Analysis Of David Kohn's Let Kids Learn Through Play

Starting school is important time for the young children, their families, and teachers. Every parent is proud of their children at this time when they are starting school and they are looking forward for their child’s success in school and rest of their lives. Preschool and Kindergarten are supposed to be getting kids ready for school. In his op-ed “Let Kids Learn through Play,” David Kohn compares how kids in twenty years ago used to learn in school and today’s kids. Twenty years ago, preschooler, kindergarten, first grade and second grade students spent most of their time playing such as building block, drawing, and creating nonexistent world. Nowadays, these activities were abandoned and teachers are more focused on the higher education …show more content…
The scientists believe that this has the opposite effect and is delaying their emotional and cognitive development. Rebecca Marcon, a psychology professor at the University of North Florida, studied 343 preschoolers who were “academically oriented”. After four years of her study, she finds out that the children who were “academically oriented” obtain considerably lower grade than the children who were given more freedom to learn through play. Kohn says that children’s development may have been delayed by “overly academic preschool …show more content…
It is very important to teach young children important lessons that will help them grow mentally and physically. It is the parents and their teachers and everyone that involves are responsible to help them learn. In my experience as a mother, I see that my three-year old child learning through her play. She loves to play and play is essential to her health and growth development because that is how children learn and develop ideas about the world around them. I see that my toddler flipping her hands and pretending to be an airplane. I see her building block and trying to figure it out how to make it a tall building. This is important because she is doing critical thinking and using her imagination and creativity and this will help her physical and mental growth. My three-year old daughter already learned so much through her play. At this age she can sing the alphabet letter song, she can count numbers up to ten and if I point to a letter or a number she would tell me what it is and she also knows all the colors and shapes. If I show her a picture of animals on the picture books she would name them and knows how they sound them. Sometimes she pretends that she is having tea party with her dolls and she invites her little brother and she gives him directions of where to sit and what do to. This shows me that she is play a role of leadership and how to follow