Holidays bring celebration, rest and, for many families, long stretches of indoor time. For some, this means on kitchen tables. Games provide opportunities for learning mathematics actively.

At first glance, play and explicit reading instruction can seem at odds. Under pressure to improve reading outcomes after years of falling or stagnant scores, schools might or limit imaginative activities to make time for instruction. But this is a false choice. shows that play is not only compatible with the science of reading — it’s a powerful way to build the very skills kids need to become strong readers in the first place. In fact, children learn best through hands-on, engaging activities that make new sounds and words stick.

That’s because play isn’t just fun; it’s serious learning. — where teachers set up fun activities with clear learning goals — is than direct instruction in promoting learning, particularly for young kids. For instance, that using activities like blocks, drawing and dramatic play to deliver literacy instruction improved children’s oral language, letter recognition and ability to sound out letter blends and words. Learning to read felt like a game for kids, but the gains were real. 

The Boston Public Schools’ evidence-based program shows how this can work at scale. There, children in pre-K through second grade spend most of the morning acting out stories, playing with letters and exploring books — all activities carefully set up by teachers to align with science of reading principles. Unlike many districts that have shifted instruction in the early grades to be more traditionally academic, Boston has made a play-based approach a focal point of K-2 learning. The results show it’s working: consistently display substantially stronger literacy and language skills than their peers who are not enrolled. 

In districts nationwide, programs like and go further. A Tools pre-K classroom, for example, uses themed dramatic play to teach early reading skills; in a pretend grocery store, children might create shopping lists (writing), sort items by categories (vocabulary) and engage in conversation with peers about what to cook for dinner (language development). Every Child Ready classrooms use songs, stories and games to teach sounds and letters, with teachers closely tracking progress to tailor instruction. These approaches combine the best of structured literacy and joyful learning to help children develop the skills to be . Studies show that kids in Every Child Ready on foundational literacy skills, while kindergartners in Tools of the Mind experience significant boosts in and . 

This combination of play and evidence-based reading instruction may be especially important for boys and children in schools serving primarily low-income students. As instruction has shifted toward more sit-still-and-listen activities, many boys — especially those who are among the youngest in their grade — . Play-based approaches, which offer more movement and choice, can help engage boys in learning early, laying a stronger foundation for reading and future academic success. 

For low-income children who are already to have access to for play than their wealthier peers, that minimal play time often gets sacrificed first as schools scramble to improve test scores. By making a shift away from play, schools could unintentionally be depriving kids of one of the most valuable and evidence-based tools in their toolkits. 

With below proficient in reading, addressing America’s literacy gap is critical. But the answer isn’t to turn early learning into a series of drills and worksheets. To inspire a joy for learning, play is key. Reading success should not — and doesn’t have to — come at the cost of the creativity, joy and social growth that are key to the early years. 

Education leaders and policymakers should promote evidence-based curricula, training and assessments that integrate both reading and play. Help teachers make literacy instruction playful and engaging, and give kids the freedom to imagine and explore as they learn, and you’ll see results. 

Disclosure: The Overdeck Family Foundation provides financial support to Tools of the Mind, Every Child Ready and The 74.

The cofounder and executive director of Chicago nonprofit VOCEL, which stands for Viewing Our Children as Emerging Leaders, thinks of her role as “democratizing brain science,” explaining, “We see ourselves as a go-between between everyday families and academic centers like the and .”

Sure, play is fun, and ample evidence demonstrates that it’s a key to how young children learn, but can it also address economic and social inequities? Building upon the investigations of Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Roberta Golinkoff, Helen Shwe Hadani and others, a contends that because play builds up assets like self-regulation and motivation, it increases children’s agency, which, in turn, “makes it possible for the child to own and guide their own train of thought.”

Baker and her co-authors continue, “While agency does entail self-reflection in thought and self-determination in action, the scope of these can extend to a wider community and is, therefore, consistent with collectivist values.”

If that all sounds overly abstract or ambitious, consider VOCEL’s story, which began 10 years ago with a visit to the . “This was a preschool where children’s voices were meant to be heard,” recalls Ilhardt. Signs in the hallway read, “No shh zone.” The children walked not in lines but in clusters, in order to encourage, rather than curtail, conversation.

