Play-Based Learning is an open-ended, child-led, teacher-supported form of early childhood education. In sum: it’s playing for the sake of play, but engages the child’s imagination and develops their innate interest in learning. With adult engagement, however, the ‘learning’ for young children comes in the form of guided vocabulary words and techniques that become the bedrock of associative learning. It can look like many things: playing with sensory bins, stacking blocks, or dramatic play with costumes and props.


As a parent, you may be concerned that unstructured, open-ended play won’t adequately prepare your toddler for kindergarten. Yet, there are many educational benefits to this kind of learning: children will develop social and motor skills, language, and pre-mathematical skills as they explain their thoughts and count their way through the play, as well as self-regulation and impulse control-- needing to clean up your mess is a great motivator to be neater!

Play-Based Learning is very different from its more traditional counterpart, Academic Learning. Academic Learning is teacher-centric and emphasizes a “correct” answer as well as retention of concepts, facts, and ideas. While this traditional way of teaching offers benefits such as familiarity with letters, numbers, shapes, and colors, it results in more behavioral issues in young children if they aren’t also getting plenty of play-time. Young children actually often lose interest in this type of learning because their own creative imagination isn’t engaged as much, and they are told what to learn and focus on. In fact, research has shown that earlier introduction to Academic Learning does not speed up a child’s cognitive development.

Luckily, it’s easy to create a play-based learning classroom in your home! Creating “stations” for different activities that your children or students can choose among, with parent or teacher support, playing at each station for as long as they like before moving onto the next one.


Fill a plastic bin about a quarter of the way full with water or dry beans or rice. Place different colorful objects inside, such as pom-poms (note: make sure objects are large enough that they won’t be a choking hazard!). The sensations of the beans or rice and discovering objects in water is a lot of fun for 2 and 3-year-olds! Pairing this with descriptions about texture, color and shape will also boost your child’s vocabulary and ability to identify these different sensory experiences. If you have a garden or can get to a beach, playing in sand and dirt has the same benefits as a sensory bin, plus the immeasurable benefits of being in nature.


Molding soft, colorful playdough is a perfect play experience for toddlers. The experience of seeing their movements sculpt and change the shape of the playdough lays the groundwork for a lifetime of creative expression and learning.


If you want to enhance this activity, you can easily make your own homemade playdough with your kids. This offers them the academic experience of measuring, counting and combining different ingredients, followed by the reward of playing with what they have made! Kids love to mix the ingredients together and participate in activities that adults usually do.


Here is an easy homemade playdough recipe:


A good costume box is easy to make! You can find different pieces at a thrift store, use old clothing that would otherwise be given away, and even add scraps of fabric and materials like ribbons. Costume jewelry and props, such as toy swords are a great way to add more elements for creativity. Giving kids all the time they want to dig through the box and check out all the costume pieces encourages them to go out and discover. Allowing children to wear costumes however they choose (even if it’s not ‘the right way!’) helps them practice ‘flexible thinking’: the ability to shift thinking, attention, and responses based on new circumstances. Since there’s no right answer to how to play with costumes, the possibilities are endless! Costume play generally leads to dramatic play, like creating silly characters, or playing a favorite character from a movie or TV show!

While it is tempting to invent an imaginary “scenario” or guide children to specific academic outcomes, try to keep this kind of engagement to a minimum and instead look for cues from the children. Are they focused on scooping beans or rice into piles? Present toys, like a toy bucket or scoop, that help them to do this. Are they calling the playdough “pizza”? Make playdough pizzas with them, or find an object to help them roll the dough. Let them show you what calls their attention and support them in deepening their own curiosity and ideas.

The simple experience of being a kid is endlessly educational. Play-Based Learning offers children a positive relationship to learning in which they participate, engage, and learn that their ideas and observations have value. Naturally, teachers and parents want those educational experiences to create lasting positive impressions to carry their kids throughout their lives, but it’s important to remember that play opens young minds to the possibilities of learning as an adventure!

The Benefits of Play-Based Learning

College admissions officers are looking to build successful cohorts; a class of varied backgrounds and knowledge bases is key to building a diverse and dynamic student body that will go on to make their alma mater proud. Figuring out how to connect your academics, extracurriculars, and interests -- while painting a true picture of who you are -- is a challenge

 experiences as part of the college application process. 

The key is telling a cohesive story across the application via the college essay and supplements, your transcript, and your resume (clubs, volunteer activities, extracurriculars, and summer plans). And that’s where ‘threading a theme’ comes in. We all have many interests and our days are full of things we both like and dislike doing. But what do you truly “nerd out" about? Find that passion and carry it through to all parts of the application. Why? 

For one, passion exploration will help you grow as a person, build deep personal and professional connections, and find joy through learning. But it’s also a sure-fire way for the college admissions officers who look at thousands of applications every year to really discover who you are, what you’d bring to the table, and how that college can help develop your passions further. And if you truly can stay up all night doing this one thing (or several things), your enthusiasm will come through in your treatment of the “theme” in your fantastic college application!

We asked our college admissions experts for examples!

“One student I had did very well academically and wanted to apply to very competitive business programs. Searching for threads in his interests, the student noted he particularly wanted to go into impact investing, which is a way to invest in innovative products and markets to create a big impact socially. The student and I realized his ‘nerd out’ was researching companies that intersected business and social justice. He continued to research more on the subject and was able to put it into practice when he was accepted in a business-focused summer program offered at Georgetown on social entrepreneurship. For his final project in the course, he designed a model for a restaurant that was socially impactful. He knew a little about restaurants from working at a Panda Express making rice bowls and leveraged that in his project. For his personal essay, he discussed his passion, the model he created, the summer program, his part-time job, and his future endeavors. Admissions officers loved his story and he was incredibly successful in the application process.”

“I once worked with a student who had a severe food allergy, and his theme was living with this life-threatening condition. Throughout his college search, he was really looking to attend a university that was especially cautious about food allergies. With enormous humor, he wrote his college essay about his experience gaining confidence at and thriving in school despite having an atypical experience. The main subject of his college essay, though, was his close relationship with school nurses, with whom he ate lunch every day. He landed at Colorado College, who could ensure that he would be safe and has done incredibly well there.”

“Another student applied ED to the Math Education department of Boston University. At IVY’s College Essay Bootcamp, I learned she had a strong interest in social justice and played the role of the leader and organizer in her high school. We looked at how that strong passion dovetailed with her love of math and teaching. She began to do some important volunteer work, making challenging math ideas fun and accessible to under-resourced students who weren’t previously encouraged in math. Her main essay highlighted the origin story of her passion for social justice. It all started with snowball fights on snow days in elementary school. While throwing snowballs, the kids would swap stories about racist interactions with teachers and police. This laid the groundwork for her current activism. Her supplements and resume highlighted tutoring work with middle and elementary school students in her neighborhood, echoing her strong passion for lifting up her fellow minorities. Needless to say, she was admitted early-decision to the program of her choice and couldn’t have been happier.”

While college applications can be tedious to fill out, linking what you think you want to study in college to specific actions you’re taking now to explore your passions is a great way to simplify the process. In other words: narrow your focus. When I was in the application process, I went about my essay process differently: I listed all the things I felt would wow admissions and tried to fit them all into my personal statement for credibility. But when it came down to fine-tuning my application a week or so before the early decision deadline, my essay and supplements were covered in red remarks from my guidance counselors and teachers. Years later, I realize they were helping me ‘thread a theme' by editing down my too-many-lofty- achievement flexes down to a narrative that showed an arc, my interests, and my personality to better give admissions an admissions officer an idea of who I was. Essay supplements became the places to discuss other skills that didn’t make it into my college essay.

If you are also feeling like I did (too many college essay ideas) or you can’t think of a topic, you may want to consider Justin’s 

. We guarantee you’ll finish the week with a college essay that’ll WOW admissions!

Creating a Theme in Your College Application

In the latest webinar of our March series, we tackled how College Admissions has changed in 2020 and 2021. Our panelists highlighted the importance of what’s on your activity sheet -- you know, that list of everything you do inside and outside school that makes you a unique candidate.


