Why Games Engage When Worksheets Don’t

When children play, something remarkable happens: they explore freely, make decisions, and learn without always realising it. That spark of curiosity is one of the most powerful forces we have in education, yet it too easily gets sidelined.

Play is not the opposite of learning. It is one of its earliest forms. Extensive research in cognitive science and neuroscience shows that active engagement, exploration, and experimentation create stronger neural connections than passive listening. For example, one review finds that play activates the brain’s reward circuitry while avoiding the negative stress responses that impair learning.

Educational psychologists such as Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky described play as a rehearsal for real life: children build their social and cognitive frameworks through playful experience. More recent neuroscience backs this up: when curiosity is piqued, the brain releases dopamine, which enhances memory encoding and consolidation.

Digital games amplify many of these natural mechanisms. They provide immediate feedback, calibrated challenge, and spaces where failure is safe and learning continues. A recent meta-analysis of game-based learning in early childhood found moderate to large positive effects on cognitive, emotional, social, motivation and engagement outcomes.

Yet in many schools, play becomes marginalised as children get older. We substitute worksheets and silent reading for the kind of active exploration that fuels learning. Attention is the gateway to learning, but attention is driven by motivation, challenge and purpose, hallmarks of good games.

This does not mean every lesson must be a video game. Rather, it means we need to understand what games get right about human motivation and design learning experiences that honour those dynamics. When students feel agency, when they can explore and create, they learn more deeply, remember longer, and apply more flexibly.

Harnessing play is not a distraction. It is alignment, aligning how children naturally learn with how we choose to teach. If we can do that, we shift from compliance to curiosity, from repetition to discovery. That is the kind of learning that lasts.