A summarised information on PLAY taken from the Open University resources.
Why do Children need PLAY?
There is reason to think that children who have their play behaviour severely restricted, or who find it difficult to play, can become very unhappy, or worse. In a study of 26 young male murderers, Brown (1998) reported that normal play behaviour was virtually absent throughout the lives of these highly violent, antisocial men.
According to Katz (1998) there are plenty of opportunities for spontaneous play with blocks, dressing-up clothes, painting, collage and clay, as well as dramatic play.
An excerpt taken from the 'Curriculum Guidance/Frameworks and Play':
From an early age, play is important to a child's development and learning. It isn't just physical. It can involve cognitive, imaginative, creative, emotional and social aspects. It is the main way most children express their impulse to explore, experiment and understand. Children of all ages play.
(Dobson, 2004, p.8)
In some societies and cultures, play is an important element in the protection model of children, a model which presents ‘well-cared’ for children as those who are cocooned from the day-to-day life and anxieties of the adult world:
in modern Western society play has become marginalized and locked itself in a world of its own. It has grown into a highly differentiated and separate activity – an activity that separates children from the real, adult world. It has become one of the expressions for the banishment of children to the margins of society. Play has become an expression of a kind of activity that has no place in real society; something easy that children engage in while waiting for entrance into society.
(Strandell, 2000, p.147)
This particular concept of play arises from a particular view of ‘the child’, a view that sees children as different from adults: they are innocent in the sense that they are untouched by the cares of the adult world; they have the right to be protected; they have a degree of autonomy, but the extent to which they participate in the ‘real’ world is circumscribed, and lacking responsibility is almost synonymous with childhood. It is apparent, then, that attitudes towards children's play are socially, culturally and politically determined. This being the case, we need to be conscious that theories about the value of children's play will vary through time and place, and will be influenced by the dominant discourses about childhood, education and child development.
WHAT IS PLAY?
It seems that defining the word PLAY is very crucial and important. Most may not seem to understand what lies underneath the aims and objectives of PLAY. The quote by Dobson (2004, as above) might explained it all.
Another excerpt taken from the website:
What is important is that practitioners, parents and children within a setting share their ideas about what constitutes play and that we, as adults, are clear about why we value play. In order to do this, you need to take a step back and think about what you think play does and, from there, consider why it is valuable.
Words and phrases such as exploration, fun, freedom, investigation, enquiry, learning, social development, coping with anxieties, making sense of the world and using up energy are some of the many descriptions and interpretations of play activities.
The purposes and reasons for valuing play have included the view that it:
utilises surplus energy;
is natural for children and part of the innocence of childhood;
helps children understand the social world;
helps children to develop cognitively;
supports children's developing communication skills;
helps children to cope with their feelings and fears and to manage their emotional states;
develops positive dispositions towards challenge, change and self-initiated learning.
- What are the BENEFITS?One of the beliefs challenged by the study's findings was that play is a valuable learning context because the children have ownership and are interested and self-motivated. The data suggested that children were often unable to gain much from a particular play episode because the practitioners assumed the children possessed a range of complex skills, ‘such as making decisions, carrying out their plans, co-operating with peers, sharing resources, problem-creating and problem-solving’, and in some cases this was not the case (Bennett et al., 1997, p.121). Children were also observed as being ‘hands on’, but not ‘brains on’; they would appear to be playing in the way the teacher had hoped and expected they would, but in fact they were not intellectually engaged (Bennett et al., 1997, p.121).It is often argued that play encourages children to be independent learners, but in order to be an independent learner the child has to develop a range of strategies and skills, ranging from selecting resources, through working cooperatively with others, to reflecting on what they know and what they need to know.HOW to achieve?- The Role of Adults in PLAY- The Settings helps in developing ideas- Be creative;- Play can be as simple as it could be, and it won't be necessary to be expensive.What else can PLAY help one to achieve?
Observing children's play offers an important way in which adults can monitor and assess children's progress.
Logging children's use of a particular activity or play scenario helps practitioners monitor how children use their time, their particular interests and any gaps in their experiences, so that practitioners can plan a balanced curriculum that takes note of children's strengths, interests and needs.
(QCA/DfEE, 2000a, p.24)
Playtime in a primary school offers a context where children's free play can be observed. Janet May, a teaching assistant from Yelvertoft Primary School, Northampton, describes how she draws on playground observations to inform classroom thinking.
I love being around the children. It's very interesting for me to see them as a teaching assistant in the classroom, and then as a playtime supervisor outside. I can very often take back a lot of things to the teacher that have happened at playtime. Or maybe something I've seen in a child's character outside that I'm able to discuss with the teacher; and that might explain what's happening in class. So it's quite valuable to be in both situations.
(Personal communication, May 2006)
More...
According to Cagliari, observing children in ‘unstructured’ or play activities may reveal what a child has already learnt. She suggests that in order to be able to plan future activities the adult needs to be a participant observer: taking part in the activity, listening to and discussing the children's ideas and engaging in self-observation in order to identify possible future paths of learning (author's personal notes on Cagliari, 2003a).
Hyder (2005) argues that children can reveal a great deal through their fantasy and imaginative play, and that listening and watching is a crucial part of gaining access to children's ideas and feelings. Cagliari (2003a), however, warns about the dangers of seeing what we want to see. Children's play is complex, and we need to be cautious about assuming that, because we have observed the observable (i.e. what the children are doing or saying), we have accessed their thoughts and ideas. We need to be careful that we see what actually happens and not what we expect or want to see. There are always different ways of interpreting situations; these may not be ‘correct’ from a scientific point of view, but if we are not open to what we didn't expect, if we are not open to different ways in which a topic can be approached, the different connections it is possible to make, the different premises, then it becomes difficult to discover the knowledge-building processes of the children. It is important not to over-predict what will happen.Source: The Learning Space, Open University
For more and clearer information, please visit:
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=397481
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