Competency 2

Examine the Critical Role of Play as it Relates to Curriculum Planning

Play is a valuable source of curriculum. It is very important to incorporate play into the
daily curriculum. There are four Principal always play influences child development and lays a
foundation for learning in school: 1. Play affects children's motivation, enabling them to develop
a more complex hierarchical system of immediate and long-term goals. 2. Play facilitates
cognitive decentering as children take on roles in their play and negotiate different perspectives.
3. Play advances the development of mental representations as children begin to separate the
meaning of objects from their physical form. 4. Play fosters the development of deliberate
behaviors - physical and mental vocabulary actions - as children learn to sequence actions,
follow rules, and focus their attention. Play has changed drastically over the years. Children who
play more make-believe learn abilities to self-regulate. Self-regulation is extremely important, it
predicts development in virtually every domain. Play as one of the primary approaches for
learning available to young children. Through play children try roles and situations they've
experienced in their life. Their play is often serious, yet also enjoyable and deeply satisfying.
Despite all the development play is being pushed out of kindergarten and also vanishing from
pre-schools and Head Starts.
Play needs to be incorporated in young children's daily routine for numerous reasons such
as development, learning opportunities, self-regulation skills, and more. Creativity, curiosity,
play and problem solving, are all intertwined in early childhood. So knowing that in kindergarten
play will be extremely limited early childhood professionals should incorporate as much play
experiences as possible to help the children develop through their own learning process rather
than the academic robots that the public schools want them to be