Play & Development
Introduction
When I think back on my own childhood I can remember playing for hours in green areas, trees, housing estates, basically areas not specifically designed for children to play in, however they were great places for me to use my imagination and creativity. Not all children have the time or the space needed to play in such a way. These days so much emphasis is put on the importance of education that children have less and less free time. These days many children do not have the facilities to play freely and in many cases it is no longer safe to allow children to play unattended outside.
What is play?
Every child in the world has the right to play. Play is about high levels of learning. Play is essential to a child’s learning as it helps children to learn about relationships, feelings, ideas and imaginations, and their moral, spiritual and physical self.
When children play they use this time to practice their lives, they imagine the future, they reflect and try to make sense of the past, they are creative and imaginative. They create and organise their learning for themselves and gather theirs thought and feelings, relationships and physical bodies under their own control. This play is crucial to the development of self-esteem. (Tina Bruce & Carolyn Meggitt)
Some people believe that children know how to play naturally, this idea of ‘free play’. In many cases they play by watching others. Older children often teach younger children to play by involving them to play in their own games. Children also play in a pre-set routine developed by adults, the idea of ‘structured play’. (Tina Bruce & Carolyn Meggitt)
Theories of play
There are many definitions of the word play. It is a far more complicated word/term than we think and this is evident when we look at theorists such as Piaget, Vygotsky and Parten.
Jean Piaget
Piaget (1962) defined play as the child’s effort to make his/her own environment match his/her own concepts. Piaget (1962) claimed that play was for pleasure, and not something to be forced upon. He said that it was for children to practice things that they had already learned, and that play did not necessarily mean the child would learn new things. (earlychildhoodnews)
Piaget looked at the importance of play. He used 4 different developmental stages to help describe play to adults. The first is mastery play (from birth year 2 aprox.) This is where the child is aware of how objects and people respond to physical activity and particular words or commands. The child’s play at this stage is about learning to control its environment. The second stage (2 – 7 years) is symbolic play where the child uses objects to represent other things. This is done through the use of their own imagination. At this stage play is a result of intuition rather than logic. The third stage of play (7 – 11 years) is play with rules. Here they start to play games with structure and rules and it is the first signs of logical reasoning. The fourth stage (12 and above) is play with competitiveness and predominantly governed by rules. (findarticles)
Lev Vygotsky
Vygotsky, like Piaget, observed children at play. One of Vygotskys Theories is the cultural-historical theory. This is the idea that child development is a result of interactions between children and their social environment. These interaction include those with parents, teachers, classmates, playmates etc. he also says that a child’s greatest achievements are possible through play, achievements that tomorrow will become his/her basic level of real action. (Janice J. Beaty)
Mildred Parten
In 1932 Mildred Parten published her findings on the topic ‘social participation among pre-school children’. She found that this topic cold be categorized into 6 categories. These categories include:
1. Unoccupied behaviour: The child does not participate in the play around him. He sits in one spot, follows the teacher, or wonders around.
2. Onlooker behaviour: the child watches others play around him, may talk with the others but does not join them or interact with them physically.
3. Solitary independent play: the child plays actively, but on his own and not with the others around him.
4. Parallel activity: The child plays alone, but plays along-side another group and may use they’re toys.
5. Associative play: the child plays with others and with the same materials and even talks with them, but acts on his own and does not contribute to the group.
6. Cooperative play: the child interacts fully with a group, with organisation. The child actively has a part in the group.
These ‘play categories’ are interesting as they out-line the different ways in which children play and socially develop. (Janice J. Beaty)
Friedrich Froebel
Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852) was the creator of the ‘Kindergarten’ pre-schools. He thought that play should not be left to chance. He felt that it should be structured and based around learning. He designed play things to be given to children. These were known as ‘Froebel gifts’. These were balls, blocks, tiles, rings and sticks which encourage creative play. Through playing with toys such as blocks as seen in fig1, Children learn basic but important special awareness and mathematical skills. He also believed that observing and nurturing plants in a garden was good for stimulating awareness of the natural world. (froebelweb)
Play at different ages
Children develop the skill to do simple actions that can b regarded as ’play’ from an early age. Infants can imitate simple actions in the second half of their first year, they will playfully imitate sounds they hear. Below is a rough guide to the types of play that may be observed in different age groups.
