A child under the age of three should learn as she plays, play as she learns. This principle—of learning through playing—forms the premise of the “play-based pedagogy” recommended for the caregivers of children in this age bracket. 

A child’s play entails the creation of an imaginative space, where they give meanings to the objects and places around them, and ascribe roles to themselves. The caregiver typically directs this process in different capacities, as the child comes to develop strong associations to the meanings and roles they conjure. In the presence of adequate licence and guidance, these associations become a way for the child to learn concepts, develop faculties and capacities under different domains of development.

The caregiver, in order for a child’s play to facilitate learning, is expected to take a more hands-on role throughout the process of play. This begins with affective engagement: that occurs when the caregiver actively engages in toddlers’ play and communicates with toddlers “both verbally (by explaining the process of play and growth) and non-verbally (by tuning in to the children’s play through modelling play actions).” This allows for the child to both collaborate with their caregiver as they explain, and imitate them as they model the play actions—letting the child raise himself to a higher intellectual level of development through collaboration, to move from what she has to what she does not have through imitation. 

In other words, a play adequately guided by the adult provides the child with the stimulation and scaffolding to learn what she doesn’t already know, while simultaneously expanding the scope of what the child can learn. This is also called the expansion of the zone of proximal development—illustrated under the diagram below as well.