WICHITA, Kansas — Every day at 1 p.m., Cheryl Caton’s kindergartners at Kelly Elementary School stop what they’re doing for some very important business:
Play time.
Some kids head straight for a child-sized kitchen, where they prepare pretend meals while snuggling baby dolls. Others sit at a table and roll out scented dough. Some set up a birthday party for one classmate with pretend cake and donuts.
“Purposeful play is the most joyous time of day,” said Nicki Vossman, principal at Kelly Elementary.
“Kindergartners — and little kids in general — are just made to play, and this has been the best thing we could have done for kids.”
This isn’t recess, but it’s not your average kindergarten lesson either. Kelly Elementary is one of four in the Wichita district that has brought back self-directed free play — known among educators as purposeful play — as a way to enhance learning and teach social skills.
For about 40 minutes a day, kindergartners head to play areas stocked with all sorts of toys, art supplies and building materials, where they get to choose what and how they play.
It’s noisy and a little chaotic, but educators say kids need it.
“We were on such a strict schedule for so long,” said Amanda Sharshel, executive director of instructional support for Wichita schools. “Now the kids are really driving the decisions they make and what they do during this time.”
Sharshel said young children learn crucial concepts through play — and not just letter sounds or counting to 100.
“How to share, make eye contact, have a laugh together,” she said. “Kids are coming in less and less with those skills … and I do believe that play opens the door for us to teach those skills.”
Kindergarten was invented nearly 200 years ago by German educator Frederick Froebel. He believed in the importance of hands-on learning for youngsters and saw them as “plants” that needed to be nurtured. Hence, the name kindergarten, which means “children’s garden.”
Early America kindergartens featured lots of songs, stories and even nap time. But things changed in the 1980s, after the federal report “A Nation at Risk” found public schools lacking and in need of reform.
Kindergarten morphed into something more similar to first grade, with more group instruction and an intense focus on academic skills.
Caton, a kindergarten teacher at Kelly Elementary, said that shift, combined with the growth of computers and smartphones, created new problems.
Many of her students started the year staring blankly at toys, she said. They weren’t used to using their imaginations to build castles or shop in the pretend bakery.
“They didn’t know how to play with things,” Caton said. “Like, ‘What do I do with the fake food? How do I play with baby dolls?’ There’s so much screen time that they don’t know how to play.”
Last year, Wichita district leaders asked teachers what they thought kids needed in kindergarten. The resounding answer was: More play time.
So principals at four pilot schools — Kelly, Caldwell, OK and Gordon Parks K-8 Academy — shifted schedules. Teachers stocked their classrooms with play kitchens, blocks, craft tables and train tracks.
In Melissa Wait’s classroom at Kelly Elementary, a kindergartner named Paisleigh explained what she loves about the change.
“Every one of the stations is a special station that’s so fun,” she said. “The blocks (center) is like an area that has a little city. … In puppets, you can make up your own story.”
Vossman, the principal, said she pushed for the change in part because her own daughter complained that her kindergarten class was all work and no play.
“She would tell me, ‘Mom, I see all these toys on the shelves, and we just don’t have a chance to play with them,’” she said. “I can’t wait for all kindergarten, and even first grade, second grade … being able to do this.”
The shift created some challenges. Free play requires lots of toys and supplies that most teachers no longer have in their classrooms, things like play kitchens, doll houses or race tracks.
The district provided some funding to get teachers started. Caton said she scoured yard sales and looked for other deals to build her inventory.
Then there was the challenge of fitting everything into tight classroom spaces. Reworking the kindergarten schedule to free up 40 minutes a day wasn’t easy, either.
But Sharshel, the district director, said teachers recognize the importance of giving children time to explore and use their imaginations.
“We still know that we have to have kids who move into first grade that know their letter names, know their letter sounds, understand basic mathematical concepts,” she said. “But we also know that they can learn all those things through play.”
Leaders of the four pilot-project schools said they’re seeing better attendance and fewer behavior problems in kindergarten. The program will expand to at least 10 more Wichita schools this fall, and the district hopes to eventually include free play in every kindergarten class.
“We know that this is what kids need,” Vossman said. “Kids are under a lot of pressure sometimes when they come to school, to perform all these academic tasks, and they’re missing this key developmental piece.
“So I’m really happy that we’re getting a chance to do this.”
Suzanne Perez reports on education for KMUW in Wichita and the Kansas News Service.
The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KMUW, KCUR, Kansas Public Radio and High Plains Public Radio focused on health, the social determinants of health and their connection to public policy.
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