Module: Children’s Play
Individual Assignment – Essay on:
Discuss the historical context and perspectives of play.
Explain how play can be injected into daily activities.
Write on 3 theories supporting play.
(A) History and Perspectives of Play
The notion of play conjures up different images for different people. For me as a fledgling early childhood educator, the first thing that comes to mind when play is mentioned is the image of children engaging in outdoor activities where they are running, laughing, shouting and sharing. The second image would be children involved in some form of indoor play comprising a board game of sorts, or simply playing with toys, in all shapes and sizes.
History, however, suggests a different take on the notion of play. As early as the times of the great Greek empire, it is interesting to note that play and education were viewed then as one and the same thing. The Greek words for play and education were the same (Hughes, 1999). Play was already viewed as compatible with education during those early ages. Play was for the young, and when they moved into adulthood, they were expected to engage in competitions such as the Olympic games, in order to make a living.
In more recent times, what children did when they played was roam in packs, large or small, more or less unsupervised, and engaged in freewheeling imaginative play. They were princes and princesses, or more likely, action heroes. Basically, children spent most of their time doing what looked like nothing much at all. This is the play that I, and most of us, I would hazard to guess, are likely to relate to. We improvised play, whether it was in the outdoor or whether it was on a street corner or someone else's backyard. We also improvised our own play; we regulated that play and we made up our own rules. In my mind, these times would remain as the “golden period of play” for me.
But over the last 2 decades, play appeared to have changed radically. Instead of spending their time in make-believe play, children were supplied with ever more specific toys for play, and with predetermined scripts as well. Essentially, instead of playing pirates with a tree branch, children started to play Star Wars with a toy light saber. This increasingly commercialization of children's play had inadvertently begun to shrink the size of the children's imaginative space.
This perspective on play has brought about much debate between parents. More and more parents expect their young children to be learning specific academic skills and at an even younger age. If adults are seeking more and more of these academic outcomes, there is no room left for child-centered learning-play (Wardle, 1996). Exacerbating this situation is that play is being eliminated more and more from the formal education of young children.
From my perspective, advocating for play in early childhood has therefore become even more urgent now than ever before. As early childhood educators, the need to expose our young charges to more play should become one of our central aims.
(B) 3 Theories Supporting Play
Individual Assignment – Essay on:
Discuss the historical context and perspectives of play.
Explain how play can be injected into daily activities.
Write on 3 theories supporting play.
(A) History and Perspectives of Play
The notion of play conjures up different images for different people. For me as a fledgling early childhood educator, the first thing that comes to mind when play is mentioned is the image of children engaging in outdoor activities where they are running, laughing, shouting and sharing. The second image would be children involved in some form of indoor play comprising a board game of sorts, or simply playing with toys, in all shapes and sizes.
History, however, suggests a different take on the notion of play. As early as the times of the great Greek empire, it is interesting to note that play and education were viewed then as one and the same thing. The Greek words for play and education were the same (Hughes, 1999). Play was already viewed as compatible with education during those early ages. Play was for the young, and when they moved into adulthood, they were expected to engage in competitions such as the Olympic games, in order to make a living.
In more recent times, what children did when they played was roam in packs, large or small, more or less unsupervised, and engaged in freewheeling imaginative play. They were princes and princesses, or more likely, action heroes. Basically, children spent most of their time doing what looked like nothing much at all. This is the play that I, and most of us, I would hazard to guess, are likely to relate to. We improvised play, whether it was in the outdoor or whether it was on a street corner or someone else's backyard. We also improvised our own play; we regulated that play and we made up our own rules. In my mind, these times would remain as the “golden period of play” for me.
But over the last 2 decades, play appeared to have changed radically. Instead of spending their time in make-believe play, children were supplied with ever more specific toys for play, and with predetermined scripts as well. Essentially, instead of playing pirates with a tree branch, children started to play Star Wars with a toy light saber. This increasingly commercialization of children's play had inadvertently begun to shrink the size of the children's imaginative space.
This perspective on play has brought about much debate between parents. More and more parents expect their young children to be learning specific academic skills and at an even younger age. If adults are seeking more and more of these academic outcomes, there is no room left for child-centered learning-play (Wardle, 1996). Exacerbating this situation is that play is being eliminated more and more from the formal education of young children.
