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Writer's pictureShannon de Winnaar

Learning Through Play

Education and learning have moved far away from children listening to content delivered by a parent or teacher and repeating it back or children working through a textbook. Education and learning have become about more hands-on activities that children can be actively engaged in doing. Learning through a plan has many advantages. Some advantages include:

  • highly engaging and fun for children;

  • using hands-on materials helps develop a child’s fine motor skills;

  • often requires working with a partner or group which develops communication and collaborative skills;

  • has links to real-life experiences.

An example would be children learning about money:

  • how to identify coins and notes;

  • their values;

  • how to add up money; and

  • how to determine what notes to use and how much change they may receive.

As parents, you can take your child shopping and ask them to add items up or tell them they have a certain amount of money to spend and see what they can buy. You can do this using a shopping app too, e.g., if they want to buy something like a toy, you can search a shopping app and ask them to add items up and then take it away from their birthday money or pocket money.


At Astor when students are learning about money, we created ‘Astor Mart’. We set up a small shop at the front of the school with lots of items all labelled with price tags.



We have shopping bags and baskets with small wallets of play money. We had shopping lists for children to use to write down their items and the total cost. We had a register and receipts where children could write down the items, total cost and change.


The children loved going shopping at ‘Astor Mart’ they didn’t even realise they were learning about money. The level of student engagement, communication and collaboration amongst students was very high and it was suitable for all ages.



Find out more about Astor International School by booking a tour here.



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