To learn the word "the," Kristen Bauter’s kindergartners used to sit at their desks with a worksheet and circle words scattered across the page. Now, the 5-year-olds stand at a station digging through shredded blue paper to find cardboard fish marked "the."

It’s a change for the Watertown City School District in far upstate New York, where Bauter works. This year, the district has implemented a play-based learning curriculum for kindergartners and first-graders in its five elementary schools, an effort to make learning more developmentally appropriate and to cultivate students’ social-emotional skills.

It’s also in alignment with the state of New York’s new standards for early learners, which encourage play and “active, joyful engagement.”

"This is an intentional effort to remain within developmentally appropriate parameters that do not pit play against 'academic' learning," the state’s Board of Regents said after voting in September to adopt the Next Generation math and English standards to replace the Common Core.

That makes sense to early-learning researchers, who have long argued for play-based education for young students. Years of research have demonstrated the importance of play for childhood development, yet the "either/or" argument between play and academics, with their strict standards and assessments, has inhibited making playtime more prominent in the early grades.

Read the full article aboutthe push for play-based learningby Kate Stringer at The 74.