From my perspective, advocating for play in early childhood has therefore become even more urgent now than ever before. As early childhood educators, the need to expose our young charges to more play should become one of our central aims.
(B) 3 Theories Supporting Play
Lev Vygotsky
One of the world’s leading developmental psychologist, Lev Vygotsky, argued that in the preschool years, play is the leading source of childhood development. He theorized that through play, children learn and practice many basic social skills (Mooney, 2000). They develop a sense of self, and they learn to interact with other children. Through play, they also learn how to make friends and how to role-play.
At the basic level of cognitive development, Vygotsky argued that make-believe play is crucial to helping a child in abstract thinking (Hughes, 1999). According to him, very young children are incapable of abstract thought because for them, meaning and objects are one and the same thing. This means that they cannot think about a horse without seeing a real horse. But when they begin to engage in make-believe play and use a stick, for example, to represent a horse, they begin to separate meaning from the object. As a result, children soon become able to think about meanings independently of the objects they represent.
On a second level, Vygotsky showed that play can provide a rich context for socially assisted learning. His concepts of zone of proximal development (ZPD) and scaffolding showed amply the power of play in helping children grasp and extend their knowledge and skills to a higher level.
Thirdly, Vygotsky viewed play as a self-help tool that promotes learning and understanding. Children engaged in play can create their own scaffolding and stretch themselves to such areas as self-control, cooperation with others and literacy, using private speech to direct, control and self-regulate. Play can therefore become a magnifying glass revealing potential new abilities before these new abilities became actualized in the young child.
Mildred Parten
The study of how play develops in children was carried out extensively by Mildred Parten in the late 1920s. She closely observed children between the ages of 2 and 5 years and categorised their play into six different types (Dockett, Fleer, 2002). Parten collected data by observing and sampling the children's behaviour. She observed the children for 1 minute periods, which were varied systematically. Her 6 types of play are:
1. Unoccupied play: the child is relatively stationary and appears to be performing random movements with no apparent purpose. This is a relatively infrequent style of play.
Thirdly, Vygotsky viewed play as a self-help tool that promotes learning and understanding. Children engaged in play can create their own scaffolding and stretch themselves to such areas as self-control, cooperation with others and literacy, using private speech to direct, control and self-regulate. Play can therefore become a magnifying glass revealing potential new abilities before these new abilities became actualized in the young child.
Mildred Parten
The study of how play develops in children was carried out extensively by Mildred Parten in the late 1920s. She closely observed children between the ages of 2 and 5 years and categorised their play into six different types (Dockett, Fleer, 2002). Parten collected data by observing and sampling the children's behaviour. She observed the children for 1 minute periods, which were varied systematically. Her 6 types of play are:
1. Unoccupied play: the child is relatively stationary and appears to be performing random movements with no apparent purpose. This is a relatively infrequent style of play.
2. Solitary play: the child is completely engrossed in playing and does not seem to notice other children. This play is most often seen in children between 2 and 3 years-old.
3. Onlooker play: the child takes an interest in other children's play but does not join in. The child may ask questions or just talk to other children, but the main activity is simply to watch.
4. Parallel play: the child mimics other children's play but does not actively engage and play with them.
5. Associative play: the children are now more interested in each other than the toys they are using. This is the first category that involves strong social interaction between the children while they play.
6. Cooperative play: The playing has some goal and children often adopt roles and act as a group. Some organisation may enter the children's play.
What is interesting to note about these 6 types of play is that the first four categories of play do not involve much interaction with others, while the last two do. While children shift between the types of play, what Parten showed was that as they grow up, children participated less in the first four types and more in the last two, that is, those which involved greater interaction.
Parten therefore emphasized the important idea that learning to play is learning how to relate to others.
Sara Smilansky
Sara Smilanksy was an Israeli researcher who studied children at play in Israel and the United States. She developed the 4 stages of play, which focused on the intellectual development of the child. Her 4 stages of play are:
1. Functional Play - Here, the children’s movements are used to provide exercise. This is characterized in infants and toddlers.
2. Constructive Play - The child works towards a goal – an example is when a child is completing a puzzle or a drawing. This is characterized by children up to 3.5 years.
3. Sociodramatic Play – The child assumes roles and uses language for the purpose of pretending. This is characterized by children between 4 and 6.5 years.
4. Games with rules – This is the highest form cognitive play for children. This is characterized by children who are 7 years and above.
She defined dramatic play as taking place when a child pretends to be someone else and sociodramatic play as those times when two or more children cooperate in such role–playing. In her research, the results point to dramatic and sociodramatic play as a strong medium for the development of cognitive and socioemotional skills. It led her to conclude that sociodramatic play activates resources that stimulate emotional, social, and intellectual growth in the child, which in turn affects the child’s success in school.
She argued that children who play well in creative social situations show significant gains in many cognitive and emotional-social areas, including language development, intellectual competence, curiosity, innovation and imagination and that the good players tend to have a longer attention span and greater concentration ability (IPPA Website, 2009).
(C) Explain how play can be injected into daily activities.
Play can be injected into daily activities in a preschool setting by using popular play games and seizing opportunities for the children to engage in make-believe plays. Some of these games for children are:
1. Simple Simon Says : This children’s favourite, Simple Simon Says, is a game that requires children to control and inhibit themselves. Children have to think and require them to not do something, which helps them to build self-regulation and confidence.
(C) Explain how play can be injected into daily activities.
Play can be injected into daily activities in a preschool setting by using popular play games and seizing opportunities for the children to engage in make-believe plays. Some of these games for children are:
1. Simple Simon Says : This children’s favourite, Simple Simon Says, is a game that requires children to control and inhibit themselves. Children have to think and require them to not do something, which helps them to build self-regulation and confidence.
2. Imaginative Plays: Imaginative plays where your child plans scenarios and enacts those scenarios for a fair amount of time help children build cognitive and social skills. Realistic props are good for very young children, but it may just as good to encourage the children to use symbolic props that they create and make through their imaginations. For example, a stick can be used as a sword.
3. Play activities that require planning: Games with directions, patterns for construction, recipes for cooking, for several examples that preschool teachers can introduce into their classrooms to support Parten’s 6 stages of play.
4. Joint storybook reading: Reading storybooks with preschoolers not only fosters language development, but engenders good social skills within children because children's stories are filled with characters who model effective social skills and strategies.
5. Encouraging children to talk to themselves: Like adults, children spontaneously speak to themselves to guide and manage their own behavior. Children often use self-guiding comments recently picked up from their interactions with adults, indicating that they are beginning to apply those strategies to themselves. Encouraging children to be verbally active fosters concentration and enables problem-solving skills.
These would be 5 ways that preschool teachers can naturally, and without much effort, inject play into their classrooms.
References
1. Dockett, S & Fleer, M. (2002), Play and pedagogy in early childhood : Bending the
rules. Harcourt, Australia.
2. Hughes, F.P. (1999), Children, Play and Development, 3rd Edition, p.3. London, Allyn
and Bacon.
3. IPPA Website [Online Database]. Retrieved March, 10, 2009 from the World Wide
Web: http://www.ippa.ie/play.htm
4. Mooney, C. G. (2000), Theories of Childhood, p.93 . Readleaf Press, Division of
Resources of Child Caring, 450 N, Syndicate, Suite 5 St Paul, MN 55104.
5. Wardle, F. (1987). Getting back to the basics of children’s play. Childcare Information Exchange, Sept 27-30
These would be 5 ways that preschool teachers can naturally, and without much effort, inject play into their classrooms.
References
1. Dockett, S & Fleer, M. (2002), Play and pedagogy in early childhood : Bending the
rules. Harcourt, Australia.
2. Hughes, F.P. (1999), Children, Play and Development, 3rd Edition, p.3. London, Allyn
and Bacon.
3. IPPA Website [Online Database]. Retrieved March, 10, 2009 from the World Wide
Web: http://www.ippa.ie/play.htm
4. Mooney, C. G. (2000), Theories of Childhood, p.93 . Readleaf Press, Division of
Resources of Child Caring, 450 N, Syndicate, Suite 5 St Paul, MN 55104.
5. Wardle, F. (1987). Getting back to the basics of children’s play. Childcare Information Exchange, Sept 27-30
