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LECTURE 8: BENEFITS OF PLAY

SAADAH KHALID

Gestwicki, C. (2007). Developmentally Appropriate Practice : Curriculum And Development In Early Education. (3rd Edition).NY. Thomson Delmar

KEY CONCEPTS

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LECTURE 11

BENEFITS OF PLAY

DEVELOPMENTALLY APPROPRIATE CURRICULUM

EMOTIONAL BENEFITS

PLAY PROVIDES ALL AREA OF DEVELOPMENT

PLAY ALLOWS FOR DIFFERENCES

PLAY PROMOTES ACQUISITION OF FOUNDATIONAL SKILLS

DEVELOPMENT AL BENEFITS

PLAY EMPHASIZE LEARNING AS AN ACTIVE PROCESS

PLAY CONTRIBUTES TO BRAIN DEVELOPMENT

EDUCATIONA L BENEFITS

PLAY PRESENTS HIGHLY MOTIVATED OPPORTUNITIES FOR LEARNING

PLAY IS PLEASURABL E

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Emotional benefits include : Enjoyment, fun, love of life. Relaxation, release of energy and tension reduction. Self expression.

Improve communication skills and vocabulary. Enhance story telling and emergent literacy.

COGNITIVE DEVELOPMEN T

Enhance creativity, imagination and problem solving. Develop abstract thinking. Mastering new concepts. Improve social cognition, empathy and perspective taking.

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LANGUAGE DEVELOPMEN T

AFFECTIVE DEVELOPMEN T Build childrens selfconfidence, self esteem, anxiety reduction and give therapeutic effects.

Create an attention regulation atmosphere. Prolong concentration and persistence.

DEVELOPMENTAL BENEFITS

ATTENTIONAL DEVELOPME NT

SOCIAL DEVELOPME NT

Provide fine and gross motor experiences. Gives physical challenges. Improve self help skills

PHYSICAL DEVELOPME NT

Promotes cooperation, sharing, turn taking. Improve conflict resolution. Develop leadership skills.

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Educational benefits include : Providing a meaningful context for children to learn concepts and skills. Making learning fun and enjoyable. Encouraging children to explore and discover together and on their own.

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Allowing children to extend what they are learning. Encouraging children to experiment and take risks. Providing opportunities for collaborative learning with adults and peers. Allowing for the practice of skills.

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Play is the medium best suited to preschool childrens cognitive development. Early childhood educators a half-century ago

affirmed the importance of play in classrooms for

young children.

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John Dewey, Patty Smith Hill, and Susan Isaacs all supported play as an opportunity for children to explore materials and develop concept of problem solving abilities, as ell as enhancing social growth.

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Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI) and the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) agree that play is the medium through which children most appropriately develop in all aspect.

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Play provides for all areas of development in a simultaneous and integrated way, such as : Cooperating and sharing ideas and conversation. Problem solving. Developing eye-hand coordination and fine motor skills. Working on an understanding of balance.

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Representing a concept symbolically.

Extending attention span, task

perseverance and concentration. Learning to listen and take into account the perspectives of others. Expressing themselves in language. Enjoying companionship and feelings of success.

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Involvement of children in meaningful activities gives them a context for their learning. Children who interact with other children are exposed to ideas they have to fit in with their own previous understanding. Example : Jack : But we cant live there, because people dont live in space. William : Well, but they live on space ships because I saw pictures. They were bouncing around. Jack : Okay, but theres no bouncing on the space station, because then it would fall to the water. Here, this can be

the water.
(as he runs over to get a piece of paper from the art shelf across the room).

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Usually, children prefer to choose to participate in activities that are meaningful to them, play presents highly motivated opportunities for learning. Example: cooking, bride and groom, jigsaw puzzle.

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They choose whether or not to play, their play partners and their tasks, their roles, and their involvement. The children accept the learning challenges because they are interested in and ready to play.

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However, adults must be careful to distinguish between those kinds of adult-manipulated play that thinly disguise the adults teaching/learning agenda and do not really allow children to freely choose what and how they will play.

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Play allows for differences in developmental ability, interest and learning style. Within the choices prepared by the teacher are opportunities for children to:
play alone or together; play with simple or more complex materials; construct, create, match, manipulate, explore, pretend

and succeed at their own level.

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No such failure occurs in play where children are able to find the activities best suited to them, their needs, and their interest. Obviously, as children with special learning needs or disabilities are included in classrooms with more typically developing children, they can succeed at their level (whatever that level may be) in an environment designed for play. Children who play can set their own tasks and are likely to succeed at such self-assigned challenges.

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The preschool years are the fastest growth period for the frontal lobe networks, with play contributing to brain development. The speed of processing, memory and problemsolving increases as a result of this rapid growth. Because of the activity in the higher brain centers, preschool children increase in the levels of attention and their ability to inhibit impulses.

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Research shows that the synapses in the higher brain centers are activated by following scripts and taking roles that require selfregulation and problem-solving during childrens play. While, complex play experiences with other children enhance the development of the higher brain centers.

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While children are playing, they are filled with energy, enthusiasm and curiosity. They are excited by their discoveries and confident in their abilities. Participation in the play is extending their ability to stay with a task, that is to preserve.

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They do not manipulated into staying with the task a little longer. Their self-esteem as learners and as people is nurtured. Children also had chosen their play materials and will use successfully show the correctness of considering play as the appropriate curriculum for them.

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A number of studies show that the connections between play and many complex cognitive activities, such as memory, self-regulation, distancing and decontextualization, oral language abilities, symbolic generalization, successful school adjustment and better social skills (Bodrova & Leong, 2004).

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Meanwhile, studies in language and play, researchers found an increase childrens use of literacy materials and activities and gains in phonological awareness.

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Thus, through play children learn in ways that the competent

preschool mind can use to succeed.

The skills that children learn through verbalization, language comprehension, vocabulary, problem-solving, observation, empathy, imagination, taking on anothers perspective, learning to cooperate with others and using symbols. These are all foundational skills for all cognitive development and academic achievement.

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