Project PLAY Professional Development Program

This program is designed to support early childhood education professionals’ understanding of how play contributes to young children’s learning. Across the seven modules, educators will learn about and try out strategies for incorporating playful learning strategies into the teaching of literacy, numeracy, science and life skills.

We designed these modules with the Tanzanian context in mind, and they are aligned with Tanzania national syllabus for pre-primary education and the modules are provided in both English and Swahili. We hope the modules are relevant to teachers in other African and low-resource settings, however, and we hope you’ll try them out even if you’re not in Tanzania!

If you are doing this program on your own, we encourage you to keep a journal where you can reflect on what you have learned and what try in your own classroom. If you are doing this program as part of a Professional Learning Community, we encourage you to create a group chat on WhatsApp or a similar platform so you can share your ideas and insights from the program.

Throughout the course, you will be invited to reflect on your own beliefs about play, your current practices, and the new ideas we present. We encourage you to follow the prompts to try new methods and activities in your classroom and to take time afterward to reflect on what went well and what could be improved.

Most of all, we encourage you to have fun with this and to adapt the ideas we present to your context and your students.

We’d love to hear how it goes! Please share your wins and your feedback through this contact form.