than did their counterparts in other countries. The tension between the traditional emphasis on memorization versus play-based learning is captured by a Hong Kong mother who said, “Once children are in school, then maybe there are things that they need to just memorise; these require rote learning … because it is all for the exams. Playing means that your grades will decline.”

Play and learning in the pandemic

With so many children now doing ‘school at home’, families worldwide may feel pressure to help their children learn in traditional ‘school-based’ ways, given that parents sorted school tasks only into the learning pile. Yet there is nothing wrong with learning in playful ways that keep children’s interest and invite them to have fun at the same time. A mother from the US explained this well: “Yhey learn through play, they learn by experiencing … by conversation … that’s how they develop language skills. I think it’s totally important. Play should be an active part of learning all the time, in school at really any age level.”

Mothers know best! When we listen, many of them tell us what the science says: play and learning often occur simultaneously and together encourage the kinds of skills children need to succeed in the 21st century. And consider: learning doesn’t have to be a slog when it can be joyful and engaging. Which way would you rather learn?

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Play is an emotional toolbox

Think back to some of your favorite childhood memories of play. These reminiscences probably bring a smile to your face. In fact, most people think of play as a joyful state of mind and body that includes being fully in the moment, with a special combination of confidence and excitement. Recent research by the PALS group (Play and Learning Scholars Around the World) asked mothers in five countries (Argentina, Denmark, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, and the United States) about the feelings they associate with play. Pleasant emotions dominated their responses. For example, a US mother said, “When you’re playing, why wouldn’t you be happy cause you’re having fun, you’re doing an activity, you’re using your imagination, you’re engaged.” A mother from Hong Kong acknowledged that play offers children first-hand experiences that “actually can’t be learned from a book … how to communicate with other people, how to read people’s facial expressions or how to read how they are feeling, expressing your own feelings.” Mothers around the world considered play to be associated with pleasurable feelings but they also recognized that children experience a range of emotions when they play.

Since children are the experts in how play makes them feel, the PALS researchers also asked five- and seven-year-old children to describe what play meant to them. Perhaps surprisingly, children mentioned more than just joyful emotions. With their words, gestures and actions, they spoke of having fun, but also trying hard, thinking, and needing to be focused. As one seven-year-old boy from Argentina said, in play “you enter a fantasy world, and it is really fun and you concentrate.” Children spoke of play as a way of diving into a world that only they inhabit. They also reported that they became cross or frustrated when they had to wait their turn, did not win, or found that an activity was too difficult for them. A five-year-old girl from the UK described feeling cross if someone else popped the bubbles she was making. Others explained that they felt confused, nervous or even a bit scared when playing games they didn’t quite understand. They also expressed loneliness, as when they yearned for a companion but had to play alone. Wider research evidence suggests that during shared pretend play, the variety of emotions children can explore expands as they watch their playmates respond with laughter, tears, or impatience.

Thus play works as an emotional toolbox—a safe space in which many emotions can be experienced without consequences or worrying about whether the emotion is acceptable to the big people in children’s lives.

Learning through play extends to other parts of children’s lives

The arc of feelings that children experience during play is important for their wellbeing, and even more so during the current pandemic. Given the events happening around the world, being deeply engaged in play can help children escape from their own and others’ worries and uncertainties.

As adults, we might sometimes think that children are ‘only’ playing.  But play offers many opportunities for children to grow emotionally and cognitively.

Children are likely to be experiencing many emotions related to the huge changes occurring in their lives – schools are shuttered, they can’t see their friends and relatives, they are stuck inside, sports clubs are suspended, and family members may be unwell. And consider the postponement of birthday parties that children often look forward to all year long.

Using pretend play is a great way to help children express their emotions without having to claim the feelings as their own. Parents and siblings can join in and create imaginative scenarios and play worlds. Pretend play also helps children cope with intense emotions from their unsettling circumstances. Even before the pandemic, for example, a mother from Denmark described observing children “where they played that somebody died, or that they had to go to the hospital or things that they hear in society, they take that into play.” This kind of play affords children the opportunity to work through their fears and to return to a safe place.

Photo: the PALS scholars practising what they study.

When children are playing, they are also practising how to communicate and handle their emotions in socially acceptable ways (for example, it is unacceptable to lash out physically in anger). Working through these emotions in play helps build socioemotional skills such as self-regulation, empathy, and perspective-taking. Play teaches children that emotions come and go. At the start of a game, children may quarrel about a rule, and a minute later they may be following that same rule. Play lets children practise managing difficult situations and gives them confidence to resolve such situation in the future. Similarly, concentrating during play can help children increase their attention span, which can translate to improved attention in school, at home, during sports, and during art projects.

As Lev Vygotsky, the famous Russian child theorist wrote, “In play, children are a head taller than themselves”—meaning that when they play imaginatively, children assume more mature perspectives than they do in real life, for example, playing a teacher, a shop assistant, a powerful wizard, or a superhero.

As adults, we might sometimes think that children are ‘only’ playing. But play offers many opportunities for children to grow emotionally and cognitively. This raises some questions. If play is an emotional toolbox that supports children’s socioemotional learning, when should grownups intervene? Should adults provide a solution for children when they have conflicts? Certainly, adults should intervene when children respond in ways that could harm themselves or others. But otherwise, taking a step back might let children resolve conflicts on their own in unexpected ways. When children ask someone to take turns or stop particular negative behaviors, they build their negotiation skills, and they learn how to advocate for themselves or others in response to what they see as unjust.

Taking the time to observe children at play can help adults understand children’s fears, concerns, and interests. Parents can join in the play in a number of ways, such as asking what children are doing and how they are feeling. Parents might add in another character to sustain and extend the storyline. Or parents and children might make up a dance or song together that fits with the children’s interests. Letting children play while experiencing the full toolbox of emotions will help them feel better in the here and now and prepare them for many future situations where emotion plays a role, including school.

Header photo: Size of the word corresponds to the frequency of the terms mentioned by 5- and 7-year-old children from the 5 countries PALS studied.

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