Why Guided Play is the Secret to Playtime with Your Kids

“Well, we don’t have a toy combine” I said in passing.

He looked sad and at a loss as to what to play with. “Wait,” I said, “we can make one out of Duplos.”

“Really?” he asked, not so sure as to what I was talking about.

“Sure, let’s see what I can help you figure out” I said and quickly grabbed up some Duplo blocks and started piecing them together.

Before long we had a “combine” made out of 4 Duplo blocks. I made a “vroom” sound as I ran it over a field of toy corn we already had. He loved it. You could instantly see the gears in his head turning as he decided how he could play with it. He carried it around all day, even in the car. This is when I realized the power of guided play in toddler development.

As a parent, you may wonder if all that time you spend with your child playing with blocks and puzzles really helps them learn anything. In an age in which new, high-tech toys are showing up on shelves everyday, it is tempting to think that “old fashioned” toys like blocks and puzzles are boring.

In an age where “everyone” is sending their children to academic preschools to learn phonics and addition, you may wonder if this seemingly simple play with blocks really helps them at all.

However, research is showing us that this is far from the truth. A recent study by researchers at Temple University showed that young children who played with blocks along with an interactive adult developed a larger spatial vocabulary (e.g., words like “under” or “over”). Spatial vocabulary, not surprisingly, is associated with the development of better spatial abilities.

Related reading: The Developmental Benefits of Dress-Up Play

Having good spatial abilities is not only important if you dream of your child becoming an engineer, but they also come in handy in everyday life. If you’ve ever tried to put together a piece of unassembled furniture, you know the importance of spatial skills.

The key aspect of this study is the role that parents play in interacting with their children through guided play. In the study, children were placed in three groups to compare:

1. “free” play with the blocks with little assistance from adults,
2. “preassembled” play in which the blocks were glued together into a structure, or
3. “guided” play in which adults helped children create a structure based on graphic instructions

As you might expect, children in the “guided” play group showed the highest development of spatial vocabulary. This was due to the fact that children learned concepts like “over” and “under” from listening to the adults work with them in creating the block structure.

What is Guided Play?

Beyond the development of spatial skills, this study reminded me of the importance of this idea of “guided” play. Play is the “work” of childhood and research has shown repeatedly how play-based learning fits better with young children’s developmental capabilities than rote learning.

Play-based learning, however, doesn’t necessarily mean that kids should be left to do whatever they want all the time. Some adult guidance is useful in helping kids structure their play and learn new concepts. This doesn’t mean you have to instruct your child how to play, but offering some ideas or a starting point is often helpful.

Related reading: The Fallacy of Early Academics

I have found in playing with my sons that they will often come up with an idea of something they want to create or imitate based on something they saw in a book or video, but they may not quite know how to implement it. Once they mention an idea, I will help them come up with the tools (usually whatever toys are lying around) to create the vision.