Play as a Source to Unlock Children's Creativity - Essay Example

“Well-planned play, both indoors and outdoors, is a key way in which young children learn with enjoyment and challenge” (QCA, 2000). Critically evaluate the work of two pioneers who have contributed to our understanding of the importance of children play. Play is as vital as love, food, care and hope [President, Highlights-Jigsaw] Child development experts unanimously agrees that play is very crucial in the learning and emotional development of all children. Play is often defined as being multi-faceted: Play is the best medium for children to experience fun and joy. Play helps children to develop their social relationship and also it influences in them to develop values and ethics. Play is the medium for children to process and manage emotions, and enable them to understand and interpret the world around them. Play is considered as a source to unlock childrens creativity and imagination, and also develops reading, thinking and problem solving skills as well as motor skills. Patricia M. Mikelson rightly says that, ‘Play is a "brain food" to help brains develop in ways critical to success. It provides the foundation for learning including language, reading, thinking and reasoning skills. In addition, parent-child play provides important opportunities for parent-child bonding.’ Also, it is perfect to say that the most authentic play experiences are child-initiated, freely chosen, and child powered. Such play is pleasurable and fun, active and mind absorbing. Considering today’s fast moving world and the technologies, while infants and children can be engaged by videos and technology based toys, they do not provide the same multi-faceted stimulation and developmentally essential experiences those more traditional games, toys, music, and imagination provides. It is true that play has an essential role in building social skills and communication, creativity and problem solving. The best developmental tool that we can give them is by allowing children to participate in self-directed, unstructured free play. Researches insists that while children are playing, we need to create a tolerance for error, allow them fail too, reducing the expectation that they must be perfect. This gives the child a scope of decision making, memory development and the thinking skills necessary for childhood success in the classroom and adult success in the workplace. Play is something that doesn’t intend to target race, religion, or socio-economic status. Data from eminent child specialists gives clear picture that play deprivation leads to increased aggression and violence, anti-social behavior, repressing of emotions, learning disorders, and obesity. Play is crucial to both the cognitive and physical development of children, and its deprivation can have negative and long lasting effects. There could not be any second thoughts that children involved in the outdoor games in the playground enjoys the freedom to be physically active but above all this playing experience works as an outdoor learning laboratory with numerous exciting and challenging activities. When outdoors, children can observe nature, hang bird feeders, plant radishes, search for cicada shells, or watch the communal, determined behavior of ants transporting food. They can develop interpersonal skills of problem-solving and conflict resolution in small or large groups involved in dramatic play and explore the arts in a way not available indoors. Even dramatic play takes on new aspects in the outdoors. [Play, Children with Physical Disabilities and Occupational Therapy: The Ludic Model] Friedrich Froebel and Rudolf Steiner are two eminent personalities whose contribution to the child development is undisputed. Their ideals and theories were the initial stepping stones that gave the realistic and modern touch to the child development activities. To begin with Friedrich Froebel, a nineteenth-century German educator who is the man behind originating the idea of the kindergarten, he came up with the theory that kindergarten should be focused on play as a childs work. Froebel was of the opinion that curriculum should not be imposed on children but should rather issue forth from childrens unique interests. We learnt from Froebel to honor the childs interest as the driving force of the curriculum and that play is the young childs natural mode of learning and self-expression. Friedrich Froebel, patriarch of the modern kindergarten, was an educational philosopher. Froebel built his concept around children exploring, questioning, and touching dirt, grass, plants thereby knowing the world better. He believed that it was through these young learners interaction with their world that they began to develop an in-depth view of the world around them. Kindergarten also gives children a broad exposure to mathematical concepts. They need opportunities to explore spacial concepts, patterns, sorting and categorizing, and the notion of numbers. Froebel was instrumental in creating kindergarten and first-grade environments that are flexible, activity-oriented, and filled with plants and animals. Such environments liberate young childrens abilities and provide them opportunities to experience the special pleasures--as well as the awful fears--that are unique to this stage of life. His initial vision of understanding and developing children has taken a new way in today’s fast moving scenario and we have much advanced and structured version of the same vision around us now. Past decade has seen the emerging economy that has compelled a growing contingent of professionals to echo Fröebel’s devotion. Friedrich Fröebel is very well referred as a charismatic champion of “natural education.” His program foreshadowed modern-style multimedia design by integrating gardening, music, dance and storytelling. It also incorporated playful interaction with a series of educational toys. Known as “Fröebel’s gifts,” the toys included building blocks, parquetry tiles, origami papers, modeling clay and sewing kits. Frobel was one person who after careful study hypothesized that harnessing the natural impulses of children could ease learning