WIXLIB

6Some newer thinking proposes it is more thanthat. Play seems to have some immediatebenefits, such as aerobic conditioning andfine-tuning motor skills, as well as long-termbenefits that include preparing the young forthe unexpected, and giving them a sense ofmorality. How? Learning to play successfullywith others requires ‘emotional intelligence,’the ability to understand another’s emotionsand intentions. Play helps to level the playingfield and promotes fairness. Justice beginswith healthy social play (Azar 2002).Paediatrician Dr. Ari Brown stressed thatunstructured play time is the best way tostimulate the developing brain. ‘When babiesare engaged in unstructured free play withtoys, they are learning to problem-solve,to think creatively, and develop reasoningand motor skills,’ she said. ‘Free play alsoteaches children how to entertain themselves,which is certainly a valuable skill.’ (AmericanAcademy of Pediatricians 2011).PLAY AND CHILDDEVELOPMENTPlay is essential to development because itcontributes to the cognitive, physical, social,and emotional well-being of children andyouth. Play also offers an ideal opportunityfor parents to engage fully with their children.Despite the benefits derived from play for bothchildren and parents, time for free play has beenmarkedly reduced. Children today receive lesssupport for play than did previous generationsin part because of a more hurried lifestyle,changes in family structure, and increasedattention to academics and enrichmentactivities at the expense of recess or free play.What are the benefits of play in a child’slife? According to play therapist O. FredDonaldson, a child who has been allowedto develop play resources receives manyenduring advantages. She develops auniversal learning skill. Play maximises herpotential by developing creativity andimagination. Play promotes joy, which isessential for self-esteem and health. Thelearning process is self-sustained based as itis on a natural love of learning and playfulengagement with life. oural benefits of play Play reduces fear, anxiety, stress, irritability Creates joy, intimacy, self-esteem andmastery not based on other’s loss ofesteem Improves emotional flexibility andopenness Increases calmness, resilience andadaptability and ability to deal with surpriseand change Play can heal emotional pain.Social benefits of play Increases empathy, compassion,and sharing Creates options and choices Models relationships based on inclusionrather than exclusion Improves nonverbal skills Increases attention and attachmentPhysical benefits Positive emotions increase the efficiencyof immune, endocrine, and cardiovascularsystems Decreases stress, fatigue, injury, anddepression Increases range of motion, agility,coordination, balance, flexibility, and fineand gross motor exploration

7A review of more than 40 studies found thatplay is significantly related to creative problemsolving, co-operative behaviour, logicalthinking, IQ scores, and peer group popularity.Play enhances the progress of earlydevelopment from 33% to 67% by increasingadjustment, improving language and reducingsocial and emotional problems (Fisher 1992).As the developmental biologist Jean Piagetobserved, ‘We can be sure that allhappenings, pleasant or unpleasant, in thechild’s life, will have repercussions on herdolls’ (Piaget 1962).THE ROLE OF TOYSIn addition to being purpose-built for children’splay, toys invite play and prolong play.Children will play longer when suitable playobjects are available, and stand to gain thegreatest benefits that play has to offer.According to research conducted in homes,the two most powerful factors related tocognitive development during infancy andthe preschool years are the availability ofplay materials and the quality of the mother’sinvolvement with the child.The availability of toys in infancy is related tothe child’s IQ at three years of age. Childrenwith access to a variety of toys were found toreach higher levels of intellectual achievement,regardless of the children’s sex, race, or socialclass (Bradley 1985, Elardo 1975).In one study, the availability of toys intendedfor social play increased social interaction bydisabled children in an inclusive preschool(Driscoll 2009).It is abundantly clear that play is ofvital importance in children’s health anddevelopment, and in becoming responsiblecitizens. Yet despite the wide spread beliefthat play is beneficial to children, opportunitiesand encouragement for free play areincreasingly limited. Among child developmentexperts and education professionals thereare growing calls for reintroducing play intoearly childhood education (Elkind 2007,Fisher 2011).YOU CAN DISCOVERMORE ABOUT A PERSONIN AN HOUR OF PLAYTHAN IN A YEAR OFCONVERSATION.Plato