Inspired by what she’d seen in Atlanta, Ilhardt and her cofounder Kelly Powers launched a full-day, year-round nonprofit preschool in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago () and ran it on the principles of play-based learning and putting children in control of their education. Soon, it became apparent that the students’ learning correlated with assets that weren’t accessible to Austin’s families. “I remember recommending a ‘mommy and me’ music class and hearing, ‘They have those out in the suburbs, but they don’t have them here.’ That was one of those light bulb moments for us.”

As VOCEL launched its own housed within neighborhood elementary schools, the organization received feedback that Ilhardt has never forgotten. “I love the model,” said one school principal, “but, no offense to you, I don’t want your people to lead it. I want someone from my community.” This exchange fueled a budding co-creation stance that has persisted to this day and has become central to VOCEL’s approach. It has proven valuable as Chicago ramped up early education through the public schools. VOCEL’s preschool closed, but the academies proliferated. By next year, there will be 24 across the Windy City. Parents and caregivers share their experiences, driving content of the academies, which Ilhardt describes as judgment-free communities, with VOCEL staff supplying research-proven approaches.

Ilhardt’s talent for explaining young minds has led to a new and impactful shift for VOCEL. Public school principals, many who had early learning thrust upon them when Chicago implemented its pre-K initiative, found themselves out of their element. They often resorted to methodologies that apply to older grades, and Ilhardt started getting calls from parents, who said things like, “You taught me it was all about play and nurture and conversation, and now my child is getting worksheets, flashcards and timeouts.”

Upon inquiring with principals at VOCEL’s partner schools, Ilhardt heard principals admit that they didn’t know much about early learning. One even blurted out, “I’m scared of the littles.” Her VOCEL team sought to fill the gap with a coaching and training fellowship for principals and assistant principals. School leaders, she says, are reconsidering schoolwide attitudes about behavior, intervention, discipline and environments conducive to learning at every age. Ilhardt and her team impart developmentally appropriate practices to school leaders in a position to strengthen their early learning programs and smooth the transition from the early years to kindergarten and even the upper grades.

Joyce Pae, principal at The Chicago Academy elementary school, recently went through VOCEL’s Building Early Learning Leaders (BELL) fellowship. She says, “These past few years have been particularly challenging for our littlest learners to our biggest, and one big takeaway I had from BELL was on the importance of co-regulation and focusing on the social and emotional well-being of our children. Our partnership with VOCEL has taught me so much about early childhood and building a strong foundation for our students to succeed.”

Ilhardt notes that public schools in Chicago, like many organizations, have been undergoing a high level of turnover ever since the pandemic started, so it’s important to maintain relationships and continually refresh knowledge about early education as the makeup of schools’ leadership teams evolve. VOCEL customizes their approach to each school, allowing for flexibility.

Throughout the transition from a brick-and-mortar care center to the launch of parent-child academies, to the implementation of the fellowship for principals—and, even more recently, a fellowship for teachers, Ilhardt says her organization has stayed perpetually open to change. “It’s a muscle that definitely needs to be worked,” she says.

Chris Riback: Kathy, Roberta, thank you for coming to the studio.

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff: Our pleasure.

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek: Thank you.

Chris Riback:  Kathy, why is “play” a four-letter word?

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek: Well, it shouldn’t be a four-letter word.

Chris Riback: It shouldn’t be a four-letter word. So what happened? What’d we get wrong?

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek: I think it became “just” play when people got worried…

Chris Riback: Modified with “just.”

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek: Yes, modified with the “just.” We became a more global society. People started to worry and have fear that, oh my gosh, if my kids are playing rather than working, they’re going to fall behind every other kid on the block.

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek: They didn’t want that, because all of us want our kids to go to MIT, and Harvard, and start now in the proper pre-school.

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek: Then the toy companies caught on, and they thought, well, this is a great opportunity. Let’s monopolize on the fear. Let’s market that we can help these kids get ahead. And all of a sudden, toys started to morph more into workstations than into toys themselves. Then you got the educational toy market.

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff: Might I react to what Kathy just said? I just attended James Heckman’s talk, he’s a Nobel prizewinner, economics, and he studies early childhood. One of the things that he emphasized in his talk was that, in our field, it used to be the case that IQ ruled.

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff: And now the findings are showing that it’s not about IQ, it’s about social/emotional development, it’s about perseverance, it’s about executive function. And these are all the things that develop in the context of play.

