When the doors to Mansfield Elementary School in northeastern Connecticut officially opened to students in the 2023-24 school year, Principal Kate McCoy had a lot to be excited about.
She looked forward to building a new school community for the estimated 550 students coming together from three former area schools that had closed due to aging infrastructures and declining enrollment. And she appreciated how the building’s features—abundant natural light, a patio for outdoor learning, a dedicated LEGO room, and the neighboring Mansfield Hollow State Park, whose 250-plus acres allow for easy access to class hikes and other outdoor activities—would support her primary goal as an elementary school leader: to create a culture of joy for students.
The timing was right.
In 2023, Connecticut passed legislation mandating a return to a teaching approach for young learners that has eroded across the country in the wake of more rigorous academic expectations: guided play.
“I believe elementary schools need to be places where we build joy, and play is how we can get there,” said McCoy. “Pushing play was part of our dialogue from the get-go.”
McCoy’s message, and the state’s newly implemented legislation, are a part of the growing pushback to the “academization” of kindergarten. Over the past couple decades, educators in the early grades have increasingly introduced literacy and math standards with an eye toward preparing students for the grades, and standardized tests, ahead. Explorative, imaginative play that once dominated early-elementary classrooms has been de-emphasized, teachers say.
But while rigorous academic standards in the early grades may be here to stay, how schools best support students in reaching these standards isn’t set in stone.
“The academic rigor of kindergarten has changed, but that does not mean that play should be removed,” McCoy said. “When children find joy at school, they are more willing to take risks, persevere, and engage in challenging learning.”
Connecticut educators pushed for legislation that reintegrates play in early grades
Members of the Connecticut Education Association pushed hard for the 2023 legislation that reinstated play in early-elementary classrooms. To bolster its argument, the association surveyed the state’s K-3 teachers and found that the teachers reported dramatic declines in play, coinciding with a rise in direct instruction and test preparation. The survey also noted a significant increase in behavioral problems and more anxiety in the early grades in recent years.
Joslyn DeLancey, who taught elementary school in Connecticut public schools for 15 years before joining the state teachers’ union as vice president in 2021, witnessed firsthand such changes sweep through kindergarten programs. The school day went from a half day to a full day. Teachers were told by school leaders to remove from their classrooms blocks, dress-up materials, and other sources of imaginative play.
“Then they really started pushing these forced scripted curriculums and teaching to the test and really just took all of the play out of the classroom,” she said.
That’s starting to change. The Constitution State’s law, which went into effect July 2024, requires public elementary schools to provide play-based learning for kindergarten and preschool students and permits teachers in grades 1-5 to incorporate play-based learning.
DeLancey continues to support the law’s implementation, offering professional development workshops for elementary school educators on play-based learning.
The Mansfield school system has emerged as a key partner in the association’s efforts to educate teachers on how to incorporate guided play into the curricula. In the summer of 2024, the district, which serves just under 1,000 students, collaborated with the union to host two days of professional learning on developmentally appropriate guided play aligned to academic standards.
That professional learning continues. “Through ongoing professional development, coaching, and collaboration, play-based learning continues to deepen across our school,” McCoy said.
Teachers at Manchester Elementary report that, in the brief time that they’ve been encouraged to deliberately weave guided play into academic lessons, they’re seeing how it benefits their young students—namely, igniting their innate curiosity and reducing feelings of academic pressure.
Using imaginative, playful lessons to make learning stick
For veteran teachers at Mansfield Elementary like Erika LaBella, the changes couldn’t come soon enough.
“What I’m teaching kindergartners now is what I was teaching 1st graders many moons ago,” LaBella said. “We were slowly watching ourselves move away from play. Then Kate brought this [new instruction] back to us and said, ‘We can incorporate play into our academics,’ and that’s what we’ve all been able to do—find a way to have the kids be joyful throughout the whole day, instead of just having one little isolated time to go play.”
That joyfulness can extend even to the more mundane lessons, like learning new vocabulary, which historically has involved word lists and rote memorization. Courtney Ramsdell, a kindergarten teacher at Mansfield Elementary, has found a better way to get new vocabulary to stick for her young students.
She starts with a focus wall that relates to a specific lesson. In the fall, for instance, Ramsdell’s focus wall centered on a pumpkin patch that doubled as an interactive learning board. The soil for the pumpkin patch required nutrients—a vocabulary word whose meaning made sense to students in the context of growing pumpkins. These nutrients made the soil fertile, another vocabulary word. The students labeled the different parts of the pumpkin patch with their newly acquired vocabulary and added to it throughout the fall.
“It continued to grow so far above and beyond what the actual curriculum required,” Ramsdell said.
In Kate Harbec’s 2nd grade class at Mansfield Elementary, students in December learned both math principles and vocabulary while building gingerbread people. She first introduced to students the concept of polygons, then, quadrilaterals. She then tested students’ knowledge by spreading out dozens of polygons made out of felt and having students form gingerbread people using only the quadrilateral-shaped pieces.
“They had to think about what the attributes of a quadrilateral were. And by the end of 15 minutes, every kid could tell you that a quadrilateral had four sides,” Harbec said. “It was just a fun, engaging way for them to apply it right away.”
Learning through play takes the pressure away
In most school settings, students learn from a young age that there is a right and a wrong answer. This knowledge can quickly become a source of stress or anxiety.
Students might become fixated with getting the right answer and the best grades. Getting the answer wrong often enough can lead students to lose confidence, become convinced that they’re not good at school, and even stop trying altogether. On the contrary, teaching concepts via playful exploration encourages academic inquiry and stamina, Harbec said.
In science, her 2nd graders are learning about matter and properties by building toys.
“Because it’s playful, when things fall apart, they’re like, ‘OK, I can fix it,’” Harbec said. “It’s a natural way to work on growth mindset and learning, because they don’t feel like they’re right or wrong. It’s all about the process along the way.”
Fixating on getting the “right” answer can derail the learning progress for even very young students. So too can hyperawareness of one’s rank within a classroom. Harbec uses games to circumvent this issue as her students strengthen their math skills.
“One group might be playing with cards or dice with higher numbers to make it more challenging for them. The kids are all just thinking they’re playing this game. And if you come into the room, you think everybody is doing exactly the same thing, but you actually have groups of kids working at their best level,” Harbec said. “It’s a natural way to differentiate.”
Early reports show strong performance at Mansfield Elementary
Mansfield Elementary teachers consistently report high student engagement, collaboration, oral language, and confidence, said McCoy, the school’s principal.
In 2023-24, the school’s first full year, Connecticut’s School Performance Index (SPI) showed that Mansfield Elementary students, outperformed state averages in English/language arts by 10.5 percentage points—74.4% compared with 63.9%. The following year, the school’s SPI score in ELA rose to 77.5%, the highest in both the district and the state.
Thirty-two percent of the school’s students are eligible for free or reduced lunch, and 10% identify as English learners.
Meanwhile, in 2023-24, the school’s math SPI score was 74.4%, compared with the district’s overall score of 72.2% and the state’s average score of 60.2%. In 2024-25, the school again outperformed all other schools in the state, with a math SPI score of 75.5%.
Based on state assessment results, Mansfield Elementary has been recognized as a School of Distinction for the past two years.
“This reinforces that centering joy and play does not mean lowering expectations,” McCoy said. “It means creating the conditions where students can do the hard work of learning.”
