Windsor Public Schools adopts play-based model to boost early childhood learning

Windsor Public Schools is transforming early years education by emphasising play, outdoor activity, and social-emotional development, aligning with new state laws and international best practices to improve long-term student success.

Windsor Public Schools is remaking the experience of its youngest pupils with a model that looks more like play than formal instruction. In kindergarten through second grade, the district is replacing a more conventional early-years routine with a programme built around blocks, outdoor learning, social interaction and reduced screen use, as Superintendent Noha Abdel-Hady says it is designed to strengthen the foundations children need later on.

The district’s Windsor Early Learning Model is rooted, according to school officials, in research on neuroscience, literacy and child development, and in practices used in high-performing systems abroad. It also mirrors a broader shift already taking hold in Connecticut. State law, which took effect in July 2024, requires play-based learning in public pre-school and kindergarten classrooms and allows teachers in grades one through five to use it during the school day. Yale School of Medicine has described the policy as a recognition that play is not a diversion from learning but a central part of it.

Abdel-Hady said the move came after she studied student performance data and saw younger pupils doing well on standardised tests, only to lose ground as they advanced. She said visits to Finland, along with research into education systems in Japan, Estonia and Singapore, convinced her that children often benefit from delaying more formal teaching and from spending more time on purposeful play, outdoor activity and social-emotional development. The district says the new model still aligns with Connecticut’s literacy requirements, including a reading curriculum grounded in the science of reading.

The shift also brings back cursive writing and limits classroom technology. Abdel-Hady said handwriting matters for letter formation and penmanship, and she argued that too much device use has shortened children’s attention spans. Windsor will not use one-to-one devices in the early grades, and the Connecticut State Board of Education last week urged districts to consider bell-to-bell cellphone restrictions and to cut classroom screen time. Board chair Ayana Taylor said the approach combines high expectations with space for children to move, explore, ask questions and build confidence.