0-1 yrs: infants play by looking and listening. They discover their ability to kick their legs and grab at objects. This turns into games to them when they drop objects on the floor and realise that someone will pick them up for them.
1-2 yrs: the child is more mobile, moving things around. They enjoy the company of others, and become more interested in other people and colours and sounds.
2-3 yrs: children enjoy sorting, stacking threading, hammering, drawing etc. and further enjoy the company of other children, looking at pictures and listening to stories.
3-5yrs: by now children are starting to create their own play ideas, such as ‘make believe’ and pretend play, music making, reading and being read to, construction toys, balls etc.
5-8 yrs: by now children enjoy all of the above. They devise their own play world’s, enjoy reading, finding out things and creating challenges for themselves.
This is a rough guide to the play ages. Often children of a much older age like to play with blocks and water associated with a much younger age group. This should not be dismissed as ‘babyish’ as often this can happen when the child has a specific plan for this method of playing. This time around the thinking and logic behind the playing may be far more complex. (Noirin Hayes)
Types of play
Through a child’s life play takes on many forms as they mature. Different forms of play help a child’s development in different ways. Changing forms of play can indicate new abilities while at the same time, failure to advance to different methods of playing may indicate development problems. Through various methods of play, children develop social rules, understanding of the physical environment and their knowledge of language. (Noirin Hayes)
Physical Play
Physical play involves the use of the child’s natural motor skills or ‘gross’ motor skills. Very young infants show this type of play when they are put on the ground, free to kick and crawl, grab and roll. This type of play is characterised by exploration, manipulation and adventure. Wide open areas for play are important to children of a young age. They love to test their skills at a young age, and even play such as fighting or scrapping with a friend is a characteristic of physical play. This type of play also fine tunes motor skills such as hand eye coordination, which helps develop skills like holding a pencil, and throwing/ catching a ball. (Noirin Hayes)
Creative play
Creative play can be seen from a young age. Messing or throwing food, dropping or throwing objects are all ways to play with movement or sound. As children get older their creative play will involve drawing, finger painting, sticking or pasting things, playing with water, sand play dough, and wood. Any play involving building block’s, lego etc. can also be used for creative play and are important because they aid physical development, cooperation and imagination. (Noirin Hayes)
Imaginative play and make believe play
This is also a type of creative play but has to be looked at separately because of its importance in children’s lives and their development of a self-image. Children pretend that objects are something else like a stick being a gun or a ruler being a sword. As children develop they use role-play and role taking, e.g. pretending to be a teacher or a mother. They also enjoy dressing up while involving in role play. This type of play can mature and take on particular rules and be played for days, more typically for older children. (Noirin Hayes)
Structured play
This type of play refers to play that is governed by the material/objects the child plays with rather than the child themselves. This type of play involves the use of objects with specific purposes such as building blocks with window and door pieces (pushing the idea of a building), jigsaws, puzzles, and other such ‘educational’ toys. Board games would fall under this category. (Noirin Hayes)
Free play
Free play is considered to be the most important type of play in a young child’s development. In free play children have freedom, choice and control over their play. It can involve all the others types of play; physical, creative, imaginative and structured, however it is up to the child to decide how to play. It allows a child to be creative, spontaneous and most importantly, free! (Noirin Hayes)
Conclusion
When I started this essay I was a little confused and worried weather I would understand the theories relating to child play and development. On reflection it is a topic that was surprisingly easy to relate to. Piaget said that the age of 2-7 is the ‘symbolic play’ stage of play, where children use objects to represent other things. This can be described as simply as a child playing with a box pretending it is a fort or a castle.
