Play preferences 4-6 year olds

Would you rather build something and once it's done build something else, or quickly build something and act out stories? And what about the pupils in your class?

During free play of preschoolers, you will see different play preferences. These preferences influence interaction with a playful design activity. With the materials on this page, you explore what the different play preferences are and how you can create assignments that suit the different play preferences in your classroom.

Booklet and worksheet

The booklet, which you can download below, explains what the different play preferences are and how you can respond to them by creating variations of assignments. The booklet starts with an introduction to how spatial thinking and design are related. This project was part of a larger project on spatial thinking, which you can read more about here. However, you can also use the preferences and worksheet when designing assignments that are not explicitly related to spatial thinking. For example, the booklet also shows how children can get stuck during design assignments and how you can respond to this as a teacher. The worksheet guides you step by step through a design process. At the end, you have two variations of an assignment. That way children can choose which assignment they want to work on and at the same time everyone is working on the same learning objective.

Play preferences in preschool language
You can also use the play preferences to have a conversation with your students about their play preferences. For example, choose two sets of preferences and let the student choose. Use the sheet ' Play preferences in preschool language' to do this.

Materials are available for free download below: