Schools that strategically weave play into math see benefits in joy, engagement, and academic outcomes.
Recent coverage in Education Week highlights a national swing back toward play-based learning in early grades. Classrooms that intentionally integrate guided play are reporting higher student engagement, reduced pressure, and deeper curiosity across content, including early math concepts. Schools in Connecticut, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and Oregon are passing policies that re-embed play into everyday learning rather than isolating it as “free choice time.” (Education Week)
There’s also a 2022 review of 39 studies that shows that guided play tends to outperform direct instruction on early math skills, shape knowledge, and cognitive flexibility for learners up to age 8. (Childcare Canada) That’s not just teacher testimony, it’s analytic evidence supporting experiential learning.
Separate academic research on play-based classrooms also shows meaningful gains in reading and math outcomes over time when teachers leverage purposeful play (not just letting kids “run around”) but framing experiences with guided questions and goals. (ResearchGate)
So what does this have to do with problem solving?
Game-based math and problem solving aren’t spiral play for its own sake. They’re structured opportunities for learners to experiment, hypothesize, test, fail, revise, and reason. That’s the core of mathematical thinking. The research on play doesn’t separate joy from genuine learning; it maps them onto each other. Students who engage joyfully are also the ones exercising executive functions like planning, perspective-taking, pattern discovery, and flexible thinking, skills we explicitly build in problem solving.
That’s the promise of a webinar series that MANGO Math will be hosting starting on Wednesday February 18th @ 1:30pm PT/4:30pm ET. We’ll explore the problem-solving strategies that emerge when learning environments invite risk-taking, strategy-selection, and joyful inquiry. Each quarter we’ll break down 2–3 problem-solving approaches, things like Guess & Check, Look for a Pattern, Make a Model, and connect them to research on cognitive development and playful learning.
This approach aligns with the research trajectory we’re seeing:
In 2026 we don’t add games to math as an afterthought, we reframe math as a space for inquiry and exploration. That’s the world MANGO Add+venture and MANGO Math kits aim to cultivate: playful, purposeful problem solvers who see challenges not as hurdles but as puzzles to unlock.
