Pw 3-10

As an early years practitioner you will recognise that children’s play is closely linked to their learning and development. Children learn in so many different ways but you will notice that they learn mainly through play. When children are able to do many different activity’s that allows them to lean but have fun at the same time thy will find what they are doing fun and will engage the children. It is important that when in you your setting you set up a variety of educational activity’s this way the children will be able to choose freely what they want to do.

Children through play and leisure, children and young people explore their physical and social environment, test out ideas and concepts.

Functional play is that children can explore their setting inside and outside, and can use their senses when exploring. For example, the children find a caterpillar and the children touch the caterpillar. After, the children will ask many questions such as how does the caterpillar become a butterfly.pg2Also, they can predict what the caterpillar is going to be, and predicting connects to science.

This essay will outline the theoretical rationale for play in the development of young children. Boushel, Fawcett and Selwyn (2000:57) state, ‘Play is not easily defined...’ Play means different things to different people. Rubin, Fein and Vandenberg (1983) {cited in Hughes, 2010} suggest play should be intrinsically motivated, freely chosen, pleasurable, non literal and actively engaging. Play gives children freedom of choice, it allows them to lead their own learning, follow their own learning intentions and express themselves freely. There are many reasons that lead us to believe play is crucial for child

Playing in the in the dramatic play center will give the children the opportunity to play and interact with their peers. As the child pretends to be the mom and hold a baby and feed the baby a bottle. The child is acting out what they have seen at home when her mother feeds her baby brother. Then another child is pretending to play restaurant and taking your order of what you want to eat. They make marks on a piece of paper and then goes to the

Who defines what play is? Reed and Brown suggest that play is something that is felt (2000, as cited in Jarvis et al, 2009), whereas Piaget

She stated that "play transforms children because it helps them to function beyond the here and now. They can become involved in more abstract thinking about the past, using the past, and into imagining the future, or alternative ways of doing things. It helps them to problem solve, and to experiment. It helps them to work out what they think and feel."

In addition to play promoting pleasure as well as physical activity, play forms the holistic growth in children’s development, or to put it in another way using Brown (2003) acronym, acknowledged as ‘SPICE’; play represents the ‘social interaction’; ‘physical activity’; ‘intellectual stimulation’; creative achievement and emotional stability, (with the addition of “compound flexibility”) in a child’s development. Compound flexibility is the idea that a child’s psychological development occurs using the relationship between his/her environment with the adaptability of the child himself. Thus the flexibility of surroundings and his/her adaptableness can provide children the means to explore; experiment and investigate (Brown, 2003, pp. 53-4). On the contrary, the absence of social interaction and physical activity through the means of play can inhibit children’s overall development and without the consistency of play children suffer a “chronic lack of sensory interaction with the world, [which leads to] a form of sensory deprivation” (Hughes, 2001, p.217 in Lester and Maudsley 2006).

8. Evaluate different approaches to managing risk during children and young peoples play. An approach to managing risk could be to talk to those children involved with e.g. play fighting and if they got too carried away I would stop them from playing together. Another approach would be to provide crash mats if children are playing on an indoor climbing frame, I would place them underneath to steady their fall so they don’t injure themselves too badly.

This assignment is all about play and learning for children and young people. Play is engaging in an activity for enjoyment and pleasure however can also be used for learning purposes and development in children and young people. Play activities can be planned by practitioners within the setting or can be free-play, when a child goes off and plays by themselves. Play can be carried out individually or in groups and can also be carried out in different environments such as indoors and outdoors. ‘Research confirms the importance of play for infants in developing children’s brains and minds.’ (http://playtherapy.org.uk/ChildrensEmotionalWellBeing/AboutPlayTherapy/MainPrinciples/PlayDefinition) this is why practitioners encourage young children

Play is central to the development of children, enabling them to make sense of their world as they learn through exploration and experimentation. Susan Isaacs said ‘play is indeed the child’s work and the means whereby he grows and develops’. (Isaacs,1929) Play can support a child’s social, emotional and behavioural development through the following:

Play tests the ability of the children to be able to develop ideas around places and objective. The pretend play assists children in developing important critical thinking and evaluative skills. For instance, the board games tech the children importance concept such as waiting, turn-taking and socialization with other students. Children during play use gross and fine motor skills and react socially to each other. The children thinking what they are going to do and use language to communicate with one another and they respond emotionally to the activities.

Although these are not the basic types of play, they are commonly seen among children and easily spotted in their play styles.

Play is considered as an important tool for emotional development as children recognise themselves more clearly and they are encouraged to fully realize their potential (Oliver & Klugman, 2002). Piaget explains that during pre-operational stage children develop their ability to distinguish between the real and mental world by using an object as a symbol for something else rather than the object itself and Vygotsky also agreed to this concept (Dockett & Fleer, 2002). Play enables them to share their play with their peers and listen to others point of views which develop their empathy (Smidt, 2011). Play positively affects the emotional well- being of the child when they show their enjoyment through laughter, smiles. They get motivated to play when they are the active participants in the play and achieve mastery in known fields being acknowledged by the adults. It gives them internal excitement which nurtures their desire to learn.

From an early age children are known to engage in a number of activities in which would feed their curiosity alongside aiding their development. The main activity in which they would willingly participate in would be pretend play; play is not something which is only done by children however can be performed by adults and even animals.