Lesson Content

• Play is essential for optimal development
• Play enhances every aspect of children’s development and learning.
• It is children’s window to the world.
• Play is so important that its significance in children’s lives is recognized by the United Nations as a specific right in addition to, and distinct from, a child’s right to recreation and a child’s right to recreation and leisure.
The Changing Nature of Children’s Play
• Growing numbers of children are spending time in settings that focus on structured educational and recreational activities, This is leaving little time for participation in open-ended, self-initiated free play
• Play nourishes every aspect of children’s development
• It forms the foundation of intellectual, social, physical, and emotional skills necessary for success in school and in life.
• Play paves the way for learning.
• For example, block building and sand and water play lay the foundation for logical mathematical thinking, scientific reasoning, and cognitive problem solving. Rough-and-tumble play develops social and emotional self-regulation and may be particularly important in the development of social competence in boys Pretend play fosters:
o communication, developing conversational skills
o turn taking, perspective taking, and the skills of social problem solving persuading
o negotiating
o compromising, and cooperating
Stages of Cognitive Play
Building on the stages of cognitive development put forth by Piaget, S.Smilansky identified 4 cognitive stages of play.
Smilansky argued that play is cognitive because it contributes to a child’s understanding of the world. Although the styles of play at each stage are different, play is the medium through which, according to this theory, the child learns.
Functional Play (birth to 2 years)
• Characterized by simple, pleasurable, repeated movements with objects, people, and language to learn new skills or to gain mastery of a physical or mental skill.
• You will also hear it referred to as sensorimotor, practice, or exercise play.
• Examples:
o One year old that stacks and un-stacks rings on a pole.
o Mouthing of a new toy by a 5 month old.
o Repeated banging of spoon in a dish and on the high chair table.
• Although functional play is the style of play through which infants learn, it is enjoyed at other ages by a 4 year old when running around a big, open room, or by the 7 year old when practicing bicycle riding on the sidewalk.
Constructive Play (3 to 7 years)
• Manipulation of objects or materials to make something.
• This type of play combines functional play with symbolic representation of ideas.
• Examples:
o puzzles
o block building
o drawing
o woodworking.
Sociodramatic Play (2 to 7 years)
• Also called symbolic play, pretend play, imaginative play, dramatic play, fantasy, and make-believe.
• It continues in different forms into adulthood.
• Symbolic play reflects children’s growing mental ability to make objects, actions, gestures, and words stand or something or someone else.
• It focuses on social roles and reveals children’s ability to play with ideas and symbols. In symbolic play, children make mental and verbal plans of action, assume roles, and transform objects or actions to express their feelings and ideas.
• Examples:
o Preschool and kindergarten children’s are most confident and in control when they are engaged in sociodramatic play. They pretend alone or with others, use non-realistic objects (a block can be a bottle), assume roles (you be mommy and I am auntie).
o By the age of five they can develop elaborate plots and enjoy wearing fanciful dress up clothes. In later ages, although not the dominant style of play, dramatic play is enjoyed by school age children when putting on a play for the neighbourhood, or by adults, who enjoy the drama of soap operas.
• Research shows that symbolic play increases children’s memory, enriches language and expands vocabulary, and fosters flexible and inventive thinking.
Games with Rules – (Age 6 – Adulthood)
• Characterized by prearranged rules that guide acceptable play.
• Games with rules are board games, card games, outdoor games.
• Infants and toddlers do not play games with rules.
• Preschool children will play games with simple rules such as Candy Land and Duck, duck, goose! Because preschoolers’ natural style of play is dramatic play, they easily will “bend” the rules, preferring their own imagined versions of the rules to rules imposed externally by the game.
• School-age children’s more logical ways of thinking and advanced social skills make it possible for them to follow a set of rules and negotiate with peers.
• Examples of games with rules that school age children enjoy are:
o monopoly,
o Dungeons and Dragons
o computer games
o checkers
o chess
o soccer
o baseball
o ice hockey.
Examples of Cooperative play, parallel play & Solitary onlooker play
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB5n8thi2Kg Solitary play
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFdg83SheZQ CooperativePlay
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeEusiwsfA4 Parallel Play
Example of socio dramatic play
https://youtu.be/pdOwvZwiYwk
Examples of Functional play
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SReyXREGhAY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DYUBAMYNUk
Social Stages of Play
Read Social Play Categories of Mildred Parten [pg. 47-48] Table 2.2 pg. 49.
