Session 3

Session 3: Developing Through Play

Introduction

Have you ever wondered what might happen when young children are in a room with a variety of toys and other interesting materials? Why are children are so interested in play? Why do children choose certain activities over others?

Play is children’s work. Children all over the world play. In this session you will discuss early memories of play to help identify the characteristics of play, learn the developmental stages of play, and discover how child care providers can provide play experiences that encourage children’s development.

Session 3: Developing Through Play

Getting Focused Activity: Just Playing

Directions

Step 1: Perform an Internet search to find the poem “JUST Playing,” by Anita Wadley. When you find it, read the poem.

Step 2: With one or more peers from your CCS3130 course, discuss what the poem tells you about the importance of play.

Session 3: Developing Through Play

Inquiry 1: What Is Play?

To provide you with an overview of facilitating play with young children, watch the video clip “Facilitating Play.”

Course Project

As you progress through this session, remember to also be working on items and strategies to include in your strategies box. Can you apply the information from the video to items and strategies in your strategies box?

What Is Play?

Play is universal. All children from all cultures and all countries play. Even though toys or activities may look different, you may be surprised to see how many similarities there are in play around the world.

Working with a group of diverse children means recognizing, encouraging, and building on their strengths. Children with disabilities are no exception. Setting up appropriate play environments can increase all children’s self-concept.

Play is a child-directed, intrinsically motivated activity. “Intrinsically motivated” means that the child’s motivation for the activity comes from within. His or her personal interest in an experience is what prompts the child to become involved and stay involved.

Play is the process by which young children develop and grow. The young child is usually actively exploring and pretending with materials.

Consider the following examples of play.

• Adrienne enjoys the dress-up corner and can be found there during most free-play periods. She dresses up in whatever clothing is available and often invites other children to play with her there.
  
  

• A child care provider observes two children playing in the sand table. The children are pretending to bake a cake. The child care provider adds some cake pans and measuring cups to the sand area and says to the children, “I heard you were making cakes and thought you might be able to use these measuring cups and cake pans.” The children take the materials and carry on with their play.

In the second example, the play was the children’s idea and the child care provider supported the children but didn’t take over the play. As such, this was a child-directed activity. Child-directed activities enhance children’s learning.

An adult-directed activity is an activity led by an adult who tells the children what to do and sets time limits for the activity. These activities should be done infrequently and only when it is necessary to demonstrate a proper procedure. Too many or poorly timed adult-directed activities could cause children to become frustrated or bored or to misbehave.

Consider the following example:

• A child care provider shows a group of three-year-old children how to put toys in specific places and asks the children to repeat the task. The children will likely respond by not listening, getting angry, acting out, and so on because they are not interested in the activity selected by the child care provider.

Session 3: Developing Through Play

Learning Activity 1: Examining Memories of Play

Focus

Recalling the importance play had on your early life can be a way to realize the potential value that play holds in the lives of children.

Directions

Step 1: Complete the Learning Activity 1: Examining Memories of Play.

Step 2: After responding to the questions, share your thoughts and memories with a peer from your class or with a friend or family member from outside of your class.

Step 3: Review the Student Rubric for Learning Activity 1: Examining Memories of Play. Assess the quality of your work and make any necessary adjustments.

Important: Please remember that you are not expected to share information about your life that you do not feel comfortable sharing.

Checking In

Save your completed learning activity and your self-assessment in your course folder.

Session 3: Developing Through Play

Inquiry 2: Characteristics of Play

There are five characteristics of play that must be present in order to truly call an experience play. True play experiences promote development in all areas (social-emotional, physical, creative, intellectual, and language). It is essential that child care providers know these five characteristics of play so that they can ensure they support play in child care environments.

The five characteristics of true play include the following:

• The child must freely choose the play experience.
  
  Example: Joshua wanders the room and decides that he would like to make a picture at the craft table.

• The child directs the play.
  
  Example: Joshua decides to make a picture for his mom. He chooses feathers, ribbon, and lace to glue onto a piece of green construction paper.
  
  
• The child has a reason or goal for being involved in the experience.
  
  Example: Joshua enjoys making his picture and is excited to give it to his mom when she picks him up after child care.
  
  
• The adult follows the child’s lead.
  
  Example: Joshua asks the child care provider if he can use some string, which is not already on the craft table. He explains that he needs the string for a handle. The child care provider says, “That’s a great idea,” as she looks for some string.
  
  
• The child is not expected to produce or complete a product.
  
  Example: Joshua decides that his picture is complete and puts it in his cubby.

The focus of play should not be on the final product; rather, the focus should be on the experiences of the child as she or he experiments. Sometimes child care providers focus too much on the final product (e.g.; a block tower that is built or a painting that is finished).

