supports their development? Marion Dowling explains.
Play is so important to optimal child development that for some years it has been recognised by the United Nations Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights as an entitlement for every child1.
Of course, there are many forms of play, so here I will use the definition from a document by the former National Strategies: 'Play is freely chosen by the child, and is under the control of the child. The child decides how to play, how long to sustain the play, what the play is about and who to play with. There are many forms of play, but it is usually highly creative, open-ended and imaginative. It requires the active engagement of the players and can be deeply satisfying.'2
Julie Fisher rightly stresses that once a playful activity has an inten- ded learning outcome (identified by the practitioner), it ceases to be play. Instead, it becomes an adult-initiated activity using play resources - valuable at times, but not meeting the above criteria3. However, I suggest that the adult can facilitate while respecting the integrity of play, through observing children's actions, providing resources and strengthening skills and attitudes that help children to be good players.
Here, I aim to show how the aforementioned definition of play can support young children's social, emotional and dispositional development.
SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
Living and learning with others
A young child's secure initial attachment with a key person or small group of known adults underpins any other relationships. These special persons, by forging a link, will help the child to widen their world, grow to trust and enjoy play with others.
Action: learn about children's relationships
- Note the patterns of friendships to identify the most popular children and those who have difficulties in making relationships.
- Encourage individuals in the latter group to gain access to a play activity by copying others - for example, building a wall of bricks or creating an obstacle race using found materials.
Playing with others
Lev Vygotsky strongly supported social learning and claimed that mental activity begins with social contacts between people. Eventually these exchanges will be taken on board. Vygotsky suggested that what the child does in co-operation with others, they eventually learn to do alone4.
Friendships developed in play really help children to rub along with others. Broadhead notes that the more co-operative the children's play, the more likely they are to recognise and appreciate the thoughts and perspectives of their friends5.
Action: strengthen friendships
- Provide a new child with a friend who can help to explain routines and show the new entrant resources to play with.
- Include many daily opportunities for turn-taking in play and sharing equipment.
- Give scope for den building where children learn teamwork, arguing, negotiating, making joint decisions and working collaboratively.
EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Expressing feelings
Young children's feelings, positive and negative, are initially best reflec- ted through playful actions. They will dance for the sheer pleasure of twirling their bodies in space, make marks, daub colours, stick materials, and construct imaginary scenarios to depict pleasures and turmoils which they are initially unable to talk about6.
Action
- Provide access to a rich and broad environment inside and outside which allows children to re-present their emotions in ways that suit them.
- Recognise that what you do is more powerful than what you say. Share and name your feelings both positive and negative with children.
- Use puppets and situation stories to help children understand why characters feel differently.
- Observe role play when children vent their feelings. Where appropriate, join the play and encourage children to reflect on how the different characters feel.
Case study
Bimla and Daisy (four years old) were playing with small-world resources. Bimla called to Janice, her key person, 'Janice will you help us?' Janice cheerfully agreed and asked the two girls what was happening.
Bimla: 'You see, Janice, little teddy is going to big school and he's frightened, he's really frightened.'
Daisy: 'Yeh an, an he doesn't want to go, does he Bimla, so he shuts himself in this box.' (Squeezes the bear into a small box.) 'Oh no, he won't fit.'
Bimla: 'His mummy is looking for him.' (Uses a high-pitched voice) 'Teddy, Teddy, where are you?'
Daisy: 'Shhh ... he is hiding from his mum cos he doesn't like big school. It's ... it's too big and the children are big so Ted won't go.'
Bimla: 'But his mummy is cross, Janice. What will happen?'
Janice: 'Poor Teddy, I think that we need to help him to start to like school. Perhaps we might find him a friend.'
Comment
Janice listened carefully to the grap- hic drama. She had no training in play therapy, but quickly realised that the two girls were playing out their own fears about their forthcoming move to the Reception class. Having been invited to join the play, Janice was able to immediately suggest practical ways to help Ted that she hoped would allay some of their anxiety 7.
Memorising important feelings
We reflect on and store deep in our brains memorable events that evoke strong feelings of pleasure and pain. Daniel Levitin suggests that the strength of a memory reflects how much we care about an experience: we identify things as important when we feel strongly about them, either positively or negatively8.
