PROMOTING CHILDREN'S PLAY & LEARNING FROM BIRTH TO FIVE

Promoting Children's Play & Learning from Birth to Five



Promoting Children's Play & Learning from Birth to Five

Introduction

Play is defined as a rite and a quality of mind in engaging with one's worldview. Play refers to a range of voluntary, intrinsically motivated activities that are normally associated with pleasure and enjoyment.

Play is freely chosen, intrinsically motivated and personally directed. Playing has been long recognized as a critical aspect of childhood and child development. Some of the earliest studies of play started in the 1890s with G. Stanley Hall, the father of the child study movement that sparked an interest in the developmental, mental and behavioral world of babies and children.

Many of the most prominent researchers in the field of psychology (including Jean Piaget, William James, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Lev Vygotsky) have viewed play as endemic to the human species; indeed, the attributions projected upon an imaginary friend by children are key to understanding the construction of human spirituality and it pantheon(s) of deification (and demonization).

Analysis

Childhood 'play' is also seen by Sally Jenkinson (author of The Genius of Play) to be an intimate and integral part of childhood development. "In giving primacy to adult knowledge, to our 'grown-up' ways of seeing the world, have we forgotten how to value other kinds of wisdom? Do we still care about the small secret corners of children's wisdom?"

Modern research in the field of 'affective neuroscience' has uncovered important links between role playing and neurogenesis in the brain. Sociologist Roger Caillois coined the word "ilinx" to describe the momentary disruption of perception that comes from forms of physical play that disorient the senses, especially balance.

In addition evolutionary psychologists have begun to expound the phylogenetic relationship between higher intelligence in humans and its relationship to play.

Stevanne Auerbach mentions the role of play therapy in treating children suffering from traumas, emotional issues, and other problems. She also emphasizes the importance of toys with high play value for child development and the role of the parent in evaluating toys and being the child's play guide.

Sudbury model of democratic education schools assert that play is a big part of life at their schools where it is seen as a serious business. They maintain that play is always serious for kids, as well as for adults who haven't forgotten how to play, and much of the learning going on at these schools is done through play. So they don't interfere with it. Hence play flourishes at all ages, and the graduates who leave these schools go out into the world knowing how to give their all to whatever they're doing, and still remembering how to laugh and enjoy life as it comes.

The framework recognizes that there are Early Years Practitioners -nursery staff, nannies and child-minders working with children under the age of five in a variety of settings providing them with a huge range of opportunities. It provides support, information, guidance and challenges which values each child's uniqueness ...