Advocating Children's Playing Activities

[Name of InstituteAdvocating Children's Playing Activities

Introduction

Importance and power of early childhood play has long been recognized by the educators. The contribution of children's habit of playing on their learning and development is documented in many disciplines by many researchers and authors such as in anthropology, education, psychology, communications etc. possessing an ability play is said to be one of the important developmental task of childhood (Jones & Reynolds, 1997).

Discussion

Play is a momentous practice. It is also extremely pleasing for children, a search they look for keenly, and one they discover continuously fascinating. Anybody who has watched them play be acquainted with the fact they connect sincerely and they capture their play exceptionally seriously. Children define their plays different and they have their own purpose and goals behind their play. A recent study shows that children define play as an activity in the absence of adults and presence of their friends or peers (Howard et al., 2006).

Play not only cultivates but also nurtures every phase of development of children which include social, physical, creative and intellectual. The learning in play is often not visible to many parents and educationists. They deny its importance while ignoring the fact that playing is an integral part of their child's learning phase. Children build knowledge by combining their impressions, ideas and intuitions with their opinions and experience they go through while playing. Jones and Reynolds (1992) suggest that young children do not learn important things when they are told but they learn when they construct the knowledge while interacting with other children and the physical world and they do it while playing. The relationship between playing and learning is complicated, multidimensional and complex. The processes of learning and playing inspire and encourage each other and there are aspects of ...