EARLY PLAYEXPERIENCESSET THESTAGE FOR ALLSUBSEQUENTDEVELOPMENT

92 VARIETIES OF PLAYIt is widely accepted that play changesacross early childhood. The infant’s firstexperiences of play are when adults try toelicit smiling and laughter through tickling, orplaying peek-a-boo. But these are notinitiated by the infant and do not constitutetrue play. Baby’s first play is solitary, exploringobjects in her surroundings. Toddlers canexperiment with their environment (‘exploratoryplay’) while older children can manipulate andcontrol their environment (‘mastery play’).Solitary play is followed by parallel play playing ‘next to’ but not ‘with’ other children- at around two or three years of age. Thissets the stage for social play, at around agethree or four. Social play is diverse andcomplex, and includes everything from simpleactivities, like working together to build asand castle, to ‘rough-and-tumble’ play(chasing, play fighting), and complex ‘sociodramatic play’, in which children enact rolesin fantasy scenarios that they themselvescreate.This sequence of play development, whichextends from solitary exploration tosensorimotor play to pretend play, hasreceived extensive empirical support andcorrelates with children’s cognitive abilities(Brown 2009, Else 2009, Smith 2010). Theemergence of pretend play, in particular, isa critical achievement of toddlers as itallows them to practice symbolic thought.Virtually every aspect of the growing child’slife is affected by play. Early play experiencesset the stage for all subsequent development.For example, being able to substitute oneobject for another – using a sponge as a‘boat’ in the bath – is a necessary step inlanguage development, where words standfor something other than themselves.A study by Levine, Huttenlocher and Cannon(2011) examined the relation between children’searly puzzle play and their spatial skill.Individual differences in spatial skill emergeprior to preschool entry.However, little is known about the earlyexperiences that may contribute to thesedifferences. 53 children and parents wereobserved at home for 90 minutes every fourmonths (six times) between the ages of twoand four years. When children were four anda half years old, they completed a spatialtask involving mental transformations oftwo-dimensional shapes. Children who wereobserved playing with puzzles performedbetter on this task than those who didnot, controlling for parent education andincome. Among those children who played withpuzzles, frequency of puzzle play predictedperformance on the spatial transformationtask.By preschool age, children’s imagination,language, and communication skills permitcommunicating about social pretend play.Children can plan and manage their fantasyplay easily and can modify the script as itprogresses. During social play childrenacquire knowledge and information (such ascolour names and word spelling), learnpersonal limits and social rules. Social playrequires the play partners to share the sameunderstanding of the situation, to agree onthe rules of play. A ‘tea party’ requires thechildren to agree on the imaginary scene, andto pretend that there is tea in the emptyteapot and tea cups.Children benefit most by varying their playactivities, sometimes playing alone but alsowith others, playing quietly on the floor aswell as actively outdoors. In order to stimulateand prolong play, adults should support andencourage it by providing sufficient spacein which to play, and a broad assortment oftoys and other play objects to enable thebroadest range of play possibilities. This willensure that neural pathways in the brainare developed and strengthened, that everymuscle is exercised, and that great feats ofimagination are displayed.

PLAYINGWITH BLOCKSPROMOTESLANGUAGEDEVELOPMENT

113 TALKING, THINKING,CREATINGThe growing child learns nearly everythingthrough play. Play helps build stronglearning foundations because later levels oflearning are built upon earlier ones, a processreferred to as ‘scaffolding’. The qualities ofspontaneity, wonder, creativity, imagination,and trust, are best developed in earlychildhood play. In play, the learning process isself-sustained because the natural love oflearning is preserved and strengthened. Thepower of play also enhances self-esteem andinterpersonal relationships.COGNITIVEDEVELOPMENT ANDLANGUAGEThe cognitive processes involved in playare similar to those involved in learning:motivation, meaning, repetition, self-regulation,and abstract thinking. Contemporary toys andgames, by virtue of their electronic functionsand possibilities, invite exploration anddiscovery - learning activities par excellence.Attention is essential for reading and for manykinds of learning and performance. Attentionspan during free play depends almost solelyon the type and number of toys available(Moyer 1955).Children’s explorations during free playsupport learning (Schulz 2008). The abilityto read, speak and do maths ultimately restsupon the child’s capacity to use symbols,for example, a block to represent a truckor a telephone. Play at an early age (1324 months) facilitates language (Hall 1991,Ungerer 1986).Various forms of pretend play can enhanceschool readiness, social skills, and creativeaccomplishment.Children’s early exposure to and participationin pretend play in the preschool years isrelated to their emergent literacy skills whenthey reach kindergarten (Katz 2001, Roskos2007, Singer 2002).Children’s toys provide a rich arena forinvestigating causal understanding becauseobjects are understood at different levels ofabstraction. For example, many dolls andaction figures can be construed either ascharacters from a fictional world or asphysical objects in the real world. In twoexperiments, 72 four and five year oldsunderstood that characters shared certainproperties even though they did not have thesame name. Children’s understanding of anobject’s abstract character identity enabledthem to use it in multiple ways (Rhemtulla2009).‘Children at play begin to learn essential mathskills such as counting, equality, additionand subtraction, estimation, planning,patterns, classification, volume and area,and measurement. Children’s informalunderstanding provides a foundation onwhich formal mathematics can be built’(Fisher 2011, p. 344).Researchers, educators, and parents havelong believed that children learn cause andeffect relationships through exploratory play.In one study, four to five year olds explorednovel toys in an effort to understand how theywork (Schulz 2007).‘To learn in a formal school environment,children must be able to regulate theirbehaviours and emotions and communicateand engage with others in sociallyappropriate ways. Research clearly highlightsa relationship between playful learningexperiences, social and self-regulatory skills,and academic achievement’ (Fisher 2011).

