Play provides benefits for cognitive, social, emotional,
physical, and moral development (American Academy of Paediatrics, 2006; Elkind,
2007) for children from all socioeconomic, cultural, and linguistic
backgrounds (Zigler, E. & Bishop-Josef, S., 2006). Play helps to improve the
physical developmental domain of the child. Physical outdoor activities like
climbing boards, swings, slide, push and pull toys, jungle gyms, see-saw,
tricycles and bicycles will help develop large muscular coordination. While
indoor activities like painting, building blocks, peg boards, coloring and
spooning are useful in the development of small muscle co ordination.Intellectual
activities like looking through picture books, reading story books, comics and
playing puzzle games can help develop children’s cognitive domain. When
children play they have many opportunities to apply mental images of
the world to new objects, people and situations around them.
Teachers and parents need to be aware of Piaget’s belief that children are active learners who interact with their
environment- (Nixon & Gould, 2002). This belief, armed with the knowledge
of Piaget’s stages of play-(Isenberg & Jalongo, 2006) will help the teacher
facilitate learning through play. Teachers of infants can create an environment
where functional or practice play is encouraged - (Isenberg & Jalongo,
2006). Infants learn through active exploration of
the environment. The onus is therefore on the infant teacher to expose infants
to repeated movements with objects, people and language - (Isenberg & Jalongo, 2006). There should be enough toys and
materials for them to explore. Toys will help them develop exploratory and constructive ideas.
These toys should not be easily breakable, sharp, nor contain toxic
substances. They should be able to
stimulate child’s interests and
creativity. Toys can be used to develop the concepts of colors and shapes .Teachers of toddlers on the other hand, can reinforce symbolic play- (Isenberg & Jalongo, 2006) by promoting the proper use of
language. For instance, a teacher observes a child's play and provides language
for the concepts involved, building the child’s vocabulary: "Isn’t that
lovely that you’ve lined up these fish from small to big, little to
gigantic." In another instance, a teacher may observe a child pretending that a play
house is a hospital and he is the doctor. She asks, “Where are the nurses? How
many patients are you seeing today?”This type of conversation will encourage
the child to develop his imagination and vocal skills - (Bay area early
childhood funders, 2007). For outdoor
play, primary teachers can explore stage games as proven by Jean Piaget -
(Isenberg & Jalongo, 2006). Children between the age of 7-11 years, which
Piaget termed as the concrete operational period can handle competitive games
like running, handball,
hide & seek and football - (Isenberg & Jalongo, 2006). Boys can play
against girls in a competition and vice versa. This will help them develop
interdependence, coordination, good thinking skills, self control and a
balanced self esteem. Children develop concepts and skills together as they
are integrated in the context of meaningful and playful experiences. Cognitive
skills are developed through activities that occur naturally during play, such
as counting, sorting, sequencing, and matching- (Bay area early childhood
funders , 2007).
There is a wide body of evidence showing that a child’s emotional
development blossoms as a result of play. Schools should foster an atmosphere where “children learn through responsive and reciprocal relationships with
people, places, and things. Interaction provides a rich
social world for children to make sense of and gives opportunities for
them to learn by trying out their ideas with adults and other children”-
(MoE, 1996). Children learn a lot from playing and interacting with peers and
adults.
The communication that occurs among children during play will help to
develop their language and cognitive skills. This is most apparent among mixed age
children. The older children learn from teaching the younger ones and the
younger children learn from observing and imitating the older ones. Parents and teachers should continuously promote an environment
where children’s communication ability can be developed to suit a range of
purposes .
Written by
Olapeju Okungbowa
REFERENCES
American Academy
of Paediatrics: Ginsburg, K.R. and the Committee on Communications and
Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health. (2006, October).
Clinical report: The importance of play
in promoting healthy child development and maintaining strong parent-child
bonds.
Bay Area Early
Childhood Funders,(2007). Play In The
Early Years.
Ministry of Education. (1996). Te Whariki- He Whariki Matauranga monga
Mokopuna o Aotearoa,Early childhood curriculum.
Wellington: Learning Media
Wolf, A. D. (2000). How to nurture the spirit in non sectarian environments
Dunkin,D., & Hanna, P. 2001 Thinking
together:Quality adult child
interactions.Wellington:NZCER Press
Nixon
, D., & Gould,K.(2002).Emerging:
Child development in the first three years (2nd edition)
Katoomba, NSW: Social Science Press.
Oliver,S.J.,
& Klugman, E.(2002).Playing the day
away. Child Care Information Exchange.
Alliance for
Childhood. (2007). A call to action on
the education of young children.
J.P Isernberg, M.R.Jalongo,
(2006 ) Creative thinking and arts based
learning preschool through fourth grade. Merrill, Pearson Education
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