Heuristic play is an approach to play that is child-led and allows children to discover things for themselves through open-ended exploration. It was developed by Elinor Goldschmeid over 30 years ago. Heuristic play provides cognitive, social, and emotional benefits to children such as increased concentration, learning through trial and error, using their imagination, and making independent decisions.

1. Heuristic Play
Joanne Sowerby

2. Heuristic Play
A heuristic approach is one that enables a
person to discover or learn something for
themselves. Heuristic play is an approach
deeply routed in children’s natural curiosity
where the adult supports play and
observes, but the play is entirely child led.
These experiences are open ended, items
can be used and played with in any
imaginative play that the child chooses,
there is not ‘wrong’ or ‘right’ way to play.

3. Who devised this approach?
Elinor Goldschmeid, she
devised this approach over
thirty years ago. Elinor was a
pioneer in early childhood
care and education.

4. What are the benefits?
The open ended and exploratory experiences heuristic play
provides benefits children’s cognitive, social and emotional
development;
• Learning how to maintain focus on an activity is an
important skill for children to develop, and when children
are particularly fascinated and engaged by what they are
doing, their concentration levels are considerably higher.
• Strongly encourages children to explore using trial and error.
In this way they learn about the properties of materials and
experience, first hand, concepts such as size, shape,
capacity and mobility.
• It encourages older children to extend their imagination
and creative thinking and use language skills to begin to
use one object as being representative of another.

5. Benefits continued.
• One of the biggest benefits of this kind of play is the
opportunities for independent decision making. It allows
children to feel that they have the chance to control their
environment and learning, and to be able to play
independently of adults.