‘Play Based Learning’ - Workshop



Ms.Sweta,

Preprimary Coordinator



  The workshop on ‘Play Based Learning’ was conducted at ‘Stone Hill International School ‘  Bangalore by Ann Vanndam.This workshop was the first of its kind organized by the IB. It was a very interactive workshop with lot of debate and discussion on ‘what is play’. 

 There were many burning questions like:

 Can everything be taught through play?

 Do we need to assess play?

The outcome of this workshop gave an insight that ‘YES, everything can be taught through play and the emphasis was on ‘Free Play’. How to create an enabling environment for rich play to thrive. The use of recyclable resources and open ended resources.

A lot of reading materials, and videos of various schools throughout the world were shown where play has been instrumental in shaping the childs understanding and interpretation of his surroundings.

The thing that struck me most was the stark reality from a research-

‘Too many schools place a double burden on young children. Firstly , they heighten their stress by demanding that they master material beyond their developmental level. Then they deprive children of their chief means of dealing with the stress- creative play.’

The three day workshop led to new discoveries and learning and ended  with presentations by each group on the final day.