education and play

| * Age-appropriate equipment for example soft ball for foundation stage playground and normal football for the KS3 children * Foundation stage children have

Play is satisfying to the child, creative for the child and freely chosen by the child.

Social skills - By playing independently of adults, children have the chance to practise their social skills. They might squabble or raise their voices at times, but most children from 3 years or so are able to work things out themselves. Learning to take turns and cooperate helps children’s social skills.

The purpose of this project was to create a house corner, so the child-minder and her assistants are able to assess the children in their care more easily. As well as having somewhere for the children to be able to go and role/pretend play.

Assessment 7: Understand How to Provide Play and Other Activities for Children in Home-based Settings That Will Support Equality and Inclusion.

Making relationships: children play co-operatively, taking turns with others. They take account of one another’s ideas about how to organise their activity. They show sensitivity to others’ needs and feelings, and form positive relationships with adults and other children.”

The practitioner in an early years setting supporting children’s play learning and development is extremely important, as play helps stimulate the child’s brain, supports their needs on an educational level, as well as helping them with social difficulties such as building relationships, developing them and helping them gain confidence. Many people believe that a child learns best when they are motivated, such as Fredrich Froebel. He believed that children benefitted from all types of play. The McMillan sisters believed that outdoor play was extra important as they studied children who played and slept outside and discovered that they were the happier and healthier children in comparison to those who only played inside.

The key to attain this solid foundation is through communicating effectively and clearly with the adults associated with the play setting. For example, it is important that parents and carers are aware of any issues that may have arisen during the session, any difficulties their child is encountering, or if their child has behaved or responded particularly well to a certain situation. Essentially, this involves being ‘updated’ on their child’s general behaviour and well-being. The importance of clear communication can be evidenced here. Being vague in ones communications can lead to problems such as misunderstanding, the child being reprimanded for something they didn’t do by parents, or by parents not grasping the full extent of the problem. Not only would this affect the support the child would receive, but many could argue that such misinterpretations or misunderstandings could result in conflict between play setting and parent.

Through play, children are also able to form relationships with their peers, therefore developing socially. They are able to “learn how to work in groups, to share, to negotiate, to resolve conflicts, and to learn self-advocacy skills” all of which are important skills in a child’s world as well as the adult world (Ginsberg 183). This is especially prevalent in young school age children, who have had relatively few social encounters without the presence of their parents before entering school. These young children will often make life time friends by sharing a popular treat at snack time or borrowing a color crayon to another child who has broken theirs.

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).

Playwork Principle 5 states “The role of the playworker is to support all children and young people in the creation of a space in which they can play”.

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

Furniture and equipment should be flexible and open-ended. It should be easy to rearrange the room to respond to children’s needs and interests. Movable platforms, risers, large hollow blocks, movable tables, boxes, large pieces of fabric, clothespins, and other open-ended materials give children opportunities to arrange spaces to suit their needs. They enhance children’s imaginative play; provide opportunities for

Play contributes to children’s “physical, emotional and social well-being” (Else, 2009, p.8) and through play, the child’s holistic development and well-being is being constantly accounted for as is it led by the individual. The child decides what s/he wants to do and does it; it is

There are multiple factors in a child’s development. Parents have a responsibility, as well as a privilege, to contribute to every milestone. Most parents stress over physical and mental stages so much so that play-time is ignored. By making decisions that sacrifice play parents hinder their social development. Parents must take action and encourage their youth to play more, before childhood is lost forever.