Efforts to improve education should not neglect to provide the rich play opportunities that benefit children in so many ways. In Tanzania, the pre-primary curriculum, for example, guides teachers to use play as the primary method of teaching and learning. Despite this policy mandate for play, however, abundant evidence indicates that Tanzanian children have only limited access to rich play opportunities in their pre-primary and early primary classrooms. The Playing to Learn project seeks to address this gap between policy and practice in Tanzania through an innovative multi-level approach that fosters teachers' ability to enact play-based learning in pre-primary and the early grades. The goal of Playing to Learn is to develop a practical and sustainable model for preparing pre-primary and primary school teachers to use playscapes and play-based learning methods to promote student learning. Central to this project is a low-cost, locally sourced natural playscape. The natural playscape is innovative because, in the context of Tanzania, it represents a new approach to thinking about how and where learning can occur. Moreover, the playscape is a starting point that will seed a broader agenda around play-based learning that is sustainable and aligned with national learning goals in Tanzania.