Not all play is of equal value. Some forms of play provide positive experiences, while others are of less benefit to the child. Less desirable play experiences include the following examples:

• overly aggressive play; e.g. playing kung fu after watching a kung fu cartoon, playing cops and robbers while shooting at one other, and needing to always be “the boss”
  
  
• repetitively playing in the same way with the same materials; e.g., always needing to take on the same role, such as the mother, in play
  
  
• failing to focus on any play activity for a long time; e.g., moving without purpose or plan from one activity centre to the next, difficulty maintaining focus

Session 3: Developing Through Play

Learning Activity 2: Is This Experience Really Play?

Focus

Child care providers can better understand how to promote children’s play in child care environments by assessing if play experiences are meeting the criteria of true play.

Important: In order for an experience to truly be play, the experience must meet the five characteristics of play outlined earlier in this session.

Directions

Step 1: Read Play Experiences 1–3.

Step 2: Complete Learning Activity 2: Is This Experience Really Play?

Step 3: Review the Student Rubric for Learning Activity 2: Is This Experience Really Play? Assess the quality of your work and make any necessary adjustments.

Checking In

Save your completed learning activity and your self-assessment in your course folder.

Session 3: Developing Through Play

Inquiry 3: The Value of Play and Child Development

Play experiences promote development in all areas of development.

The diagram illustrates how each area of development is supported and enhanced by true play experiences. It is important that child care providers understand that true play experiences are necessary to children’s growth during the early years.

The Role of the Caregiver in Supporting Children’s Play

Children are naturally motivated to play, but child care providers have a crucial role in supporting and enhancing play.

It is important that child care providers do the following:

• Have a positive attitude toward play.
• Understand that play is learning.
• Understand that children make exciting discoveries from play.
• Model play to children without taking over their play.
• Model enjoyment of play.

Child care providers create good environments for children’s play by doing the following:

• making sure there is a variety of play materials
• making toys and materials easily accessible on low shelves
• changing the material periodically to keep it interesting (e.g., changing materials based on the seasons)
• keeping enough consistency so that children can explore materials in different ways

Child care providers support and encourage children’s play by doing the following:

• setting up play areas that have enough space for the children to play

• making sure children have enough time to play; children need long periods of time to play because it takes them time to organize and begin play

• finding out the special interests of the children

• asking children what they want to play with

• showing interest

• adding materials to a particular play session or making a suggestion

Twelve Easy Strategies to Make a Child Care Facility More Developmentally Appropriate

Session 3: Developing Through Play

Learning Activity 3: Promoting Children’s Development Through Play Opportunities

Focus

Children’s social, physical, intellectual, creative, emotional, and language development can be promoted when child care providers plan and organize educational play experiences.

In Part A of this activity you will focus on how children’s social-emotional, physical, intellectual, language, and creative development can be promoted in well-planned play activities. In Part B you will prepare food with a young child and reflect on what children can learn by participating in such an activity.

Directions

Step 1: Read the scenario Water Play.

Step 2: Complete Part 1 of Learning Activity 3: Promoting Children’s Development Through Play Opportunities.

Step 3: Based on food preferences, possible allergies, availability of supplies and equipment, cooking skills, access to assistance (if necessary), and so on, choose one recipe from the list below to prepare with the child. To find the recipes, search the Internet for the Taste of Home website. Once on the website, use the website’s recipe search to find the following recipes:

• Important: You will complete Part 2 with a young child. The child may be a child at the child care facility or may be a relative or the child of a friend or neighbour.

  Taco Dip Dragon
• Ladybug Appetizers
• Banana-Pear Caterpillar
• Peanut Butter Teddies
• Stuffed Celery Sticks
• Honey Bear French Toast
• Tuna Boats
• Cucumber Canoes
• Apple-Raisin Ladybug
• Butterfly Sandwiches
• Pizza Grilled Cheese
• Pizza Biscuit Bears

Step 4: Plan how you will prepare the recipe you have chosen with a young child. Consider the following:

• How will you get the child interested in preparing the recipe with you? For example, will you choose the recipe together with the child? Will you encourage the child to choose the recipe? Will you engage in a conversation with the child about his or her likes and dislikes?
  
  
• What jobs will the child do? What supports will the child need to be able to do these jobs?
  
  
• How will you ensure the child’s safety?
  
  
• How will you promote the child’s social, physical, intellectual, creative, emotional, and language development?

Step 5: Prepare the recipe with the child. Observe the ways this experience encourages and supports the child’s social, physical, intellectual, creative, emotional, and language development.

