Presented in partnership with Play-Doh Brand
Illustration: Kinomi
Melissa Stenhouse knows how play can positively impact a kid. She?s seen it time and again in her role as program coordinator at Today?s Family Early Learning and Child Care, a non-profit that offers child care and parental-support classes. But her favourite success story is about a girl named Zoey* and her love of pies.
Zoey was a grade four student in Stenhouse?s after-school program who had zero interest in reading. ?We started to notice she was creating elaborate apparatuses out of blocks,? says Stenhouse, ?and we figured out that she was building a set for a cooking show about pies.? So Stenhouse and her colleagues took it up a notch by adding baking?pies, specifically?to the program offerings. After they talked about what she would need to make a pie, Zoey learned to write out a recipe and began to show an interest in cookbooks; this led to an increase in her desire to read. ?It was incredible,? says Stenhouse. ?Expressing herself through play expanded her reading, and she won?t put her books down now.? But improved literacy is just the tip of the jungle gym when it comes to the benefits of play. It?s no secret that play is integral to a child?s overall development?researchers have been reporting this fact for decades. A 20-year study out of Pennsylvania State University and Duke University found a correlation between social competence (one of the benefits derived from play) in kindergartners and their ...