Learning to Play and Playing to Learn
A Parent-Educator’s View of Emergent Learning
By Jules Beesley
Photo by Jules Beesley
Little Jules: “Can I chase her?”
Daddy Jules: “Why not ask her yourself?”
Little Jules: “Can I go chase her?”
Daddy Jules: “You should go and ask her.”
Little Jules: “Can I go chase her?”
Daddy Jules: “Try, and see what happens.”
Free Forest School is an inclusive learning community of children and adults exploring, playing, and learning together under the trees and beneath the open sky. Children scamper down sun-dappled trails, cross creeks, scramble up cliffs, scoot down cliffs, dip fingers into cool springs, inspect uncovered insects, and squish wild berries between their fingers. My two-and-a-half-year-old son, Jules, has done all these things. But Free Forest School also involves children playing games, negotiating the rules to games, building stick houses, resolving conflicts over sticks, sharing snacks, and singing songs. Learning takes many forms, but self-directed play lies at the heart of it.
Photo by Nidia Nicet Photography
Recently during our weekly Spanish-speaking Free Forest School at a park in Austin, Texas, Jules asked if he could play chase with an older girl. He may be an expert at play, but he is just beginning to learn how to play with other children. For the most part he is teaching himself. Like a scientist, he asks questions about how to approach them, observes their behavior, makes inferences and forms theories, tests these through experimentation, and draws conclusions based on the results. He asked me if he could play chase, less for my permission or advice, but more for a confidence boost. With a little encouragement, Jules eventually asked the older child. She took off and Jules followed, running through the grass and circling around the stick house we all had built together earlier. Then he noticed an intriguing patch of earth and abruptly ended the pursuit. Jules plopped down and began to run his fingers through the loose dirt. Just like that, he had moved on to a new exploration.
“Free Forest School embraces emergent learning, an approach in which children of different ages learn by playing outdoors, guided by their interests, fascinations, and discoveries and in response to shifting situations, weather, terrain, moods, and desires.”
Evidence has been mounting that unstructured, child-directed free play is essential and that engaging in risky outdoor play benefits healthy child development. Free Forest School embraces emergent learning, an approach in which children of different ages learn by playing outdoors, guided by their interests, fascinations, and discoveries and in response to shifting situations, weather, terrain, moods, and desires. Learning happens not through explicit instruction, but rather through children actively participating with their immediate physical and social environment. Freed from adult planning, direction, and over-protection, children largely direct and choose activities appropriate to their age, ability, needs, personality, and developmental trajectory. Playing in nature–with lots of space and in all seasons–also gives children an opportunity to learn directly from encounters with one another as well as with trees, birds, snails, soil, hills, gulleys, stones, and pools.
Photo by Jules Beesley
Children in Free Forest School learn from the world rather than about the world. Learning from books and other media is inherently limited and abstracted: dis-placed, dis-embodied, and disconnected from the local landscape. Outdoors and in nature, children learn using all of their senses. My son steps into the creek and feels the cold water coursing around his feet. He smells the metallic whiff of ozone before a rainstorm. He hears trickling water, chattering birds, and thrumming cicada. He might even taste a wild berry, learning from direct experience if it is bitter or sweet. In Free Forest School, he is learning by play with and within the living world around him–including its human inhabitants. He is learning we are not separate from nature, but expressions of it. Hopefully over time, he will form an intimate relationship with the world, never taking it for granted or exploiting it as a mere resource.
“Children in Free Forest School learn from the world rather than about the world.”
What then are the roles for adults within this emergent learning process?
We create a system of safety and support that allows the children to explore and take risks–whether climbing up a steep embankment or overcoming shyness to initiate a game of chase.
We observe them carefully.
We bring dangers into awareness and ask them to consider consequences of their actions.
We step back so they can step up and take the lead.
When they ask for or need our help, we are always there to give it.
We remain present and attentive.
We hold space for spontaneity.
We join them in their imaginary worlds when they invite us.
We demonstrate curiosity, asking questions and expressing genuine wonder.
We help children to notice deeply. We ask them: what do you see, hear and smell?
We offer names to things and give explanations when asked. Or we invite them to create their own names by carefully observing characteristics of the flora and fauna they encounter.
We share stories and foster connections.
We bear witness to their growth, their trials, their joys, and their budding relationships.
We find community and support one another as we grow as parents.
“…as Jules learns to trust in himself, I am learning to trust that he is forging the path he needs to travel in order to grow and to thrive.”
I see myself as co-learner alongside my son. As Jules learns to play with other children, I am learning how to support him. When Jules investigates an interesting plant, insect, or hole in the ground, I am learning to see them through his eyes. When Jules climbs up a tall rock face, I am learning just how good he is at judging his own capabilities. As he learns to better communicate, I am learning to interpret the needs–hunger, exhaustion, frustration–that often lie beneath the spoken words. And as Jules learns to trust in himself, I am learning to trust that he is forging the path he needs to travel in order to grow and to thrive.
Photo by Jules Beesley
Bio
Jules Beesley (the elder) is an educator, video editor, husband, and father who accompanies his son to Free Forest School in Austin, Texas, every week. He worked for many years in media literacy education in New York City with The LAMP and as a guest teacher at the Brooklyn Free School. In a previous life, he made movies in California and was an editor on Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series.