"Creative play is like a spring that bubbles up from deep within a child."
-Joan Almon, Co-founder of Alliance for Childhood
Philosophy
From its founding in 1966, Bing Nursery School has offered a play-based, child-centered program that reflects particular beliefs and assumptions about the nature of children, the processes of development, and the influence of the environment.
Children are viewed as whole beings, in whom the cognitive, social, emotional, and physical aspects of the self are inextricably intertwined. They are naturally active learners who “are curious and exploratory and they strive toward competence” (Dowley, 1972). They are inherently born to learn about the world and their place in it through play.
Play provides an optimal, meaningful context for children to practice, explore, and expand developing competencies and understandings through active engagement with the physical, social, and cultural world.
During interactive play, children gain experience and competence at taking turns, collaborating, and compromising, which often requires flexibility of thought and action. The interactive nature of play promotes the development of children’s reciprocal relationships, self-regulation, and perspective-taking, while they explore the scripts that surround them in their social world. Play provides meaningful opportunities for the expression of feelings and building awareness of one’s own and other people’s emotions. The confidence, empathy, and resilience that children develop through play is essential for thriving in a diverse and unknown future. Some of the many cognitive competencies children use and develop during play include imagination, problem-solving, symbolic representation, memory, and creativity. Finally, play is fundamental to children's health and well-being.
Extended experiences in play are essential for children’s growth and development. Children need opportunities to engage in a range of types of play, including sensory, constructive, rough and tumble, dramatic, and sociodramatic. It is a source of joy that is a cherished part of childhood.
“Children are most natural and unaffected when they are absorbed in play.”
The Environment
Children’s physical and social environments play a crucial role in shaping their play experiences and growth. Bing’s spacious and naturalistic grounds were carefully designed and landscaped to inspire young children to play and wonder while expanding their learning potential under the guidance and support of highly trained teachers.
The environment offers a wide assortment of materials, an expansive indoor-outdoor classroom, and supportive, responsive adults. Each session includes extended time for play within this environment with few scheduled transitions.
Goals
Through their play experiences in a supportive environment, children have opportunities to:
- Express: emotions, ideas, questions, experiences
- Observe: cause-effect, social behavior, physical world, others’ ideas
- Formulate: plans, scenarios, theories
- Build: strength, coordination, schemas, relationships
- Construct concepts: related to literacy, numeracy, physical world
- Mold mindsets: intrinsic motivation, resilience, curiosity, confidence
- Shape identity: one’s competencies, strengths, challenges, preferences, and similarities and differences from others
Curriculum Approach
Grounded in these beliefs and assumptions, Bing Nursery School takes an emergent approach to building curriculum. Teachers collaboratively plan with the intention of fostering engagement, curiosity, exploration, and challenge through activities and experiences that respond to a particular classroom community's interests and needs.
Five open-ended materials, referred to at Bing as “basic materials,” have provided the backbone to the school’s curriculum: blocks, clay, paint, sand, and water.
These materials have a number of qualities that make them highly beneficial for supporting children’s growth and development. As “open-ended” materials, they do not have a prescribed purpose or identity. They can be manipulated and used in multiple ways by children of varying ages and skill levels without the need of particular knowledge or skills to start using them. With repeated experiences, they also can be used with of greater knowledge, skill, and intentionality leading to a sense of mastery and creative competence. These flexible, manipulable materials all support development of the whole child, involving integrated engagement of their cognitive, social, emotional, and physical selves.
“We might say that the primary aim of education is to enable youngsters to learn how to invent themselves—to learn how to create their own minds.”
What does play look like at Bing?
Children at play in our spacious indoor/outdoor classrooms.