What is play for you; biking, a volleyball game, shopping, talking on the phone, reading a good book?
• Play is intrinsically rewarding – the motivation to play is internal. People usually are not seeking external rewards to play. I can think of two exceptions – playing the lottery and gambling.
• Young children are master players. They play easily and they play often. Early in the 20th century, psychologists (Piaget, Erikson, and Vygotsky and others), parents, and educators promoted the idea that in addition to being pleasurable activity, play has value because it promotes progress – it promotes development in the child.
• Coming from the perspective that play promotes progress, Mildred Parten (1932) focused attention on social play in early childhood. She identified six types of social play, beginning with the “least socially mature” to the “most socially mature.”
• Today researchers regard Parten’s levels of social play to be descriptive of play styles rather than focusing on degrees of maturity. Some people prefer a party (social play) and others take a long walk alone (solitary play). Even an individual’s play will vary for many different reasons, such as how rested s/he feels, the environment, how well s/he knows other players.
Stages of Play

Source: Isenberg and Jalongo, Creative Expression and Play in Early Childhood, Merrill Prentice Hall.
The Teacher’s Roles in Childrens’ Play
To become a master player is the height of developmental achievement for children ages 3 to 5.
• Master players are skilled at representing their experiences symbolically in self-initiated improvisational drama. Sometimes alone, sometimes, in collaboration with others, they play out their fantasies and the events of their daily lives. Through pretend play young children consolidate their understanding of the world, their language and their social skills (Jones & Reynolds, 1992). We use master player to describe the preschooler who is a skilled pretend player. The term is not intended for assessment purposes or to compare children. In our writing, master player is an image of the potential that is in every young child to play with skill and competence. Play poses the cognitive challenges that naturally stretch preschoolers’ abilities, and good play is deeply satisfying. Erikson (1950, in Sutton-Smith, 1997) suggests that in play children can have mastery and be autonomous in a way they cannot be anywhere else. The skilful teacher of young children is one who makes such play possible and helps children get better at it. To do so, a teacher must pay attention to play.
• Observation is the most fundamental skill of a teacher of young children. Watching play, a teacher is made aware of children’s interests, their questions, what they know and are able to do. A teacher can decide to intervene spontaneously to support sustained play, she can discuss her observations with colleagues to plan curriculum, and he can share observations of play with parents through stories and documentation. Teachers make meaningful play possible.
In support of play, adults may act in all of these roles:
• Stage manager – providing enough props, thoughtfully arranged, and providing enough time for play
• Mediator – complicating play to keep it interesting, teaching conflict resolution skills, and mediating of problems with things in the physical world,
• Player – taking roles within children’s play scripts to help sustain and extend them,
• Scribe – documenting children’s play in words, sketches, and photos,
• Assessor and communicator – getting to know a child’s abilities, building on their strengths, communicating to the child and to families, making the child’s symbols visible,
• Planner – preparing the environment for investigations and play, naming children’s play scripts, engaging in dialogue to generate emergent curriculum, integrating literacy in play.
Practicing Teachers’ Roles
What do you do while children play?
• Stage manager, player, and mediator involve a teacher’s active participation in play. The teacher-as-scribe, assessor and communicator, and planner are active roles too. They call for a teacher’s reflection, dialogue with co-teachers, and documentation to represent play to children and parents through storytelling, photos, sketches, panels, and online documentation.
• Stage manager is an essential role. In an orderly, well provision environment with plenty of time for play, most children will be able to create and sustain their own play. Loose_Parts_Article FALL 2011(5).pdf
Are there program practices that interfere with good play?
Do you close play spaces early in the early morning or evening? Are there rules that limit where children can use certain materials? Outside, do children have opportunities for gross motor play, construction play, and also pretend play?
• Not all teachers are comfortable with the role of player. The effective teacher-as-player listens to children’s play scripts and builds on them. Too often playing adults co-opt children’s agendas by using play to teach concepts. Or, they allow their own ideas to take over the play. Player involves close focus with children inside the frame of play, coupled with a genuine sharing of their curiosity and emotions. Player is not a practical role when teachers are expected to supervise a large group!
