Becoming Brilliant: What Science Tells Us About Raising Successful Children

by Roberta Michnick Golinkoff

book, A Mandate for Playful Learning in Preschool,15 that advocated the value of play as a metaphor for the kind of active, engaged, and meaningful learning that occurs when a child masters counting by playing Chutes and Ladders and when he understands stories through the tales of King Arthur and his valiant knights. Our book celebrated the science of learning in action and concluded with what we called the 5Cs—a skill set for the 21st century designed in the lab for the living room. These included collaboration (or how children learn to work together and see from another’s point of view), communication (speaking and listening), content (reading, writing, and math along with history, science, and the arts), critical thinking, and creative innovation. Surprising to some but not to us, many of these skills develop as kids are playing in the sandbox.

Soft skills develop in the sandbox - through play