Over the years, there have been many debates over children’s education. This includes school structure, discipline, teaching styles, curriculum, and many other contributing factors. Children are used to having structured rules from a young age, starting from their home environment, through day care, and elementary school. Parents and educators prefer using this type of method to regulate children’s behavior and their schedule. Although children may be used to structured routines, children also need a balance of their own time such as free play. Scheduled educational activities and designated nap times essentially provide growth for the child during this time frame. According to the Oxford Dictionary, free play can be referred to as “unregulated or unrestricted playtime for children.” (Web, Oxford Dictionary, 2017, Oxford University Press). …show more content…
Indeed, it has been proven that free play has more advantages than disadvantages. Furthermore, free play for young children establishes positive cognitive and emotional behavior. In addition, the theory of free play is recognized and recommended by many historical educators. The goal of this paper is to outline and explain why free play is vital for children in a preschool environment. This paper will be detailing the advantages as well as disadvantages of incorporating this method inside the classroom. The research for these findings were documented by several peer-reviewed academic
Parents of young children have a lot to worry about and hope for. Jessica Statsky's Children Need to Play, Not Compete, shows how kids today focus more on competing against each other than working together. Although her report is not completely stable, Statsky does a half convincing job to prove herself. She uses multiple sources and includes parent opinions, but forgets to mention a few important topics.
Evaluate the key principles of play and their relevance to Forest SchoolThe Encyclopaedia of Children’s health (healthofchildren.com) defines play as" ...activities performed for self amusement that havebehavioural, social and psychomotor rewards. It is child directed, and the rewards come from within the individual child; it is enjoyable and spontaneous" At Forest School unstructured play can provide a sense offreedom in wilder spaces not normally found in day to day play. It can give participants a stronger sense of responsibility and self preservation. They give themselves permission to try things and if they don’t go according to plan they have learned and explored anyway. There is no-one there to judge them or tell them their ideas have failed or were wrong.
It has been shown that play is very important to a childâ€TMs learning. Learning through play helps a child make positive contribution.
Play accompanies and encourages development while keeping the child interested and engaged (Thompson, Stanford,
For this extended assignment I am going to focus on play and the importance of play is for children and young people. I am going to focus on children up to age of 6. “Play is a spontaneous and active process in which thinking, feeling and doing can flourish.” (http://www.playwales.org.uk/ ). Play is Important for children and young people’s as it can help children to build their confidence.
In Ellen Ruppel's, “In Praise of Bordeom” she explains from her personal history that boredom can be more beneficial than having an itinerary for your child because it can suppress the room to grow in creativity and imagination. For example, when she was a child, she consistently attended a vacant parking lot and would entertain herself with activities such as reading books, bouncing balls around and playing in the grass. She mentions that we are losing trust in our kids and don’t give them a long enough leash to navigate into the world. Ellen points the finger at marketing, because these days we are taught that the more money we spend on a learned progress like karate, organized sports and lessons, the more successful they will grow up to be. She feels that parents are straining a child's creativity and that play is
Everyone benefits from a break. Research dating back to the late 1800s indicates that people learn better and faster when their efforts are distributed, rather than concentrated. That is, work that includes breaks and down time proves more effective than working in long stretches. Because young children don’t tend to process information as effectively as older children (due to the immaturity of their nervous systems and their lack of experience), they benefit the most from taking a break for unstructured play. Recess increases focus.
Even if you’re not involved in their play it offers a sense of reassurance to children. You can also support a play based approach to learning by encouraging children to play with things they may not have played with before e.g playing with the resource yourself alongside the child. If a child sees what you can do with the resource then they are more likely to eventually participate along side you, copying what you are doing. 4.3 Evaluate different materials and equipment to support play based learning opportunities for children in their early years
I agree that play-based learning offers diverse opportunities for children to explore, discover and create, they can also discover new things and communicate with peer during free-play time. Frobel said that “Play is the highest expression of human development in childhood, for it alone is the free expression of what is in a child 's soul” (Froebel, 1887). He believed in the importance of play in a child’s learning as creative activity. Play provided the means for a child’s intellectual, social, emotional and physical development which are necessary elements in educating the “whole” children allowing them to use all imaginative powers and physical movements to explore their interests.
In general, playing is the mutual popular activity among children because playing is fun and flexible, it can be personal, with the presence of others or with the social presence of others (De Kort & Ijsselsteijn, 2008). The researchers and experts believe that the power of play has an important psychological role in children’s development, as reinforced by Sutton-Smith (1993, p. 279) using “play as progress” and “play ethos” by Peter Smith (1988, p. 166) both cited in Pellegrini (1995). Goldstein (2012) stated that pretend play is one of the common types of interactive social play among 2- to 6-years-old children. He also mentioned that as children grow, the nature and function of pretend play will also change from simple imitation to more
When arranging activities for play based learning within early years provision there can be barriers towards it from taking place. Before the week begins, planning is needed. When planned activities are prepared resources are needed too. Resources can become a barrier towards play. This is because the resources that were needed were not available to be used.
It is important that children are able to receive holistic care while in a play environment, both inside and outside. Some of the principles which would apply to both indoor and outdoor play include a child centred practice, ensuring the child 's welfare and safety, promoting a child 's rights, and enabling a child to reach their full potential. It is important that we provide a child centred practice, as it promotes a child 's learning and development through play. By having a child centred approach, we should support the children giving them guidance, but to allow the opportunities for them to learn independently, instead of taking over an activity and showing them. It encourages us as practitioners, to encourage children to explore and to make their own
It is a viable tool for addressing the maximum participation of the child and can be a catalyst to ensure effective learning. Effective teachers use an array of teaching strategies because there is no single, universal approach that suits all situations. Different strategies used in different combinations with different groupings of students will improve learning outcomes. Some strategies are better suited to teaching skills and fields of knowledge than others. Some strategies are better suited to certain student backgrounds, learning styles and
Some experts agree that dramatic play is an integral part of a well rounded preschool program as it is healthy for early childhood development. Benefits of children play is children teaches self regulation. This is a great stepping stone for learning to self regulate their emotions. Some interesting things happen when children assign and accept roles in dramatic play they are motivated to stick to them, thinking of them as rules to follow. Their own rules.
My play observation took place at Mill 180 Park in Easthampton, Massachusetts on February 17, 2018 between the hours of 12:15 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. This is an indoor urban hydroponic park where children can enjoy a variety of different games, food, and an open play area to interact with others. While I was at the park, I observed two school-aged Caucasians engaging in unstructured play. The children were siblings, with the boy being ten years old and his sister eight years old. When I first observed these children, they were not interacting with one another.