Is there a Difference with Work and Play?

“Play is the Child’s Work,” according to Maria Montessori, is one of her most well-known aphorisms. This phrase is frequently misinterpret to imply that work and play are interchangeable and that children should be working rather than playing. However,  it was not Dr. Montessori’s intention.

Maria Montessori,  has written that children might use their imaginations to imagine a distant country such as America rather than a fairy tale land.  She recognized that when play and work are combined in a single activity, learning is most effective. To appreciate this insight, we must first understand the distinction between work and play. 

Work and Play in Montessori Education

Play, in its broadest sense, is always a transformation of reality in service of the self. Young infants, for example, convert any object they can grasp into a sucking object. Older children can make a doll out of a stick and a piece of cloth, or a boat out of a piece of wood that floats in a puddle.

If a child has played the board game such as checkers, chess, or monopoly, the game pieces will transform and give an importance he will never have outside of the game. It is critical to distinguish between transformations of reality and creativity. Creativity always involves a transformation of reality, but not all reality transformations are creative. Players in board games and sports, for example, use pre-established, conventional transformations. 

The Beauty of Montessori Philosophy

When a child learns to feed himself or herself with a spoon, he or she is adapting to societal demands. Other examples of work include learning to wash and dress oneself  in which the child transforms the self in the service of adapting to society include listening to and following instructions.

Learning to read, write, and do basic arithmetic are all social adaptations. Similarly, moral behaviors such as telling the truth and not taking things that do not belong to you are examples of work, of transforming ourselves to meet the demands of society.

Although we often think of work and play as diametrically opposing, they are most effective when they are combine. The form board and the pieces to be placed on it must be mentally transformed by the child into a problem to be solved, the play component. The adaptation to reality, the work component, is placing the pieces in their proper places.

Montessori was able to mobilize the child’s personal motivation for the purpose of social learning by combining learning tasks that combine work and play. According to Montessori’s curriculum materials, a less misleading aphorism might be, “Play is the motivation for the child’s work.”

 

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