• Teacher as Mediator uses problem-solving strategies to sustain rather than interrupt play. Mediating is not policing to enforce rules, such as “inside voices” or “you have to share.” Instead, teacher-as-mediator attends to the content of the play to support children’s growing conflict resolution skills. “I am asking that the two of you tell each other why you are upset, and then we can discuss ways you want to solve the problem.”
• Teacher as Scribe combines naturally with player when the teacher scribes words children dictate but cannot yet write themselves. “Will you write ‘cat food’ on my shopping list?” In this way scribe supports literacy and number learning through play.
• Scribe as document-er-of-play is as essential any other role, but it may be abandoned if time is not allocated for this purpose.
• Teacher as assessor and communicator and planner documents children’s play through sketches, children’s words, photos, and taking notes. Representing play in panels, storytelling, and online documentation are some of the many ways teachers can share the concepts and content of children’s play. Teachers discover that documenting play is fun and a powerful way to communicate play’s meaning to parents.
Source : Erikson, E. (1977). Toys and Reasons. New York: Norton. Sutton-Smith, B. (1997). The Ambiguity of Play. Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. Press.
Teacher as Mediator
In the role of teacher as mediator, you teach children
• Problem solving
• Negotiation skills
• How to resolve conflicts
There is a reason why children do what they do.
Consider the children’s developmental level.
It…
• Can determine their level of play
• Can determine the theme of their play
• Can determine what we observe in their play
• The teacher in the role of mediator models and explains problem-solving skills that children can later practice on their own.
• The teacher uses words to help the children solve their very real problem and it allows the play to continue.
• The play is the important thing that’s happening
• The problem solving strategy should give priority to the play continuing, not it’s disruption or possible ending of the play script being developed by the children.
• In contrast, Time Out
• Destroys the play
• Gives children no useful strategies for solving this problem or the next one that comes along
• Consider the child’s self esteem
Problem Solving With Children

1. Calm the children and focus their attention to the problem
2. Each person tells their side of the story, uninterrupted
3. To clarify, the adult needs to restate what the children have explained
4. Adult encourages the children to bargain, negotiate until they reach a solution
   Teacher Behaviour That Interrupts Play
   Power For, On and With
   Power “For”:
   • Power exercised for a child means that the child is provided experiences that contribute to the development of
   o Self-esteem
   o Confidence
   o Creates power for the child
   o Even when conflicts occur, the teacher acts as a facilitator.
   Power “With”
   • Following the child’s lead in play
   • The adult has no agenda other than mutual interaction with the child.
   • Power with equalizes, temporarily, the imbalance between the adult and the child, making them peers in play. They both contribute good ideas, but the child retains the lead
   o because play is, after all, the child’s world.
   • The interactions are characterized by mutuality, and the child is, for the moment, no less competent than the adult.
   “Power On”
   • Adults who don’t mind interrupting children’s play use their power on children
   • Power on is used to domesticate, to help children learn how to behave.
   • Power on, fails to teach children problem solving strategies they can use independently
   • What is the result? Tattling is at epidemic levels in “Power On” classrooms
   • “Power on” is appropriate and necessary when safety is involved. – It may be appropriate if the adult has a moral lesson to teach and believes it can be taught directly.
   But “power on” ignores and interrupts play
   • Gives the message children are not capable of dealing with their own problems
   • Reliant on adults
   • Helpless in standing up for themselves and finding answers.
   Jason, Ryan and Jenna were busy in a far corner of the playground playing a game they invented called “Kitty Up”. You hear a loud string of profanity coming from Jason directed toward Ryan and Jenna. Both Jenna and Ryan run out of the corner. Jenna is upset and Ryan seems unsure of what to do. Most importantly the play has stopped.
   What are your solutions as a mediator?
   Issues in Play Superhero Play
   Concerns of educators:
   • Someone will get hurt
   • Violence is unacceptable
   • We strive for a peaceful environment
   but, what happens when children leave our care?
   Children may experience;
   • Media influence (video games, play station etc…)
   • Violence on TV
   • Action figures seen in the media
   • Witnesses to violence in the home
   Why are these types of images appealing to some children?