I have read many different approaches on the term ‘play’, I have tried to pick out sections to derive what I would call a ‘play area’ that would cater for all forms of play at all ages. This is a difficult task as there are a few clashes of interest; Piaget’s idea that play was for pleasure and not something that could be forced upon, and Froebel’s idea that play should not be left to chance, it should be structured and based around learning. To overcome this I think that there is a simple solution, in a ‘play area’ one could create a ‘play time’ where times are designated for ‘free play’ where children are free to play with whatever toys, objects dirt etc. another time should be set aside for using these toys, objects dirt etc. in a structured way. I believe that games using objects (structured play) in a predetermined way can help build social awareness, teach rules and learn discipline.
So in terms of play, there are many elements/stages of play that will help shape and define a ‘play area’. If we look at Mildred Parten’s 6 stage of play; unoccupied behaviour, onlooker behaviour, solitary independent play, parallel activity, associative play, cooperative play, I feel that these 6 categories are an important study to include when designing a ‘play area’. It is said that these 6 categories can relate to nearly all children during play, so it is important to create a space that does not exclude children under these categories. For example, ‘onlooker behaviour’, the child watches others play around him. Children may not always want to play or be included with others or activities so it is important not to create a space where a child is uncomfortable by oneself, but at the same time not to promote antisocialism. Another example ‘parallel activity’ the child plays alongside another group, to allow for this a play area should consist of multiple toys, objects, activities and areas/zones. I think it may be important to allow a child to decide in his/her own time when they are ready to play with others.
For me, an important point I reads about was by Friedrich Froebel who believed observing and nurturing plants in a garden was good for stimulating awareness of the natural world. I know that when I was a kid in playschool, my favourite time of the day was being allowed outside. When I was in primary school, in junior and senior infants, our play area was limited to a paved yard. The most fun we had was when we were taken under supervision to a public park nearby where we were allowed to play freely.
When I think back on my own childhood I can remember playing for hours in green areas, trees, housing estates, basically areas not specifically designed for children to play in, however they were great places for me to use my imagination and creativity. Not all children have the time or the space needed to play in such a way. These days so much emphasis is put on the importance of education that children have less and less free time. These days many children do not have the facilities to play freely and in many cases it is no longer safe to allow children to play unattended outside.
What is play?
Every child in the world has the right to play. Play is about high levels of learning. Play is essential to a child’s learning as it helps children to learn about relationships, feelings, ideas and imaginations, and their moral, spiritual and physical self.
When children play they use this time to practice their lives, they imagine the future, they reflect and try to make sense of the past, they are creative and imaginative. They create and organise their learning for themselves and gather theirs thought and feelings, relationships and physical bodies under their own control. This play is crucial to the development of self-esteem. (Tina Bruce & Carolyn Meggitt)
Some people believe that children know how to play naturally, this idea of ‘free play’. In many cases they play by watching others. Older children often teach younger children to play by involving them to play in their own games. Children also play in a pre-set routine developed by adults, the idea of ‘structured play’. (Tina Bruce & Carolyn Meggitt)
Theories of play
There are many definitions of the word play. It is a far more complicated word/term than we think and this is evident when we look at theorists such as Piaget, Vygotsky and Parten.
