Educating Young Children Volume 1 – Spring 2025 | Page 58

Why are developmental centers so important for young learners, and what can teachers learn about children while they are in centers? Why is choice an important part of the day? Why do children need opportunities to talk to each other?

The answers lie in what we have known about play and its role in children’ s development along with more recent research about executive function and self‐regulation. Opportunities for play in developmental centers provide children with time to make sense of their world. In dramatic play, they role‐play their interpretation of what it is like to be a particular community helper; for example, exploring a future career endeavor. With puzzles and games, they practice waiting for and taking turns, counting as they move spaces on a game board, or expanding their visual‐spatial abilities as they piece together floor puzzles.

With purposeful planning by teachers, every center can provide children with opportunities to further develop more than just social, emotional, and language skills: These centers are a prime opportunity to engage children in content in a manner that invites them to be active participants in the learning process. In every center, teachers who know the curriculum and the children are able to observe children’ s ownership of skills and what has truly become a part of who they are as a learner. Teachers can also gain significant information about children’ s abilities to sustain attention to self‐selected tasks, their interactions with peers, and their personal interests. Careful questions and comments can scaffold children’ s