Session 3

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.

CCS3130 Learn EveryWare ©2011 Alberta Education