Chris Riback: What is play? What defines play?

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff: It has to have an imaginary component. It’s done voluntarily. And it doesn’t have any kind of a specific goal.

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek: There’s also a more niche definition that we put out last year. That you’re active, not passive, when you play. You’re engaged in something that’s focusing in, you’re in your flow.

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek: We can have free play at one end of that spectrum. And then you can have what we call guided play, that actually has a learning goal in mind, but allows the child to be the director of the learning.

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek: And then you go to games, well, the games are well thought out, these board games, and things.

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff: Right.

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek: But the kids are also having fun while they’re doing it. And you can go all the way up to non-play, or direct instruction.

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff: We’re not Luddites.

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek: We are not Luddites.

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff: We are firmly in favor of, where’s my cell phone, and, you know. But doing puzzles is great for kids, especially if they do them with adults. Because the adults casually impart important information, like, “Is that an edge piece?”

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff: Playing with blocks is a wonderful thing for children to do. And when parents do it with them, they naturally talk to their kids. Kids pick up all kinds of concepts.

Chris Riback: With that context, what are Learning Landscapes?

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff: Oh, Playful Learning Landscapes is where smart cities and human development meet. What we’re about is changing the landscape of cities so that there are places that children and families can go, and without being teachy-preachy, can engage in activities that will feed right into their learning and conversation.

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek: Let me build on that. What if you could move the learning outside? That stimulation that would occur in so many places, out into public spaces.

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek: They don’t have to be destinations. They have to be invitations from public spaces to engage with the very puzzles, with the very blocks, with the very … impulse control … hopscotches, that we can create right there at a bus stop, right there in a library, right there in a park.

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff: So the big virtue of Playful Learning Landscapes is, it’s free and it’s in kids’ neighborhoods.

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek: And it’s not a destination.

Chris Riback: So give me an example. West Philadelphia?

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek: So, in West Philadelphia, we had an idea. And that idea was, if you have to use the bus stops, why are bus stops just benches where people sit?

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek: And if you watch what goes on at a bus stop…

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff: Wait, I’ll demonstrate. [Acts like playing with smart phone]

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek: It’s like this. Two people, like this.

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff: And the kid is wandering around.

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek: Or looking at another cell phone.

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff: If they’re old enough, yes.

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek: Yes. Okay, so that’s what’s going on in our environment right now.

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek: So we re-imagined it. And we asked if you could build a puzzle wall at a bus stop. Could you put something down in the ground where the kids were getting active and playing a game like hopscotch?

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek: And could that hopscotch be designed so that you could ask the kids, where you see two feet, use one. Where you see one, use two. So if they’re cleverly designed with the learning science embedded in the architecture itself. It invites conversations between parents and children.

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek: One more piece:  The community has to be involved. And it has to be culturally relevant.

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek: So at this bus stop, over 100 community children helped us to build it. Community members picked the spot that was important to them. A spot where Martin Luther King had given one of the first freedom march speeches. And so our puzzles are Martin Luther King.

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff: But it gets better. We took findings from the science of learning and turned those into things that kids and families can play at.

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff: And, secondly, we actually did an experiment. We compared the amount of talk that children and parents did in our Playful Learning Landscape’s installation compared to a playground that was also right in the neighborhood. And that attracted people from the same demographic.

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff: And we know from that how much … For example, STEMs: science, technology, engineering, and math language … comes out in the context of our Learning Landscape installations, compared to the playground.

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek: So these come out of, eventually, metro budgets. But what do they do? Well, our hope and prayer is that we’re going to be able to lift up a neighborhood so that these homes will then allow their kids to get that stimulation in the public spaces.

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek: And we’ll begin to narrow the very, very long held, since the 1970s, achievement gap. And narrow it. At the core of everything we know in the science, it’s that we learn through a brain that has been evolutionarily prepared to interact with human beings.

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek: So the more we can stimulate that interaction, and the more we can direct it, or target it towards certain outcomes, the better off our children will be. And the more opportunities to thrive. Dream about what cities can be, and that’s where we take Playful Learning Landscapes.

Chris Riback: Thank you both. Thank you for your work. Thank you for stopping by the studio.

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek: Sure, thank you.

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff: Oh, it was fun. Thank you, thank you.