12‘Playful learning’ refers to the use of freeplay and adult-guided play activities topromote academic and social skills (Fisher2011). For example, Montessori schoolscreate classrooms in which children choosefrom a number of playful activities that havebeen prearranged by adults. Research showsthat Montessori kindergarten children aresignificantly more likely to use a higher levelof abstract reasoning by referring to justice orfairness to convince another child to relinquishan object, and are more likely to be involvedin positive shared peer play than are childrenfrom traditional schools (Lillard 2006).LANGUAGE AND PLAYStudies from many countries show arelationship between early social playand later communication skills. Maternalresponses to infant toy initiations, as wellas manipulation and labelling of toys at age11 months were related to infant languageat 14 months. In Finland, Lyytinen (1999)reported that symbolic play at age 14 monthspredicts children’s development at the age oftwo years.Playing with blocks promotes languagedevelopment. In one study, children agedone and a half to two and a half who wereprovided with sets of moulded plastic buildingbricks with which to play had significantlyhigher language scores six months later,compared with a control group (Christakis2007).Gunhilde Westman of Uppsala University(Sweden) sees play as an arena fordeveloping language and communication.Play is demanding for children because theyhave to pay attention to each other’s wordsand actions. They have to concentrateon their own use of language in orderto communicate clearly. Children learnthese by listening to each other when theyplay. Through play children learn to reachagreement and to reciprocate words andactions. One of the functions of preschoolsand schools is to educate children to becomecitizens who can participate in discussionsand reach mutual agreements. Westman(2003) believes there may be a link betweenchildren’s confidence and motivation whenplaying, and their language development.Children who are motivated by play andtry to expand their play actions tend to bemore linguistically developed and confident.Much research has pointed to the importanceof children’s negotiations in peer pretend playfor preschool children’s social, cognitive andliteracy development. However, few studieshave investigated the relations betweentalk about play in preschool and children’slanguage skills when entering school. In astudy by Rydland (2009), a group of childrenfour to five years old, who had Turkish as theirfirst language and Norwegian as their secondlanguage, was followed for two years, frompreschool to first grade, and videotapedin play with peers. In the first part of theanalysis, relations between talk about playin preschool and vocabulary skills andstory comprehension in first grade wereinvestigated. The main findings indicate thatpreschool children’s talk about their play isrelated to language skills in first grade.

