Finding connections between spirituality and play for early childhood education

ABSTRACT

In an attempt to provide holistic education and care, expand the view of young children’s development to include the spiritual, and make connections with the found benefits of play for all areas of development, this article looks at 33 surveyed U.S. early childhood educators’ perceptions on nurturing spirituality through open-ended and free play. Data collected from the open-ended questions of an online survey were analyzed looking at 22 mentions of play as a mean to support spirituality. Findings show that 45.5% of surveyed teachers mentioned play as a way intentionally used in the classroom to nurture children’s spirituality. It is posed that developmentally appropriate approaches to early childhood education would be enhanced by including spirituality in their understanding of the child, as well as intentionally nurturing spirituality in educational settings, by providing free, child-centered, child-directed play and opportunities for children to experience spiritual moments, defined as feeling wonder, awe, joy, and inner-peace.

KEYWORDS:

• children’s spirituality
• play
• early childhood development
• in-service early childhood educators
• spiritual moments

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jennifer Mata-McMahon

Jennifer Mata-McMahon, Ed.D. is an Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education in the Department of Education at the University of Maryland Baltimore County in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. She earned her Ed.D. (2010), Ed.M. (1999), and M.A. (1998) from Teachers College, Columbia University in New York, and has worked in the field of early childhood education since 1995. Her area of research focusses on children spirituality, bilingual/bicultural education, and teacher preparation. She is coauthor of Ambiente en Acción (Environment in Action) (Unimet, 2006), author of Spiritual Experiences in Early Childhood Education (Routledge, 2015), and coeditor of Spirituality: An Interdisciplinary View (Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2016), as well as author of several book chapters and journal articles related to children’s spirituality.