What is Play-Based Tutoring?

The best way to describe what I do in my private business is "play-based tutoring". I hesitate to use the word tutoring because that conjures images of sitting in a library going over homework problems, and that's far from what we're doing. But it's also the best word I have right now to label my work.

Why is play-based tutoring important?

So many of the essential skills children need for school can be taught in isolation, through a drill and skill method. I've done this with many children, and I know it's effective for teaching that isolated skill. Yet children then learn that skill in isolation, and while they are learning that skill they are not working on any other essential developmental milestone. Those moments of learning often feel like work to the child, and create a gap between fun and school. 

Play-based learning allows children to learn a skill within the context of a broader context. This encourages meaningful generalization of the skill, as the child can understand where it fits in meaningfully within the broader context.

Play-based learning also encourages the development of the whole child. Essential skills like motor planning and visual-spatial thinking are embedded into the sessions. Those Facebook posts from Occupational Therapists about why our kids can't sit still? Play-based tutoring addresses that problem by teaching through problem solving and exploring.

The concepts behind Play-Based Tutoring isn't new. Much of my work is based off of Stanley Greenspan's DIR Floortime model. I'm currently taking classes on this model and have become a bit obsessed. Whenever I use the methods I see such great results. I'm becoming a convert to how essential motor planning along with the development of strong visual-spatial thinking is to our children's process. So many difficulties can be addressed if we encourage more movement, play, and problem solving.

The Process:

In this work, I talk with parents about where their child's development is, and what skills they'd like their child to develop. One aspect about my work that is different than work in schools is building the partnership and reliance on the parents. In schools we teachers are often are the experts, and the parents tend to play an outside role. In my work, the parents are the expert on their child. They know their child better than anyone else. 

Once the parent and I have set goals for the child, I start getting creative. How can I build on the child's interests and strengths to move up the child's development and foster new skills? The goals could be anything from maintaining joint attention and engaging in two-way communication, to increasing sight words and reading strategies, or developing skills to regulate emotions.

For many of my clients I use book kits. I take one book and through the book develop fun activities that encourage the child's new skills. We use physical objects like plastic animals or toy cars to act out the story, play additional games and sing songs that correspond with the story. Everything is connected and highly engaging, and while it looks like play, it is specifically designed to work on the child's targeted skills. 

For other children, I've taken other interests and worked to intertwine those interests with what we'd like them to learn. Academic skills are embedded into fun, engaging activities like building with legos, dominoes, playing games, or making origami creations. Legos are great for learning math concepts, and I've written simple books that give the directions for building with legos or folding an origami creation. 

I'm finding it hard to fully describe what I do, and the importance of it, but I often leave clients houses excited about their development, and I find myself constantly thinking about how to incorporate more play to further engage them and increase their abilities. I love what I do, and I love helping parents see easy ways to incorporate meaningful play into their daily lives.