Step 6: While preparing the recipe, take photos to record the experience.

Step 7: After preparing the food, cleaning up the kitchen, and eating, answer the following questions.

1. Which recipe did you prepare? (Remember to attach a copy of the recipe.)
   
   
2. How old was the child with whom you prepared the recipe?
   
   
3. At what age did your childhood experiences begin to include preparing food?
   
   
4. How were these experiences in your childhood initiated and organized?
   
   
5. How do you think the ways you interacted with the child in this learning activity were influenced by your childhood experiences of preparing food?
   
   
6. Describe in detail how you tried to promote the young child’s development in each of the following areas.
   
   
   1. social-emotional
   2. physical
   3. intellectual
   4. creative
   5. language

Step 8: Review the Student Rubric for Learning Activity 3: Promoting Children’s Development Through Play Opportunities. Assess the quality of your work and make any necessary adjustments.

Checking In

Save your completed learning activity and your self-assessment in your course folder.

Session 3: Developing Through Play

Inquiry 4: Let Children Play Outdoors!

Preschoolers are playing in a muddy puddle. Some are jumping up and down in the puddle, others are making “rivers” into another puddle. One girl is scooping some water from a container and watering a nearby plant; another is picking up small pebbles, throwing them in the water, and watching the patterns the pebbles make.

In this example, the children are benefiting from the following:

• learning about the environment by watering plants and by making rivers by manipulating the soil
  
  
• learning about each other by playing together and communicating
  
  
• learning to feel control by creating the rivers and determining which activities they will engage in
  
  
• learning about the properties of water by jumping in the puddles, creating rivers, and watering plants
  
  
• learning about cause and effect by the splashes that result from jumping in puddles and by seeing the changes in the “rivers” when more or less soil is moved
  
  
• learning to get along with each other by playing in close proximity and negotiating activities
  
  
• developing their large muscles by jumping and by moving soil with their hands, arms, and feet
  
  
• developing small muscles and hand-eye co-ordination by watering plants and picking up pebbles

Outside play time, no matter where you live, can help children grow and have fun. Researchers say that children need to get outdoors every day, as it helps promote their social, physical, intellectual, creative, emotional, and language development. Playing outside also helps children sleep better. Child care providers should try to plan to bring the children outside for outdoor play whenever the weather permits.

Developmentally Appropriate Outdoor Environments

Infants benefit from the following:

• safe places to crawl
• sensory stimulation (interesting things to look at from different positions)
• protection from excess wind and sun

Toddlers benefit from the following:

• places and spaces for acting out different kinds of movements
• water experiences

Preschoolers benefit from the following:

• space for running, jumping, skipping, and so on
• bigger toys, like wagons
• playhouses for imaginative play
• exploration of garden insects, sand, and water

Session 3: Developing Through Play

Learning Activity 4: Enjoying (and Benefitting from) Outdoor Play

Focus

Many children are self-motivated to play outdoors. As a child care provider, it is important that you provide diverse opportunities for outdoor play.

Directions

Step 1: Go to the child care facility and participate in an outdoor play activity.

Step 2: Complete Learning Activity 4: Enjoying (and Benefitting from) Outdoor Play.

Checking In

Save your completed learning activity in your course folder.

Session 3: Developing Through Play

Session Summary

Review Session 3 to prepare for writing the quiz. As you review, note the sections that connect with the following points:

• Play is the process by which young children develop and grow. Play is not something you have to force on children—all children want to play.
  
  
• Play experiences promote development in all areas. It is important to know the criteria for true play:
  • The play experience must by freely chosen by the child.
  • The child directs the play.
  • The child has a reason or goal for being involved in the experience.
  • The adult follows the child’s lead.
  • The child is not expected to produce or complete a product.
    
    
• Not all play is of equal value. Some forms of play provide positive experiences while others are of less benefit to the child. Less desirable play experiences include the following:
  • overly aggressive play
  • repeatedly playing in the same way with the same materials
  • not focussing on a play activity for a significant period of time
    
    
• A quality play program includes play that accomplishes the following:
  • contributes to the child’s physical, social-emotional, intellectual, and creative development
  • provides positive play experiences for all children
  • keeps children’s interest for extended periods of time
  • allows each child to feel successful
    
    
• The caregiver has an important role in supporting and encouraging play by doing the following:
  • making sure the environment promotes play—enough toys and equipment that are accessible, in good repair, and well organized, and enough time and space to play
    
  • enriching and enhancing play through interacting with the children
  • modelling play and the enjoyment of play
  • showing a positive attitude toward play

Session Quiz

Checking In

Contact your teacher to decide together when and where you will complete the Session 3 Quiz.