The Role of Play in Early Childhood - Research Paper Example

The Role of Play in Early Childhood The role of play in general: Children, the cute little angels on Earth seem mischievous devils when they are up to some messy mission of theirs. These little angels when at play grow and learn the best. John Muir, an American naturalist quotes a reality of life, “Surely all God’s people …..like to play.” True it is that all God’s people like to play. Play is instinctive to man whether it a new born child or an eighty five year old man. Even inside the womb, a mother can feel the kicks and jumps of her baby. Play is nothing yet everything. It is part of our existence. It is the secret of our healthy and joyful survival. Displeasing it is to imagine our world without play. Our life will become mundane without the delight and thrill of play. It is a natural system of growth, liveliness, revival, mental peace, physical fitness and mental fitness. It enhances our abilities to think, question, learn and grow both mentally and physically. Play improves our imagination, creativity and problem-solving abilities. Play amplifies learning. It helps us to handle and transform our negative energy and release stress. It’s an act of becoming social by connecting with others in this world. Play makes our work more fruitful and pleasant. Play is not just a time pass or source of entertainment it is a prerequisite to endure and thrive in a healthy way. The role of play in early childhood: As we know that humans are born to play, then how can we keep children away from play? It is against the law of nature. It becomes obvious from the above paragraph that how play plays an important role in our lives. Play is just like oxygen for the endurance of a human being especially when he is at the stage of an early childhood. It is hard to tell apart whether a child is working or playing as children have their own way of working and learning and that is through play. When a child learns to walk it is a play for him. It is a new work for him which he enthusiastically learns. If at that time we interfere in his natural phenomena of learning by playing and make him sit forcefully and scold him at walking, what would happen to that child? His mental and physical development would decline due to our mighty obstruction to his expected activity of learning, how to walk. In the same way it is observed that since past thirty years, adult activities are slowly taking out play out of our children’s lives. Here I refer to play as open-ground play. In open-ground play, where children come in contact with nature and nature related activities, where children play with mud and water plants, observe various insects, experiment climbing trees, explore new places of their own. Open-ground play is now seriously endangered due to increasing rates of population and development of metropolitan cities, where houses and buildings are closely built and there is hardly any safe open space for children to play in that is easily accessible. Parents, teachers and health professionals are now seriously concerned about the children who do not play or are not given the opportunity to play because the rules and practices in schools and at homes are such that open-ground play has become extinct. Television, video games and computer games have taken its place, which is nothing but others’ observations and imaginations and all this results in a gradual deterioration in children’s play which in turn leads to weakening of the mind to think and imagine and poor physical fitness. Schools are quickly changing their policies of teaching. They are focusing on scripted learning, computerized learning and standardized assessment. While doing all this, the management of schools is forgetting that the most vital part of learning of a child is through playing. A child innately has the curiosity and urge to learn. He has his own ways of learning and that is through playing which makes it effortless and tireless for him rather than just doing book learning in a boring environment. The concept of playground and physical education in schools is gradually dying. In Joan Almon in his article “The Vital Role of Play in Early Childhood Education” writes that he has observed a steady decline over the past thirty years in children’s play yet he was astonished when he heard that in a school of Virginia when a teacher used the word “imagination” in class one, the students had a blank expression on their faces. She explained its meaning to them by saying “You know, it’s when you pretend to be someone you’re not,”. But the students remained puzzled. Even after giving an example from her childhood the only response which she got from the students was this “but we don’t know how to do that?” That is why Plato, a Greek philosopher said, “Do not….. keep children to their studies by compulsion but by play.” Nature of play and children: If we want to save play, we must first understand what play is all about. In the eyes of John Almon, “Creative play is like a spring that bubbles up from deep within a child.” Children innately have the keenness to learn new things and experience all kinds of stuffs in this world. Their attitude towards life is always playful. Adults realize the fact that they are responsible for the brought up of the child, therefore they are always anxious to teach their children the right things. It is true that the elders of the family are the ones who need to set example for their children in all the activities they do. They must create a healthy and safe environment for them to play in. Time comes when you need to sometimes disturb their activities and stop them when things are going wrong. Yet it is very important for the adults to appreciate their children’s inborn capabilities of learning through play. What children need is just a helping hand and not strict rules and regulations or orders. In the article “The Vital Role of Play in Early Childhood Education” written by John Almon, he writes about Nathan who is a one year old kid and comes with his parents to a summer house where he enjoys climbing the stairs of his house. He constantly climbs up and down several stairs of the summer house. In his own home there is only one stair which he had already learnt to climb long time back. He never liked to be taken away from that activity. He was so engrossed in doing so that he never missed a step. He exhibited happiness while doing this activity. A glow of victory and pride flushed his face when he used to finish climbing upstairs or downstairs. Climbing so many stairs was a new activity for him, a new thing which he relished to learn in a playful manner. Every healthy normal child would do this if his brain of movement has not been troubled. It is a matter of fact that children have their own little imaginative minds according to which they perceive and