Educating Children in the New Millennium: Child’s Play

By Steven T. Webb

Our 3-year-old daughter, Tess, is in love. Her passion is the Wiggles, a children’s performance group from Australia. Last year, she was in love with Jeff Wiggle, who wears the purple shirt. Her new crush is Sam Wiggle, who wears the yellow shirt. Recently, as we were saying grace before dinner, Tess told us one thing she was thankful for. You guessed it—“the yellow Wiggle.”

We know our daughter is constructing mental “maps” based on her experiences. Jean Piaget, the child psychologist, described this early-childhood development stage as “pre-operational.” He theorized that a child’s mental models, or cognitive structures, are based on the child’s activities; engagement makes meaning. Free, unstructured play is healthy and, in fact, essential for helping children reach important social, emotional, and cognitive developmental milestones. Piaget’s theory is based on the idea that the developing child builds cognitive structures known as mental maps or schemes for understanding and responding to physical experiences.

What is known as constructivism postulates that by reflecting on our experiences, we develop our own understanding of the world. Each of us generates our own mental models to make sense of our experiences. Learning, therefore, is the process of adjusting our mental models to accommodate new experiences. Constructivist teaching focuses on creating experiential and engaging activities for students, such as participating in a science fair. This kind of learning also involves...