and enduring knowledge. He proceeded to cite the significance of “play” in childhood and designed a corresponding curriculum. He is the man behind developing a sequence of educational toys based on the premise that handling forms modeled after the basic units of nature would reveal and illuminate the logic of creation in child. He subsequently generalized the building block metaphor and used it as the basis for composing each and every facet of his system. [Brosterman, Norman (1997) Inventing Kindergarten.] Friedrich Froebel believed that humans are essentially productive and creative - and fulfillment comes through developing these in harmony with God and the world. This should begin at the early stage of childhood. This led to Froebel to creating educational environments that involved practical work and the direct use of materials through engaging with the world and thus the understanding of child unfolds. Hence the significance of play - it is both a creative activity and through it children becomes aware of their place in the world. Froebel went on to develop special materials (such as shaped wooden bricks and balls - gifts), a series of recommended activities (occupations) and movement activities, and an linking set of theories. His original concern was the teaching of young children through educational games in the family. Rudolf Steiner, another eminent educationalist and the man behind the model education for Children is an all time great philosopher and his work in the field of Children’s education and well being is widely appreciated. The educational movement based on Steiners ideas is sometimes referred to as Waldorf Education, and few hundreds of such schools established where Steiner’s vision has taken the practical shape. The underlying philosophy is based on the principle that education should support the development of the child in its physical, soul and spiritual growth towards becoming a free and responsible adult. Rudolf Steiner argued that this growth occurs in three main stages covering the years from 0 to 21. The first stage he characterized as a period when the will activity is dominant, during the second the life of feeling is developing and in the third cognitive activity comes to the fore. On this basis a curriculum is built which gives the opportunity for these three periods of growth to be facilitated. Steiner truly believed that Play both in indoor and outdoor forms ought to be an integral part of the child’s life. His principles are clearly reflected in his works and most importantly in his concept schools wherein they believe : Play expands intelligence and is a significant factor in brain and muscle development Play is a testing ground for language and reasoning connecting to the challenges children face in school, such as literacy, math and science concepts Play stimulates the imagination—encouraging creative problem solving Play helps develop confidence, self esteem, a sense of strengths and weaknesses and a positive attitude toward learning Steiner states that the place of the human being in relation to the whole environment, how this evolves over time and the responsibility that we all have for that relationship is fundamental to the whole of this education and this concept must be initiated as early as childhood. A major goal is to develop the artistic, practical and scientific sides of all students, enabling them to become balanced and integrated adults, able to unfold their unique talents and skills in ways that are based in individual initiative and at the same time are socially responsible. Rudolf Steiner came up with the concept of 3 stage Play model for children. He strongly believed that the first seven years of a child’s life are of the utmost importance for developing capacities needed later in life. The Kindergarten is an environment where children can play imaginatively and creatively, and can freely develop within their own world. There is a balance between ‘free’ play and the sharing of activities. Play, at its best, results from a balance between urgent inner creativity and the external environment that is absorbed unconsciously by the inherent capacity in all children to imitate. Playing does give children a chance to learn those skills so necessary in contemporary society: Writing, Reading, and Mathematics. Each subject is established in richly-experienced lessons while playing which lead from the childs real world of pictures towards the abstract world of adult consciousness. The Curriculum and the teaching method together facilitate a learning activity through which the child develops an integrated view of human life in its individual, social and environmental contexts. Consequently, formal skills are introduced and exercised in a meaningful context which engages the childs interest and understanding. Steiner strongly says that the faculty for fantasy and imagination in the young child, if cultivated, becomes a powerful social sense. Vanessa Ong has best described Play by saying “Play is an occupation that enhances our quality of life. Play and an attitude of playfulness can make everyone’s life more interesting and enjoyable.” We can conclude by saying that Play is the strongest medium through which children gets the actual chance to develop their overall personality, positive attitude in them and above all they get to realize their own potential and experience success. Footnotes Lilley, I. (ed.) (1967) Friedrich Froebel: A selection from his writings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kilpatrick, W. H. (1916) Froebels Kindergarten Principles Critically Examined, New York : Macmillan. http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-froeb.htm Play, Children with Physical Disabilities and Occupational Therapy: The Ludic Model, written in 1997 and available from the University of Toronto Press, or by e-mailing: utpbooks@utpress.utoronto.ca Brosterman, Norman (1997) Inventing Kindergarten. Harry N. Abrams, Incorporated. p.19. Shepherd, A.P., Rudolf Steiner: Scientist of the Invisible. Inner Traditions, 1990. Hemleben, Johannes and Twyman,Leo, Rudolf Steiner: An Illustrated Biography. Rudolf Steiner Press, 2001. Read More