In his famous essay, “The Fox and the Hedgehog,'' philosopher Isaiah Berlin separates great writers and philosophers into these two animal groups as a bit of a joke. The fox has knowledge about many things and isn’t confined to one idea, while the hedgehog has a single, narrow viewpoint and sees everything through that lens. So what’s better for the college application: being a fox or a hedgehog? You may be surprised to learn that it’s best to take the hedgehog’s approach. Now, don’t get us wrong: a high school student shouldn’t be narrow-minded or the world’s specialist in any one topic. After all, an important goal of a bachelor’s degree is to learn about yourself, grow as a person, and discover things that you may want to specialize in later. However, colleges are increasingly looking for students who are mini-experts, wanting to see that your curiosity or passion has led you to delve deeper into a particular issue, interest, or academic pursuit. Being a generalist is not a bad thing, but it doesn’t help admissions committees make a choice between you and another student.

Building a strong resume as a high school student isn’t limited to jobs and internships; it also includes clubs, volunteer activities, leadership positions, extracurriculars, and summer plans. The resume-building process should be a process of learning about yourself and eventually showing the outside world (read: college admissions committees) what you care about and what you’ve done on your own, outside of the mandatory school curriculum. The better you can show how you have followed interests and explored passions (even when they haven’t worked out!), the better your chances for a great college match.


The classes you choose are also an important part of your resume, particularly advanced courses. Whether it’s an AP class, a pre-college course, a summer intensive, or a free online class, showing admissions officers you took the extra time to seek out specialized knowledge and succeed at a higher level shows that you have a drive to learn.


Beyond courses, extracurricular activities help you continue to build on your theme. What you pursue should be authentic to you.


If you love playing video games, have you ever tried building your own on 

? And if you like that, take the next step by looking for an advanced coding or design class and/or an internship with a gaming developer.

Are you interested in medicine? One student we worked with decided to take an online science class at Columbia University during the pandemic when in-person classes were not an option. Already interested in medicine, the class stoked that fire and her teacher got her particularly excited about public health, which matched with her innate passion for helping others. Still in pandemic times, she became concerned about home-bound senior citizens. After some careful thought and planning, she started a small volunteer organization that helps elderly people book and travel to vaccine appointments. This volunteer leadership work then helped her land a summer internship at the New York City Blood Bank. She also reached out to a professor at a local community college for research opportunities, and he agreed to have her help in his lab. This is a great example of how one step in exploring your interests has a domino effect and more opportunities are born out of the first initiative. It’s also a great example of how even the pandemic didn’t stop this student from pursuing her passions and building a really strong resume as a result.


The good news is that virtual extracurriculars have boomed during the pandemic as many in-person activities became impossible. And virtual classes, internships, and clubs are likely here to stay, which opens up many more opportunities for all students!

While doing your general college search and creating a list of schools that appeal to you, make sure you check if any on your list offer pre-college courses. They often do! While some competitive summer programs will return to in-person this summer and some deadlines will have passed, virtual pre-college courses often have later application deadlines and some are offered during the school year as well. For example, 

 has a mini-Med School summer program virtually; 

has great pre-college summer programs in science, business, and medicine; 

is offering “Great Books” classes, etc. Don’t be discouraged by the high price tags of some of these courses. Need-based and merit-based scholarships are often available to those who dare to ask! There are hundreds of options available for any number of interests and we’re happy to point you in the right direction when it comes to your theme and budget.

 also have a treasure trove of classes offered by universities around the world, and many are free! Whether you want to take “Beginner’s Excel” or something more esoteric, like 

 offered by Duke University, free or low cost online classes are a great gateway to ‘advanced coursework’ and passion exploration. Remember that many of these classes are at a college level, so be ready to take them seriously!


Finally, we encourage you to make use of the plethora of webinars and tutorials offered by companies and organizations all over the world. A simple way to start your exploration is by searching for webinar topics on 

 (and many others) offer classes, internships, and councils for teens who are passionate about art, history, anthropology, or museum studies. If you love a particular museum or organization, make sure to search for opportunities on their web page. Come up with nothing? Don’t give us! Email them, and see if they’re thinking about adding a program or would be open to creating an internship for you. Don’t be afraid to show initiative; you never know where it will take you!

College Applications: The Rise of the “Mini-Expert”

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