comprehend. Their way of looking at things in this world is totally disparate from how grown-ups look at it. The things which we barely notice in our day to day lives become the center of charm and fascination for children. We must let children grow in their own way, in the way nature has destined for them. Here is another example of a child, talked about in the article written by John Almon, who learnt a work while playing. Ivana at the age of four learnt how to tie her shoe laces. On a talk with her mother it was discovered that throughout the weekend she had imagined herself going to a birthday party. She had folded scraps of paper as gifts and tied bows with pieces of yarn. She did this entire work in a playful manner and eventually mastered the art of tying bows. When she went to school she proudly showed her friends that she could tie a bow. If this work had been imposed on her, she would have taken much longer time to learn this and also this work would have become so tiresome and arduous for her. We must give children time and space to learn things on their own rather than pressurizing them to learn when they do not want to or are not yet ready to grasp it. Children have a wonderful desire to acquire knowledge but they like doing it in a playful manner. The problem with adults is that they think only they know what is right and what is not, and the child does not know anything and he will neither know it if we adults do not teach them. Adults must understand a child’s nature a and must support him fully so that he can live the colorful and beautiful life to the fullest rather than making life more boring for him. It is a tragedy that by the time children reaches the age of 8 and 9 they have already lost the urge to know more. They seem exhausted with the process of learning. The craze and love for learning which Nathan and Ivana have presented can last for a lifetime but due to unconscious activities of human adults our children are suffering and indirectly our society will suffer in future. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly listed a situation where a child gets deep inside the play that he does not even notice what is going on around him in world and termed it as “flow”. Usually healthy children get so engrossed in the activity of play that they refuse to come out of it. Sometimes, this may even happen with adults when they are fully occupied with something. If we want the fire of knowledge to remain burning inside the hearts of children then we must rectify our works, as children impersonate grown-ups. We must retain creativity in the lives of children. Children’s play is inspired by two things: i) by their instinct urge to know and grow and ii) by copying their adults. These two things have a major effect on the growth and development of a child in early childhood. A significant landmark in play is when a child starts playing in his fantasies. He starts imagining him to be someone else or a thing to be something else and plays with it. Many children at age of 2 and 3 are seen playing with bowls and spoons. The bowls are their drums and the spoon is the drumstick. Before going into the stage of make-believe play children are more observant and are more indulged in identifying objects around them and their own bodies. When they are toddlers they like to imitate their grown-ups like taking care of a baby, driving car or cooking. When children reach the age of 3 they can easily transform anything into something else with the help of their ability to imagine. They no more require the real objects as everything is in their imagination. Once they start playing make-believe play, it has no end to it. The episode seems never ending as the objects keep changing into something else. On the contrary a four year old likes to play something actually with an object, like playing in a house or in an office or shop. They impulsively get the idea by seeing an object and start playing with it. Their theme of play is more stagnant and thematic than the play of 3 years old. Five years old children are more likely to invent their own games and play. They do not get ideas on seeing any object but they create an idea and then play games. Mothers of many children report that their child wakes up in the morning with an idea for play in mind. They may play a game with the same theme repeatedly with variations in minor details. In all these stages of play, a child may play alone or with other children. However the way a child interacts with others keeps on changing as they grow. John Almon refers to the social play of two years old as parallel play as children play side by side but do not interact with each other completely. The social play of three and four years old is referred to as playmate play where children play with each other but are not attached with each other. They tend to forget their friends when they are apart. At the age of five their social play changes completely. They are more involved with their friends while playing and even talk about them at home with their parents, elders or siblings. All this makes it clear as a crystal that lack of play in early childhood may result in drastic and long lasting consequences in the overall social behavior of the child. The Social, Economic and Intellectual Benefits of Play: On the basis of a research on the role of dramatic play and socio-dramatic play in intellectual and socio-emotional development by Israeli psychologist Sara Smilansky, I have deduced the following long lasting benefits of creative play in children: Better Speech Good vocabulary Higher level of comprehension Curiosity to learn Better ideas to solve problems Higher intellect Improved peer cooperation Aggression level is low Involvement in group activity Friendly behavior Compassionate attitude Positive thinking Better socially connected Better imagination Concentration level is high Innovative Conclusion: Hereby, I conclude my research on the role of play in early childhood by quoting one line written by me, “Let the young birds stretch out their wings, let them grow in the hands of nature for nature can only give the best nurture.” We shall gain nothing but human robots by restricting our children, our future generation, from playing out in the nature because nature is their mother and a child will only become spoilt if kept away from his mother. References Muir, J. (n.d.). Play Quotes. The Strong. Retrieved from http://www.thestrong.org/about-play/play-quotes Plato. (n.d.). Play Quotes. The Strong. Retrieved from http://www.thestrong.org/about-play/play-quotes Almon, J. (n.d.). The Vital Role of Play in Early Childhood Education. Retrieved from http://www.waldorfresearchinstitute.org/pdf/BAPlayAlmon.pdf HelpGuide. (n.d.). Play, Creativity, and Lifelong Learning. Helpguide.com. Retrieved from http://helpguide.org/life/creative_play_fun_games.htm Read More