Understand The Concept Of Play Essay

Play is essential to every part of children’s lives and is important to their development. It provides the children with different ways of doing things children will want to explore and learn new things.

The relationship between play and learning seems obvious to many child professionals and parents, and yet there are still lack of understanding surrounding the importance of children's play. Some people believe that children need to "work" not play, and that playing serves no useful purpose in a learning and development environment. This is surprising considering that play, with its high levels of motivation and potential enjoyment empowers children (as well as people

In this assignment I plan to explain how play helps to improve the development of children and young people. Play is extremely important for the development of children. It is important that from a young age children play with things like toys and even with other children. Between the ages of 0 – 3 is when children develop the most. Through play children can improve their fine and gross motor skills by using toys such as shape sorters and using musical tables which have buttons and things to turn. This helps to develop fine motor skills. Gross motor skills are developed through crawling and learning to walk. If children have toys that are spread out whilst

The Early Years Learning Framework relates the importance of play to notions of belonging, being and becoming. It states that children make sense of their social worlds through playing with others (DEEWR, 2009). Article 13 of the UN Convention reads that every child has the right to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child (Connor, 2010). It is important to note that play has multiple approaches and that children’s play varies greatly according to culture, interests,

Play for toddlers is sensory-motor, the pleasure of using their senses, sucking, biting, touching, and moving toes, fingers, arms and legs. They seem to babble and enjoy listening to other sounds of voices. They tend to imitate the expressions of others such as opening their mouth, imitating hand gestures, and body movements. At the end of the second year, symbolic imitation in the form of simply play occurs around this time when they may make an attempt, as early as eighteen months, in order to feed a doll or toy bear.

Play has many definitions as far as children are concerned. Play is the engagement and enjoyment in recreational activities that are spontaneous. There are many psychologists that have tried to figure out the term "Play". Stanley Hall believes that every person will go through the same development process, which has been followed on from the age of evolution, and he believes that play is part of this process. Another psychologist Herbert Spencer decided that play was just a way of working off excess energy that we may have and which keeps us much calmer. Smart and Smart decided that play is what any child will do in any spare time that they have when they are not doing the usual parts of their daily life, such as eating, sleeping and learning.

Defining play can be very difficult. The term play can be used to illustrate a wide range of behaviors and activities, and can be perceived as both essential and insignificant to the child at the same time. Santrock (2012, p.437) suggests a definition of play as "a pleasurable activity that is engaged in for its own sake." However, this is argued by Kernan (2007, p.5) who states that none of the potential definitions are broad enough to encompass all of the meanings associated with play. Despite the lack of such universal definition, Rennie (2003, p.22) claims, that "we can recognize play across barriers of language, of culture, even of species", which conveys its importance in the life and development of children, as it is

Children of all ages are constantly learning and observing their world in unique ways. One specific way children do this is through their play. During this they are able to develop different areas such as cognition, physical development, and social skills. There are many different theories that have been established that help explain development as they go through life. Through my knowledge of these different theories and how they correlate with children’s play I was able to determine the development of a preschool child.

A). Play as defined in our book is an “activity that is intrinsically motivated, focused on means rather than ends, different from purely exploratory behavior, nonliteral, and free from externally applies rules” (Gross, 225). There are different types of play such as play with objects, social play, and pretend symbolic play. Play with objects depends on age for example a child between the age of birth to 4 months uses exploratory type of play, repetitive motor movements such kicking legs, reaching for or sucking their toes, and rolling over. Whereas a child who is between the age of 24 months and 36 months uses fine motor play which allows them to play with Play-doh and put together puzzles. Social play is playing with a responsive human playmate. This could be the child’s mother, father or caregiver. Pretend/symbolic play “usually emerges after the first birthday, when children behave in a nonliteral way, acting as if they were performing familiar routines, such as eating, going to sleep, or washing their face” (Gross, 195).

‘Play is engaging in activities for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose’ (Oxford Dictionary, 2015). It’s important for children to have opportunities to play because children have a natural curiosity to discover and explore and this is done through play. Play is a biological, psychological and social necessity, it’s fundamental to the healthy development, learning and well-being of a child (Play England, 2014).

According to (Penny Tassoni by ‘Practical EYFS Handbook’), play helps children develop self-confidence, a sense of themselves as individuals, lets them make their own choices.

Play also has other beneficial elements to it as well, like it reduces stress and conflicts. Because it has these beneficial qualities, therapist will sometimes use it to help children cope with the difficulties in their lives. There are also different types of play that children participate in. The first type is sensorimotor and practice play. The book defines this play as “behavior by infants to derive pleasure from exercising their sensorimotor schemes” (Santrock 500). During this play they are exploring their environment and surrounds and learning how things work. They will sometimes participate in practice play, which is where they repeat a behavior over and over again until the master the skill they are working on. Practice play does decrease with age because the child has usually mastered it by then. The next type of play is the pretense/symbolic play which is when “a child transforms aspects of the physical environment into symbols” (Santrock 500). This type of play usually takes place between 9 to 30 months old and this is when they start using their imagination to play pretend. This is an important type of play because it helps children develop cognitive skills like balancing social roles, testing reality-pretense distinction, and role taking abilities (Santrock 500). Social play is the next type of play and it is simply just how children interact with their peers. This play could be conversations, games, and actual physical play. Next is constructive play and it is a “combination of sensorimotor/practice play with symbolic representation” (Santrock 500). This play usually takes place in preschool and elementary aged children. This type of play for example is drawing outlines of objects instead of just smudges with their fingers. The last type of play is games, an obvious type of play for children. This play is defined as “activities that are engaged

Play is the business of childhood, allowing your child free rein to experiment with the world around him and the emotional world inside him, says Linda Acredolo, professor of psychology at the University of California at Davis and co-author of Baby Signs: How to Talk With Your Baby Before Your Baby Can Talk and Baby Minds: Brain-Building Games Your Baby Will Love. While it may look like mere child's play to you, there's a lot of work — problem solving, skill building, overcoming physical and mental challenges — going on behind the scenes. Here are some of the things your child is experiencing and learning, along with ideas on how you can help boost the benefits of his play. Play builds the

The play is an important part of the development of a child. As children play, it is substantially more essential than only an approach for them to pass the time, but it is the way for them to learn. The games they play helps them to lay a foundation for formal schooling when they will turn to pre-school. However,

When a child involved playing with the other children, it learns how to interact and shows personal identity with other children who are the same age. The educational process is not just that we are stuffing ideas within the child's mind, but how can we teach children the correct methods. There are many types and functions to play, from the kinds of toys, "exploratory" where the child discovers the surrounding areas such as play with water and throw stones and small pebbles in the river and play in the garden and picking flowers or digging sand and find some small coins between the sand. Child always likes to share with others the new discoveries. One of the types of playing funny for children, "representation" that the child mimics actions of one of his member’s family. Also of playing styles in children social interaction where we see the child interacts socially with children on a fun and entertaining, for example child pretending to be a doctor or a policeman who pursued the