Children, Play and Creativity, Essay Example

Play is essential for every growing child. Play supports the learning process and the learning outcomes.  Children’s motivations to play are directly linked to their motivation to learn. Children always want to be more skilful more knowledgeable and establish their own agency. Since play is very flexible and open-ended, children learn to control their processes and outcomes. Children are always exploring, thinking, inventing, communicating, and creating meaning. They use their everyday knowledge in play and combine this knowledge with their imaginative interpretation of concepts. In play, children take the form they want to be. They can be explorers, scientists, artists, designers or technologist. Play creates meaning in children, which they use in communication in different ways through body movements, facial expressions, gestures, and verbal language. Therefore, play contributes to the identity of children as they develop a sense in mastery of their play and learning. It changes them as it gives them options and opportunities (Marcus & Nyilsztor, 2008).

Children and develop in various ways and at diverse rates. Social and cultural experiences influence their learning journeys. This takes place through their gender, their ethnicity, languages, their special needs, the family composition and the social class a child comes from. Decision-making during play and control of actions by the child are the key elements that distinguish play from other experiences that occur during childhood.

As educators pay attention to children’s play, they keenly observe the myriad of skills developing and concepts forming. Play in its most concentrated form is demonstrated when a child has full control of the actions of pretend, the structure, and materials used in play.

Teachers support children’s play in every way possible that they can. Teachers should be able to arrange for long periods for play and choosing it to intervene. Teachers also make available props, materials, and objects that sustain and enhance the children’s play. Teachers nurture, support, scaffold, teach, encourage, ignite imaginations and playfully participate in the game the children play.

As children play, they incorporate, use and talk about ideas. Content refers to the ideas and information that a child gathers during play. They apply concepts they come up with. Concept is thus the broad understanding of ideas that children put together to explain the relationships and the way the world works. For example, why we serve certain foods during holidays and celebrations, or how it feels to be in hospital.

The child’s lens is different from the teacher’s lens. Children think about their play, having fun while playing, re-orient its direction, create story lines, and plan for extended explorations and make decisions about materials. On the other hand, teachers pay attention to what happens during play. They observe the skill development and learning process in the child.

Scaffold refers to the  this is the role played by the teacher or an educator in supporting a child’s development and providing the child with support structures to get him/her to the next level.

• Myriad this refers to a large number of people or things
• Selective having the power of being choosy or picky.
• Intuitive being sensitive or instuitive
• Organic developing naturally having the characteristics of living things
• Intentional-doing something purposely, intended and planned
• Intervene to take place between two events or points of time
• Anecdotes

Play is essential in children. Play provides a child with an opportunity for imaginative and adaptive ways of judging and acting. Much of a child’s play takes place in the mind. This is because they have creative and unique ideas about adjusting everyday materials and occurrences into play events. They also take pleasure in using their knowledge as they move around roles, rules and relationships. Children are selective in their games. The most fascinating thing lies in the combination of ideas and skills that they use in their intuitive organic play. Enhancing children’s play is the role of the educator, who intervenes in what the child does regarding his development and learning. This way they can intentionally extend and enhance development and learning. An educator teaches, scaffold, nurtures and encourages a child throughout play. As educators pay attention to children’s play, they keenly observe the myriad of skills developing and concepts forming. They also observe the changes closely and use anecdotes and checklists to note that skills each child is demonstrating.

Supporting children’s play is crucial. There are several ways one can incorporate this. Paying attention to skill development, content and concept formation during play is vital. This informs the educator on the choices and the materials to include in the play environment. It also enables one aware of when to intervene with questions and suggestions while providing opportunities to discover emerging interests.

Conclusion

Though not the same, play is compatible to development and learning. Man authors feel that because lay is creative it ought to be separate. However, based on research, development and learning are increasingly evolving into interactive parts of human activities (Samuelsson & Johansson, 2006). Children focus great on play while making decisions about the materials and ideas to use. The teachers have a task of staying attentive to what happens during the play. They monitor development of skills and learning.

References

Hewes, J. (2006). Let the children play: natures answers to early learning. Lessons in learning. Ottawa: Canadian council on learning. Early childhood development knowledge centre.

Marcus, B. & Nylsztor, D. (2008). Balanced curriculum for young children. Toronto. Pearson education Canada.

Samuelsson, I. P., & Johansson, E. (2006). Play and learning inseparable dimensions in  preschool practice, Early child development and care, 175 (1), 47-65.