Opinion | Monday, 20th April 2020

Play is educational too: an alternative look at learning during lockdown

As a new term begins and the challenge of home-schooling during lockdown continues, Professor Kate Pahl offers a different view to what play can offer

Homes are suddenly very crowded places, aren’t they? Washing machines hum as families juggle the demands of day-to-day life, adjusting to the ‘new normal’ during lockdown.

Many parents will be working from home, and most will have a new occupation to add to their everyday tasks: teaching. Children across the country find themselves at home on a weekday, in a familiar setting that lends itself sooner to bouncing up and down on the couch, playing games, messing about.

But there is a very important positive to be highlighted from this abundance of time children now have to play, which may relieve parents of some of the worry and pressures they’re now facing – this ‘messing about’ is a vitally positive part of their learning and development of literacy.

While not being at school is hard for some, it is also a time where children can explore things at their own pace, in their own time, and learn while they play.

Literacy practices are lived. Children make meaning from all kinds of things: from tissue paper, pens, paper, blankets, toys, processions of objects, and their meaning making is not confined to words. Rolling, jumping and running are all part of meaning making.

The idea that literacy is only in books does not make sense in many homes. Letting children make a mess in the living room is part of this meaning making.

In our research with year 4-5 children we explored what it was like to feel different to ‘normal’ in school. Many children talked of the importance of being able to have time to themselves, to daydream, to think by themselves in the corners of the playground, to have time not structured by adults.

I explored this world as part of my research, finding that children and their families use complex literacy practices, often without realising their significance. Families tell stories, play games, have prayers and sayings, often in different languages.

We have a plethora of languages right here in Manchester. Many of the children in our research appreciated switching languages between home and school and having secret languages that they can talk to their friends in.

The idea that literacy is only in books does not make sense in many homes. Letting children make a mess in the living room is part of this meaning making. Young children draw and narrate their worlds and the crumpled pieces of paper that result are all part of literacy.

Children make tissue paper birds, they create treasure trails using maps and pieces of paper, they bounce about on the sofa while wrestling. Children sing, dance and whoop while watching television or playing games – they create things in response to online adventures, such as the floss dance craze.

Those electronic devices that frustrate many parents, also have their value in teaching literacy. Children are using their phones and online material to make meaning – they use these devices as tools for communication.

As we all get used to being inside together, perhaps there is something we can learn from children in their ability to occupy themselves in all sorts of activities, some of them collaborative, some alone, some as ways to communicate and some as ways to live out their daydreams.

Most importantly, this time is an opportunity to do nothing. Day dreaming, lying around, thinking, all these are important parts of being.

In school, the focus is on doing. Perhaps we could all take the opportunity to be, to dream and then, when we re-emerge, everyone will be a bit taller.

Tips for educating your children at home:


1.     Take lots of breaks

2.     STRETCH and wriggle when you want

3.     Not doing things is important

4.     Stuff comes from stuff, trust in the process

5.     Have fun.


Professor Kate Pahl is author of ‘Ephemera, mess and miscellaneous piles: texts and practices in families’ and co-researcher for ‘Odd: Feeling different in the world of education’. She is Faculty Head of Research Knowledge Exchange in the Faculty of Education.

She gives thanks to doctoral student Steve Pool, the ‘Odd’ project team and her ESRI colleagues. Read more about the Odd Project here