The Power Of Play-Based Learning
What is Play-Based Learning?
We often talk about the power of play, but what do we mean? What’s powerful about play?
Play is a universal experience. Across cultures, all people engage in some form of play. And it’s not just for fun. When we play, we learn new skills, develop emotional awareness and skills, learn how communicate with each other, and discover new things about ourselves and the world.
At Right To Play, we harness the power of play to support children's learning and well-being. In our programs, we use play to help children learn to read and do math, develop self-confidence, process trauma, express their opinions, and claim their rights. Around the world, Right To Play–trained teachers and coaches use play and play-based learning to transform children's lives.
How Does Play Support Children's Learning and Well-Being?
Play is not only powerful, it’s versatile. For example, in early childhood, play is key to healthy brain development. As children grow up, play makes learning fun, engaging, and inclusive – both inside and outside the classroom. Because everyone plays, low-cost and locally relevant ways to play are usually easy to find. And in a crisis, play is the best way to help children cope and recover.
Play supports children's learning and well-being in several core ways.
Learning Happens Through Play
Play fosters important skills from early childhood that sets children up for academic engagement and success throughout their schooling.
Play is inclusive
It provides a universal experience that allows all children to grow and learn, facilitating conversations and understanding of diverse and complex experiences.
Play supports emotional well-being
It helps children build secure attachments and strengthen their socio-emotional learning.
Playing For Impact
For 25 years, we’ve been a global leader in delivering play based-programs that promote children and young people’s learning and well-being.
We teach parents and caregivers of young children how to build strong bonds with their children and support their early learning and socio-emotional development through play. For example, in Uganda’s Isingiro refugee settlement, more than 1,600 parents learned playful parenting and trauma-informed care, resulting in a 52% increase in positive parent-child relationships and a 93% rise in the number of parents who use play to support their children’s development.
We work with teachers and educational officials at the pre-primary, primary, and secondary levels to integrate play-based lessons into curriculum and lessons to support children’s literacy, numeracy, and socio-emotional learning skills. For example, students in Ghana improved their word recognition, reading fluency, and comprehension thanks to the P3 program, which trained more than 83,000 teachers in how to use play-based learning strategies like games and storytelling to improve literacy scores.
In conflict-affected settings and fragile contexts, we use play to help children to cope with trauma, regain a sense of normalcy, and get back to learning. For example, in Lebanon, hundreds of children joined play-based psychosocial sessions aimed at helping them process the effects of violence and displacement, express their fears, and connect with trusted peers and adults.
Girls are too often excluded from play and education. Through play-based programs at school and in the community, they have a chance to play sports, challenge harmful gender norms through art, theatre, and leadership clubs, and claim their rights. For example, in Senegal, 69% of participants in our sports program reported a reduction in gender-based violence in the community.
Our Approach To Play-Based Learning
Right To Play’s approach to play focuses on how adults and children take the lead and use their agency to engage in play and learning. On one end of the continuum are games and structured activities that are typically adult led. Collaborative play, where control is shared between adults and children, is in the middle. On the opposite end is free play, which is child-directed.
A key feature of effective play‑based learning is the presence of collaborative play (also called guided play), which highlights a need for both adults and children to be involved in play. Collaborative play is a co-created play experience that helps enable children's agency, trust-building, and mutual respect.
Play in Action: Success Stories
Meet some of the children, parents, and teachers whose lives have been transformed through play.
The Play To Grow program helps parents like Banard to foster their pre-school aged children's learning skills, setting them up for academic success.