Jean Piaget
Piaget (1962) defined play as the child’s effort to make his/her own environment match his/her own concepts. Piaget (1962) claimed that play was for pleasure, and not something to be forced upon. He said that it was for children to practice things that they had already learned, and that play did not necessarily mean the child would learn new things. (earlychildhoodnews)
Piaget looked at the importance of play. He used 4 different developmental stages to help describe play to adults. The first is mastery play (from birth year 2 aprox.) This is where the child is aware of how objects and people respond to physical activity and particular words or commands. The child’s play at this stage is about learning to control its environment. The second stage (2 – 7 years) is symbolic play where the child uses objects to represent other things. This is done through the use of their own imagination. At this stage play is a result of intuition rather than logic. The third stage of play (7 – 11 years) is play with rules. Here they start to play games with structure and rules and it is the first signs of logical reasoning. The fourth stage (12 and above) is play with competitiveness and predominantly governed by rules. (findarticles)
Lev Vygotsky
Vygotsky, like Piaget, observed children at play. One of Vygotskys Theories is the cultural-historical theory. This is the idea that child development is a result of interactions between children and their social environment. These interaction include those with parents, teachers, classmates, playmates etc. he also says that a child’s greatest achievements are possible through play, achievements that tomorrow will become his/her basic level of real action. (Janice J. Beaty)
Mildred Parten
In 1932 Mildred Parten published her findings on the topic ‘social participation among pre-school children’. She found that this topic cold be categorized into 6 categories. These categories include:
1. Unoccupied behaviour: The child does not participate in the play around him. He sits in one spot, follows the teacher, or wonders around.
2. Onlooker behaviour: the child watches others play around him, may talk with the others but does not join them or interact with them physically.
3. Solitary independent play: the child plays actively, but on his own and not with the others around him.
4. Parallel activity: The child plays alone, but plays along-side another group and may use they’re toys.
5. Associative play: the child plays with others and with the same materials and even talks with them, but acts on his own and does not contribute to the group.
6. Cooperative play: the child interacts fully with a group, with organisation. The child actively has a part in the group.
These ‘play categories’ are interesting as they out-line the different ways in which children play and socially develop. (Janice J. Beaty)
Friedrich Froebel
Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852) was the creator of the ‘Kindergarten’ pre-schools. He thought that play should not be left to chance. He felt that it should be structured and based around learning. He designed play things to be given to children. These were known as ‘Froebel gifts’. These were balls, blocks, tiles, rings and sticks which encourage creative play. Through playing with toys such as blocks as seen in fig1, Children learn basic but important special awareness and mathematical skills. He also believed that observing and nurturing plants in a garden was good for stimulating awareness of the natural world. (froebelweb)
Play at different ages
Children develop the skill to do simple actions that can b regarded as ’play’ from an early age. Infants can imitate simple actions in the second half of their first year, they will playfully imitate sounds they hear. Below is a rough guide to the types of play that may be observed in different age groups.
0-1 yrs: infants play by looking and listening. They discover their ability to kick their legs and grab at objects. This turns into games to them when they drop objects on the floor and realise that someone will pick them up for them.
1-2 yrs: the child is more mobile, moving things around. They enjoy the company of others, and become more interested in other people and colours and sounds.
2-3 yrs: children enjoy sorting, stacking threading, hammering, drawing etc. and further enjoy the company of other children, looking at pictures and listening to stories.
3-5yrs: by now children are starting to create their own play ideas, such as ‘make believe’ and pretend play, music making, reading and being read to, construction toys, balls etc.
5-8 yrs: by now children enjoy all of the above. They devise their own play world’s, enjoy reading, finding out things and creating challenges for themselves.