   • Media is designed to appeal to children
   • Action figures are part of a larger experience from a movie, video
   • The child spends time “playing” with the figure, recreating scenes and images from the movie.
   Is it play?
   • What really is happening is children are imitating what they have experienced in the movie through their activities.
   Is this quality play?
   • This type of play is lacks creativity, imagination since the child is imitating scripts and themes from previous experiences. The play doesn’t become more complicated, Themes and scripts remain “stuck” as Jules’ play does (article)
   • Help children move beyond narrowly scripted play that is focuses on violent actions by observing to see what children are working. Help children move beyond narrowly scripted play that is focuses on violent actions by :
   o Observing to see what children are working.
   o Complicating the play by asking open ended questions to get the child thinking more deeply about their actions, without disrupting the play
   o Introduce opened ended materials such as blocks and other loose parts to extend the play
   Open-Ended Questions
   • Open-ended questions are wonderful tools that promote children’s creative thought, problem-solving skills, and cognitive growth. Use open-ended questions, such as those below, often and in multiple areas of the curriculum
   o What do you think about…?
   o What could you do about it?
   o How could we fix it?
   o I wonder if there’s another way?
   o What’s your opinion?
   o Just suppose that…then what?
   o What would happen if …?
   o What else can we use this for?
   • Help children to see another way to use materials Use open ended questions to help children move beyond imitation of actions to imaginative, dramatic play.
   Teacher as Scribe
   • Scribe Historically:
   o Scribes wrote for people who couldn’t write
   o Wrote down messages other people wanted to send
   o In early learning environments most young children don’t write so educators act as Scribes
   • Representation Comes in many forms
   o Pretend play
   o Representing their observations of adult behaviour
   o Lead a child to literacy, one of the most abstract forms of representation
   o Oral language
   o Written language
   Literacy – Michael Holdaway’s theory best captures our roles as Scribe. Rather than being taught “how to read and write” he viewed Emergent Literacy as – a process of natural learning, providing, the appropriate components are present in the child’s environment to support the learning.
   Here are four (4) processes that enable children to acquire reading and writing ability

Representing The Children’s Play
• Making representations of children’s play introduces the idea that pictures meaning something
• Also reinforces the idea that print has meaning and I can do it too! (Practice) (An interested adult)
• Sharing Representations With Children
• -When adults write they are models for children. When adults represent children’s construction through pictures they are helping children to understand dual presentation
• Basic foundation skills in the development of literacy
• Clear simple drawing of children’s work is a method child can copy and try on their own
• It gives an opportunity to correct, change and adjust what their intentions were to the scribe.
• The scribe in turn makes the adjustments without judgment as the child speaks
What can occur as a result of this interaction between educator and child?
• Problem solving
• Visual discrimination
• Development of descriptive language
• Child observes the educator writing and will likely try it out!
Stimulating Writing As Play And Communication
• Children play at being writers
• First attempts at writing are viewed as “Drawing as Writing”
• The understanding that what they put on the page has meaning is present
• Given opportunities to play at being writers will be a huge boost to the development of literacy skills.
Documentation of Children’s Learning
Observation- Path to Documentation
• As we learn about planning curriculum for children, how we gather information to make informed decisions is relevant. You are presently learning about observation in another course.
• Observation can be defined as “a systematic process used to listen to and watch children in their play. Its purpose is to gain information about a child or group of children’s stage of development compared with documented developmental norms or behaviours that are expected for that particular age group” (Wojcik, 2011, pg. 69).
• Documentation of children’s learning refers to “examining what is going in play and during children’s activities; determining what the child is capable of without predetermined expectations” (pg 72, Table 3.1 pg. 80).
• Documentation can come in many forms. Photographs, brief notes, adult-child and child to child interactions or video recordings

1. Listen to the children
2. Review documented observations many times to discover new information
3. Examine children’s play patterns and actions
4. Examine how children co-construct knowledge
5. Examine how children express meaning and representation
6. Examine the observations to determine the level of meta-cognition (how children express knowledge about their thoughts, their thinking process) the child exhibits.
7. Examine children’s play and determine how it should be documented.
   Source: Wojcik, C. (2011). Observing and Documenting Children’s Play. In Introduction to Curriculum (pp. 69-86). USA: Pearson Custom Education.