How libraries can help through play-based learning

In the early days of the pandemic, I was chatting with my two best girlfriends about keeping our young kids busy as we transitioned to new work-from-home situations. They described their daughters focused on hours-long art projects or sitting through entire movies, while I watched my son launch his body off pieces of furniture and run around with a “weapon” he’d constructed out of Duplos. It dawned on me then that our experiences of parenting were very different.

Now, I recognize that my son is a sample size of exactly one—but a growing body of evidence suggests that developmental differences starting in early childhood contribute to the well-documented education gender gap playing out in American schools. Girls are more likely than boys to graduate high school on time, perform better on reading tests, and attend college.

A variety of factors potentially contribute to this gender disparity in educational achievement—and many disproportionately affect low-income and BIPOC kids—but what’s becoming clearer is that addressing them requires us to look back at early childhood.

A recent New York Times article, “Why Boys Are Behind in School from the Start,” indicates that girls typically score higher across many measures of kindergarten readiness, including key behaviors such as regulating emotions and paying attention. In a 2024 EdWeek Research Center survey, 51 percent of K–12 teachers reported that boys “often or always” struggle to sit still in class, a behavioral norm that can lead some to view male students as more distracted or disruptive.

Boys also tend to enter school slightly behind girls in reading. As academic expectations for kindergarteners have grown over the past 30 years, girls seemingly have an advantage in adapting to a greater emphasis on literacy development—which may compound gaps that exist. A 2016 study titled “Is Kindergarten the New First Grade?” found that the percentage of teachers who believed children should learn to read in kindergarten jumped from 31 percent in 1998 to 80 percent in 2010. More teachers also reported giving daily lessons on topics that previously weren’t introduced until first grade, like spelling, and less time spent on free play. School’s gotten tougher sooner, and some playtime has been replaced by direct instruction.

Bringing more play back into school may be one way to help young male learners from falling behind. Library spaces and programs grounded in play-based learning (along with high quality pre-K options) also provide important support. According to the 2009 report “Crisis in the Kindergarten,” socio-dramatic play helps children build language and social skills and develop empathy. Libraries can offer the free play and playful learning experiences that benefit all children but may particularly support young boys’ learning needs.

This month’s cover story, “Parks & Rec & Libraries,” highlights a variety of outdoor and nature-based library programs and the meaningful community connections they create. Poolside story times, nature education, and storywalks incorporate the kind of movement and outdoor experiences that help children build executive functioning and essential motor skills. Time in nature is also linked to positive mental health outcomes for children (and adults). Access to greenspace is limited for many children and families, so library partnerships making it more accessible can expand learning opportunities that may really count for kids.

Thinking back to the pandemic days when I couldn’t send my son to preschool, I worried that his body’s need for movement and disinterest in coloring might make him a “bad” student. But I realize now how fortunate we were to have that time together exploring the outdoors—investigating pond life, hiking through a swamp forest—and reading books that touched on things we saw or did. It helped cultivate his curiosity and expand vocabulary in ways that serve him now in elementary school. He couldn’t sit still back then for even five minutes, but he would occasionally pause—as he does today—to notice a beautiful flower or a bird and remark with wonder, “Hey, would you look at that?”