This is a rough guide to the play ages. Often children of a much older age like to play with blocks and water associated with a much younger age group. This should not be dismissed as ‘babyish’ as often this can happen when the child has a specific plan for this method of playing. This time around the thinking and logic behind the playing may be far more complex. (Noirin Hayes)
Types of play
Through a child’s life play takes on many forms as they mature. Different forms of play help a child’s development in different ways. Changing forms of play can indicate new abilities while at the same time, failure to advance to different methods of playing may indicate development problems. Through various methods of play, children develop social rules, understanding of the physical environment and their knowledge of language. (Noirin Hayes)
Physical Play
Physical play involves the use of the child’s natural motor skills or ‘gross’ motor skills. Very young infants show this type of play when they are put on the ground, free to kick and crawl, grab and roll. This type of play is characterised by exploration, manipulation and adventure. Wide open areas for play are important to children of a young age. They love to test their skills at a young age, and even play such as fighting or scrapping with a friend is a characteristic of physical play. This type of play also fine tunes motor skills such as hand eye coordination, which helps develop skills like holding a pencil, and throwing/ catching a ball. (Noirin Hayes)
Creative play
Creative play can be seen from a young age. Messing or throwing food, dropping or throwing objects are all ways to play with movement or sound. As children get older their creative play will involve drawing, finger painting, sticking or pasting things, playing with water, sand play dough, and wood. Any play involving building block’s, lego etc. can also be used for creative play and are important because they aid physical development, cooperation and imagination. (Noirin Hayes)
Imaginative play and make believe play
This is also a type of creative play but has to be looked at separately because of its importance in children’s lives and their development of a self-image. Children pretend that objects are something else like a stick being a gun or a ruler being a sword. As children develop they use role-play and role taking, e.g. pretending to be a teacher or a mother. They also enjoy dressing up while involving in role play. This type of play can mature and take on particular rules and be played for days, more typically for older children. (Noirin Hayes)
Structured play
This type of play refers to play that is governed by the material/objects the child plays with rather than the child themselves. This type of play involves the use of objects with specific purposes such as building blocks with window and door pieces (pushing the idea of a building), jigsaws, puzzles, and other such ‘educational’ toys. Board games would fall under this category. (Noirin Hayes)
Free play
Free play is considered to be the most important type of play in a young child’s development. In free play children have freedom, choice and control over their play. It can involve all the others types of play; physical, creative, imaginative and structured, however it is up to the child to decide how to play. It allows a child to be creative, spontaneous and most importantly, free! (Noirin Hayes)
Conclusion
When I started this essay I was a little confused and worried weather I would understand the theories relating to child play and development. On reflection it is a topic that was surprisingly easy to relate to. Piaget said that the age of 2-7 is the ‘symbolic play’ stage of play, where children use objects to represent other things. This can be described as simply as a child playing with a box pretending it is a fort or a castle.
I have read many different approaches on the term ‘play’, I have tried to pick out sections to derive what I would call a ‘play area’ that would cater for all forms of play at all ages. This is a difficult task as there are a few clashes of interest; Piaget’s idea that play was for pleasure and not something that could be forced upon, and Froebel’s idea that play should not be left to chance, it should be structured and based around learning. To overcome this I think that there is a simple solution, in a ‘play area’ one could create a ‘play time’ where times are designated for ‘free play’ where children are free to play with whatever toys, objects dirt etc. another time should be set aside for using these toys, objects dirt etc. in a structured way. I believe that games using objects (structured play) in a predetermined way can help build social awareness, teach rules and learn discipline.
So in terms of play, there are many elements/stages of play that will help shape and define a ‘play area’. If we look at Mildred Parten’s 6 stage of play; unoccupied behaviour, onlooker behaviour, solitary independent play, parallel activity, associative play, cooperative play, I feel that these 6 categories are an important study to include when designing a ‘play area’. It is said that these 6 categories can relate to nearly all children during play, so it is important to create a space that does not exclude children under these categories. For example, ‘onlooker behaviour’, the child watches others play around him. Children may not always want to play or be included with others or activities so it is important not to create a space where a child is uncomfortable by oneself, but at the same time not to promote antisocialism. Another example ‘parallel activity’ the child plays alongside another group, to allow for this a play area should consist of multiple toys, objects, activities and areas/zones. I think it may be important to allow a child to decide in his/her own time when they are ready to play with others.
For me, an important point I reads about was by Friedrich Froebel who believed observing and nurturing plants in a garden was good for stimulating awareness of the natural world. I know that when I was a kid in playschool, my favourite time of the day was being allowed outside. When I was in primary school, in junior and senior infants, our play area was limited to a paved yard. The most fun we had was when we were taken under supervision to a public park nearby where we were allowed to play freely.