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Children 's Learning Within Early Childhood Education

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Play in early childhood education is of great importance in the holistic development of children. Play is hard to define, due to its various presenting means. It must be regarded as an indispensable component of an individual’s development (Saracho, Olivia, Spodek & Bernard,1998). Through play, the child interacts with their peers as they explore and participate in different activities. The role of the early childhood teachers is crucial in encouraging and stimulating children’s interest in play. In this essay, I will discuss the relevance of play to young children’s learning within early childhood education. Firstly, I will begin with my own childhood experience of play in China, along with my parents’ perspective and expectation on me…show more content…
Due to his socio-cultural background which emphasized academic attainment, my father was a strict parent, who had started to teach me to speak and read since I was less than a year old. As a young child, unlike all my peers at that time, I did not have any toys to play with, but I had a whole shelf of books as company. I could play with the children in my neighborhood at their home or in the playground only when my father was at work because he would scold me for playing too much. Mostly we ran on a large lawn playing different versions of chasing game, like appointing one person as “the saver” who can rescue people that have been caught, or simply played pretend in a sand pit with all the natural resources like cobblestones and leaves as our money and food, which are some universal games in almost everywhere. In my kindergarten, children were taught by lessons in fixed timetable, like they were mass produced goods that had to adjust themselves to fit in the society. We learned to read and write basic Chinese characters, sang along with teachers sitting properly with our hands on the desks and went home with pencil-and-paper homework. I remember there was a great playground there but it was barely used due to the fact that everyone was supposed to stay in their classroom quietly. In conclusion, back to the time when I was a child, play would not be an acceptable way for children to
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