Play

Within early year’s education, Play is considered as "a key characteristic of effective practice" in education today (Wood et al. 2010) Most practitioners believe the first five years of a child’s life is the most important because during these years children seem to ‘take in’ and learn so much more than any other time. So why shouldn’t they have fun doing so? The WAG (2008) identifies that within the foundation phase ‘play’ can be seen as not structured and not have any importance to the effect of the child’s learning if it is not planned carefully. When watching children play, you can see how much they are learning without them subconsciously knowing about it. Wray et al. (2006) concludes that learning happens in everyone's daily lives, it is such a natural process that we do it without noticing it.

The importance of play

Bowman et al. (2000) identifies that play and learning are vital for the child to find they sense of self and to become independent learners. For Children, play is also an important way for them to express their creativity and allowing them to become more engaged and motivated to join in with learning. Play has a massive impact towards the different types of developments for a child's life and what skills they gain, those developments are;

•Cognitive - problem solving and using their imagination in pretend play

 •Physical - Using eye and hand coordination when throwing a ball to one another.

 • Social - Sharing ideas, setting out rules with making a new game up.

 •Cultural - Children learn about their self-awareness interacting with other children from different communities’ different ethnic when playing games with rules.

Piaget's believed that Play helped children to assimilate and accommodate new experiences, while Vygotsky believed that play was an important way for children to move to their 'zone of potential development'.

Parten's Stages of Play

In 1932 Mildred Parten took place in observing children while they were playing and came up with the theory that children pass through stages to eventually be able to play in groups with other children. They are:

 •Solitary (0-2yrs) - Within this first stage children play alone, they focus everything on what they are playing with and how their bodies are able to move things different ways

 •Spectator (2-2.5yrs) - This area is where the child is now just watching (spectating) other children or their peers to see how they act in day to day life or how they find thing to be fun.

 •Parallel (2.5-3yrs) - As children become more interested in the world and others around them, Child Care Resources (2007) believed that children begin to see themselves as part of a social group, but are still thinking egocentrically. Within this stage children will play next to one another with the same game or activity, but they won't interact or communicate with each other.

 •Associative (3-4yrs) - In this stage children begin to play and communicate together, they start to take full interest in the other children and begin to enjoy playing the same things.

 •Co-operative (4yrs+) - This final stage is when children have developed on their social skills and can now interact and build relationships with other children more easier. Because children have these more developed social skills they are able to play in a bigger group and for much longer.

References

Bowman et al. (2000) cited in: Play and learning in the early years (2010) Page xi London: SAGE Publications

Child Care Resources (2007) Retrieved 13th March 2013 from Childhood Community News: Stages of Play http://www.childcare.org/ccr/newsletter/ccr-news-summer-2007.pdf

Video Clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_-1O_rBLPU

Welsh Assembly Government (2008) Play/Active Learning
http://wales.gov.uk/dcells/publications/policy_strategy_and_planning/early-wales/whatisfoundation/foundationphase/playactivelearning/playactivee.pdf;jsessionid=67D036BF242008E1A343E0DBFDCA7CF0?lang=en

Wood, E., Brodhead, P., Howard, J. (2010) Play and Learning in the Early Years. London : SAGE

Wray, D., Arthur, J., Grainger, T. (2006) Learning to Teach in  The Primary School. London : Routledge.