Gramma comes to pick up her grandchild from English class. She peeps in through the window and heads into the classroom saying: ”Oops, I’m late. They are only playing.”
She is right, but only partly. We are not “already only playing”, we “only” play during our lessons.
Why? Because this is the best way to learn.
I’m sure you agree with us if your child has already tested our method of learning.
It is not rare that 5-6 year olds greet their parents, who arrive to pick them up, by saying: “Please mummy/daddy, let me stay just a little bit more” - begging for only 10 minutes, or even “only half an hour more”.
And this is just one side of the coin, that the children enjoy themselves while playing.
The other side is that we really learn while playing. Since the thinking or learning of a child is directly connected to activities they learn much faster and easier and memorise new vocabulary, expressions and sentences if they act what they are saying and hearing.
'Physical activities are enjoyable and help develop children’s vocabulary and memory skills.'
let me tell a short story that shows exactly this. It happened in our summer camp in July 2016. The hero of the story is one of our little friends, who attended our 2015 summer camp too, being 5 years old then. We would like to thank her for coming with us this year too, and to her parents for believing in us and letting her come with us again.
What really surprised even us, was that the little girl remembered and happily and correctly used and recited about 85% of the words, expressions, sentences and poems that she learnt last year.
Yes, our children’s language lessons look very different from the ones their parents remember having. But they are very efficient too. Our key words are “plays and games”. And experience shows that the rest comes by itself.
“Children enjoy constructive play and games. They are motivating and give children the opportunity to practise a foreign language in a relaxed, enjoyable and purposeful way. They help improve attention span, concentration and memory. Children also learn important social skills such as sharing, turn-taking, collaboration and co-operation.” - says Gail Ellis, Adviser Young Learners and Quality for the British Council in Paris and the author of “Tell it Again!”, and “Teaching children how to learn”, co-authored with Nayr Ibrahim.
Of course we can, or rather we have to play in many ways, and that depends not only on the age of the children.
More about this in a future blog.