Analyse The Importance Of Play In Child Development

Children – young and fragile, with their curiosity and imagination they are discovering the natural world around them. Everything they see and what they hear is passed through the play to express it. Play – is an essential part of child’s curriculum. While children are playing, they are learning life situations and how to socialise with other peers or adults.

The role of the adult is to provide appropriate environment for children. Their learning and development together with well-being must be facilitated always. This will help to give opportunities for the children to engage with different types of play. There are six different types of play: discovery play, physical play, creative play, imaginative play, manipulative play and social play.

The knowledge and understanding of children’s development is essential. Educator role is to plan and implement the activity for the children. At this stage, some of the educators starting to do mistakes. It is significant to find out what children would like to do, but not what educator thinks children would like to do. How to know more about the children? Through observation. The observation helps for educator to see to what children is interested in and where they are struggling. Each child has a different capability, so the observations must be taken on individual child not to the group. After observations, the educator can plan the activities for the children. it is important to pay attention to the learners age. There are stages of play which will help to plan and to know what to expect from a different age group of children. Sociologist Mildred Parten researches was about children’s play. She was a nature theorist, and her theory about stages of play is used in these days. Stages of play: solitary play, observational play, parallel play, partnership play and co-operative play (Wellhousen and Crowther 2004, p. 5). Solitary play occurs when an infant is playing alone with his feet, hands and mouth. When a child grows, he is staring to observe other children of how they are playing. Through parallel play the child is playing beside other children but do not play the same game. They might share and interact a little bit even their play might be similar, but still they are not playing together. Partnership play occurs when the children play in small groups. They are engaging and socialising with each other while in play. The co-operative play occurs in the large peer groups of children from four years. Very often in the co-operative play social hierarchy approaches. The role of the adult is to identify the interest of the children and provide activities which are appropriate their age and