Most children are naturally delighted and excited by the discoveries they make about their world. The playful stance that children tend to take early on as youngsters is likely one of the reasons children seem propelled toward greater curiosity and novelty seeking. Research supports associations between playfulness with many positive characteristics like:

• Creativity
• Humorousness
• Emotional expressiveness
• Curiosity
• Openness
• Communicativeness

These findings suggest that children who are more playful may be further effective and efficient at dealing with problems. Also, children who learn in a more playful learning environment may be extra willing to try new things and engage in a task. Consider our previous post about Sir Ken Robinson’s claim that most educational school systems “kill creativity.” Perhaps promoting and modeling a playful way of teaching and learning may support older children to be just as excited about learning as they were when they were youngsters.