Let the Kids Play!

Toys and games are typically lumped together as “things kids play with.” While a game may also be a type of toy, there are distinctive differences between the two, which shape how kids activate their knowledge and thinking to learn.

Toys invite children to decide. A child using the toy defines how to engage with it. Children can agree to use their toys together in similar ways or use their imaginations to come up with completely new ways of interacting. They bring their own knowledge, thinking, and purpose to the experience. They invent the rules. They experiment, revise, and create. A toy car might become part of a daring rescue mission, or a vehicle for testing which track is the fastest.

Games, on the other hand, are defined by the designer. They are goal-directed and rule-based. Children playing the game must learn and follow the rules. They don’t get to decide what counts as “winning.” Whether it’s a puzzle, board game, or video game, they work toward someone else’s objective or goal using a pre-structured path.

Games can support learning, especially when they’re designed to strengthen logic, cooperation, or knowledge. Kids are presented with a “problem” and they have to figure out how to solve that problem by applying a specific set of knowledge and related thinking skills. They have to know something about the game and the knowledge behind it to be successful, and figuring that out is compelling. For example, to put together a puzzle, you have to know the concept of pieces fitting together into the whole. You know the goal is to put it together in a particular way and to use the image of the completed puzzle as a guide. Those who are puzzle experts have different strategies and approaches they deploy as they complete the puzzle. These are learned either through direct teaching (someone shows you how to sort the pieces by color or start with the edge pieces) or through practice.

Games also help build self-efficacy, or the belief that you can implement a course of action that will be effective. You try strategies, fail, revise, and try again. You learn something about how the world works or how to approach a particular problem space, which builds confidence to do more of that in the future.

While there are some healthy games out there: puzzles, logic games, many board games that teach cooperation or problem solving, there are also many unhealthy games which encourage children to play longer and to spend money. Toys are typically as easy to pick up as they are to put down. They are not goal-directed. They are guided by the user’s own personal interests or a “problem” they may choose to invent and solve for themselves following rules they choose to set. For example, kids might pretend that their cafe is out of food and so they have to invent a new kind of tasty cuisine or their teddy bear is sick and needs to fixed with surgery or medicine. When kids are playing with toys, they are self-directing their thinking and learning. Kids decide how much time they want to spend imagining and discovering. They draw on their existing knowledge and apply it to the toy’s context. They get to imagine new ways of thinking, interacting, creating, and manipulating based on what they know. It deepens their knowledge and activates critical thinking that supports later learning.

Unfortunately in schools we don’t often encourage this kind of self-directed learning. I think it’s a combination of factors as to why.

1. Pressure from leadership to perform on assessments results in intense focus on standards (or goals) at the exclusion of other ways of learning.
2. The amount of diversity in learners creates a sense of chaos and panic: “How will I ever be able to get all of these different individuals to do what is written in this standard?” This often leads teachers to control the situation and tamp down deviation from the main thread.
3. Teachers fear that some learners won’t have the knowledge or skills to self-direct learning, and so it could result in less learning or behavioral problems: “Will they be ready for the state test? Will they just goof off or interrupt other kids trying to learn?”

Most of our learning in schools is goal-directed. There are standards we want students to meet. Often times learning starts with a “problem” or question that needs to be figured out. In more extreme situations, systems “gamify” learning as a way to motivate children. When the problem isn’t compelling enough to motivate kids to figure it out (How do you turn memorizing math facts into a problem-based activity?) designers sometimes build in “dark patterns,” which encourage kids to keep playing even after they’re no longer cognitively engaged. These design patterns reward kids with irrelevant incentives that have nothing to do with learning like “loot” or a new outfit for an avatar or a different background scene. The kids are not building healthy learning habits. These games are designed to be addictive, not educational. It’s the same logic behind slot machines.

Rather than trying to manipulate kids to learn, though, I believe that a more powerful approach is the one we see with toys: inquiry-based learning that prioritizes the child’s agency and imagination. Consider this example from *Developing Curriculum for Deep Thinking*:

“In goal-free or goal-nonspecific problems [. . .] learners are given information (objects, their mass, angle of incline, friction) and then are asked to determine what they can do with it (Ayres, 1993; Van Merriënboer & Kirschner, 2017). [. . .] Usually, learners receive goal-specific problems, such as “A car with a mass of 950 kg accelerating in a straight line from rest for 10 seconds travels 100 meters. What is the final velocity of the car?” This problem could easily be made goal nonspecific by replacing the last line with ‘Calculate the value of as many of the variables involved here as you can.’ Here, the learner would calculate the final velocity, acceleration, and force exerted by the car at top acceleration. And if the word ‘calculate’ was replaced by ‘represent,’ the learner could also include graphs and the like. Nonspecific goal problems invite learners to move forward from the givens and to explore the problem space, which may help them construct cognitive schemas.

“This can then be followed by more targeted teaching and knowledge building, and finally returning to problem-solving to reinforce their understanding (Kapur, 2008).”

In this example, the shift from goal-directed to more inquiry-based, self-directed learning seems fairly simple and could result in a more flexible knowledge development. Cognitive schemas, deep mental frameworks that organize and help us apply knowledge, are not easily built through rigid tasks. They develop when we interact, explore, and make meaning ourselves. (More on that next week!)

So what does this mean? Applying this back to the concept of “games” and “toys,” when children are encouraged to play with toys and engage in learning that is not goal-directed, they have the potential for deeper learning.

It also means we need to design more toy-like learning experiences. This is why we designed Wonderwood as a toy, not a game.

Wonderwood honors a child’s curiosity — it does not direct it. There’s no score or avatar outfit to unlock. We include real knowledge, presented in a way that invites exploration. Children are exposed to new topics, connected texts, and accurate facts that both expand and deepen their knowledge. And the more they know, the easier it is to learn more because knowledge is sticky and it snowballs over time.

Learning is the reward in Wonderwood, not coins, points, or prizes. With parent support, children can build healthy learning habits at home. When children use Wonderwood, they build cognitive schemas and expand their understanding of the world, which leads them to more productive play off the app and stronger learning experiences throughout their day. The results go deeper when kids are invited to imagine, explore, and direct their own learning. That’s what toys allow, and that’s what Wonderwood supports.

Next Steps:

• Read more about Wonderwood’s approach to building knowledge.
• Download Wonderwood to develop your child’s knowledge-building habits!
• Sign up to receive free learning resources via email. We’re sharing free weekly knowledge-building activities that parents can use to build knowledge through conversation and play.
• Access this infographic to learn how to be more intentional when choosing learning tools for your children.
• Share this post with someone who might be interested in children’s learning.