13PLAY PROMOTESCREATIVITYCreativity increases following free play.According to research by Anthony Pellegrini,providing children with play breaks duringthe school day maximises their attention tocognitive tasks (Pellegrini 2005).Children produced more colourful andcomplex art after being allowed to play,compared to children who first followed astructured exercise. Fifty-two English schoolchildren six to seven years old were randomlyassigned to two groups. The first groupwas allowed to play for 25 minutes, whilethe other group copied text from the board.All children were then asked to produce acollage of a creature, using a controlledrange of tissue-paper materials. Ten judgesassessed the creative quality of the resultingwork. The range of colours and total numberof pieces used by each child was recorded.The results revealed a significant positiveeffect of unstructured play upon creativity(Howard-Jones 2002).When four to five year old children wereasked to ‘play with’ or ‘to remember’ 16common objects, they recalled the itemsbetter when instructed to play with, ratherthan to remember them (Newman 1990).Adults, too, are more creative when theyimagine themselves as children at play. Withthe responsibilities of adulthood, playfulcuriosity is sometimes lost. In a 2010 studyby Zabelina and Robinson, 76 universitystudents were randomly assigned to one oftwo conditions before creative performancewas assessed with a version of the TorranceTest of Creative Thinking. In a controlcondition, participants wrote about what theywould do if school was cancelled for the day.In an experimental condition, the instructionswere identical except that participantswere to imagine themselves as seven yearolds in this situation. Individuals imaginingthemselves as children subsequentlyproduced more original responses on thetest of creativity. Further results showed thatthe manipulation was particularly effectiveamong more introverted individuals, whoare typically less spontaneous and moreinhibited in their daily lives. The resultsestablish that there is a benefit in thinkinglike a child for subsequent creative originality,particularly among introverted individuals.In A Mandate for Playful Learning in Preschool:Presenting the Evidence, a review of playresearch confirms that children’s self-initiatedplay nurtures overall development, not justcognitive development (such as learning toname colours, numbers, or shapes).In fact, research builds a very strong casethat childhood play is a required experience inorder to become a civilised, fully-realisedhuman being (Hirsh-Pasek 2006). Abundantresearch has shown that play during earlychildhood is necessary if humans are to reachtheir full potential. For children, and in fact,for society’s well-being, true play is a criticalneed, not a fanciful frill. And so it requiresearly childhood programmes to advocate forand insist upon including play as part of theirdaily curriculum and teaching strategy(Stevens 2009).

CHILDREN’SFIRST STEPSTOWARDINDEPENDENCECOME WITH THEIRATTACHMENT TOSOFT CLOTHESOR FURRY TOYS

154 PLAYMATESThe infant’s first experiences of play are withparents and siblings, who try to elicit interestand laughter from baby. Play helps infantsand toddlers gain a sense of independenceand identity. Their first steps towardindependence come with their attachmentto soft clothes or furry toys. Children with‘transitional objects’ which they cling toat bedtime or when distressed have fewersleep disturbances and are reported in threeout of four studies to be more agreeable,self-confident, and affectionate (Litt 1986,Singer 1990, Winnicot 1971).As infants develop, their social play developswith them: At six months, babies tend to bepassive; the adult must do all the work.At around six months the infant is able tosustain interest in the performance of theadult but remains passive. At about ninemonths, the infant can initiate the game butthere is no evidence of taking turns in thegame. Beginning at about one year of age,when the infant shows awareness of thedifferent play roles, infants will alternate withtheir mothers shifting from agent to recipient.In the second year toddlers can createvariations within the game, showing anunderstanding not only of its basic structure,but its limits and possibilities. Examples arerolling a ball back and forth, and peek-a-boo.During play children form enduring bonds offriendship, including with their adult playmates(Goldstein 1996, Mos and Boodt 1991).Children age five to seven years with proficientpretend play skills are socially competent withpeers and are able to engage in classroomactivities. Children who scored poorlyon the play assessment were more likely tohave difficulty interacting with their peersand engaging in school activities. Socialcompetence is related to a child’s ability toengage in pretend play (Uren 2009).Psychiatrist Stuart Brown (2009) discoveredthat the absence of social play was a commonlink among murderers in prison. They lackedthe normal give-and-take necessary forlearning to understand others’ emotionsand intentions, and the self-control that onemust learn to play successfully with others.Some toys promote social play. Two to sixyear olds at day-care and nursery centres inNashville, Tennessee, were observed duringplay. Dress-up clothes, toy wagons, ballsand a puppet stage were far more likely tobe played with in co-operative social playthan were puzzles, a toy sink and pull toys,all of which were used primarily in isolatedplay (Hendrickson 1981).Isn’t play naturally competitive? Doesn’tcompetition help children better learn tocompete in the adult world? Play isn’tnaturally competitive. In fact, it is the opposite- naturally cooperative. Ch

all art, games, books, sports, movies, fashion, fun, and wonder – in short, the basis of what we think of as civilization.’ (Brown 2009). As the noted play theorist Brian Sutton-Smith remarked, the opposite of play is not work, but depression. All types of play, from fantasy to rough-a