Studies suggest that young children reflect and replay their early experiences in their play. For example, on returning to nursery after a prolonged stay in hospital, Danny spent most of his time in role play giving injections to a teddy.
Memories also accumulate and children recall early play experiences into adulthood.
Action
Observe how children's feelings are sometimes shown differently though their verbal responses and in their play. For example, three-year-old Nickki had a new baby brother and, according to her daddy, was delighted with the baby, saying that he was a 'little darling'. Sue, Nickki's key person, later observed Nickki in the home area playing with a doll. Nickki cuddled the doll and then threw it to the floor and stamped on it, shouting, 'Now go away. I don't want you any, any more.'
Reflection
What play experiences will your children take with them to keep in their memory store?
Dealing with feelings
Young children need to experience a myriad of feelings before they can start to understand them. Over time, with support, they start to build up a bank of 'feelings words'. They learn to match these words to the emotions that they have formerly only been able to demonstrate through actions.
This is an important step when children start to regulate their feelings, rather than be controlled by them.
Their increased competency with spoken language also helps children to play more profitably with others and avoid physical altercations.
Action
- Encourage children to recognise their feelings, both positive and negative, by introducing them to different situations using puppets or small-play figures.
- Provide resources in continuous provision that help children to acknowledge and express their emotions: a punchbag on which to vent angry feelings; a large soft toy animal or soft woolly scarves for lonely/upset children to cuddle; a large stuffed figure of a granddad sat in an armchair in whom children can confide their pleasures and anxieties.
DEVELOPMENT OF LEARNING DISPOSITIONS
There are a number of books and counselling courses that offer advice for living positive and satisfying lives. All emphasise that whatever the circumstances, the key to living and learning successfully lies within ourselves.
This applies to children. Mechanisms in the young brain are all alert to promote powerful learning. Nevertheless, unless children are disposed or inclined to use what they know and understand, the mechanisms will not function.
Identifying and supporting children's interests
We start to understand very young children's interests by becoming familiar with their preoccupations or schemes of thought. Babies and infants show a strong interest in certain patterns of movement through what they do and how they behave. We witness this motivation to follow schema through their repeated actions in self-chosen play.
As children mature, they progress in play and start to combine and connect their schema - for example, linking rotational and orientation interests when they move themselves around and view things from different angles.
Tina Bruce suggests that this development in schema is best thought of as a cluster of pieces that fit together9. Relationships also play a part, as children often choose to play with others who share their interests or schema.
Action
Note the most visited areas in your nursery and the resources that offer children scope to explore and repeat their schema. For example, to support a rotation schema (an interest in going round and round), provide opportunities for the child to roll down slopes, move their bodies in circles, stir when cooking, and to use wheels, roundabouts, locks and keys and screwdrivers.
Acting intentionally
As we see, young children are not dependent on adults overseeing their efforts. Instead, they work from their interests, learn from their mistakes and are highly motivated to achieve.
They also have strong self-belief. Albert Bandura's research argues that this self-belief enables a person to:
- approach new encounters as something to relish and tackle
- become committed to a task
- persist, even in the face of difficulty10.
Carol Dweck supports this and illustrates it with reference to mindsets. Dweck argues that there two kinds of 'mindset' that reflect the ways in which we regard ourselves as learners. Those with fixed mindsets believe that talent and ability are set and cannot shift through challenge and effort.
By contrast, the people with a growth mindset believe that they can progress their talent and abilities through effort and determination11.
Learning is hard work for us all; young children have so much to learn and they must feel energised to do so. Acquiring strong learning characteristics are dependent on what children experience: 'When they are encouraged and supported to follow their curiosity, to feel the satisfaction of meeting their own challenges, to think for themselves and to plan and monitor how they will go about their activities, they become self-regulated learners who later outstrip children who may have developed more early subject-based knowledge but are more passive in their learning.' 12
Surely these experiences are represented in self-initiated play.
Children finding their element
By the time children move into Reception, they will have acquired skills, knowledge and abilities, but they need to be motivated to use these. This motivation kicks in only when individuals discover a deep interest or passion, inspiring them to explore and develop further.
Ken Robinson describes this as finding the 'element' and suggests that when this occurs people 'are doing the thing they love and in doing it they feel like their true selves'. 13 He suggests that this wonderful state occurs when there is a meeting point between natural ability and personal passion; the conditions for it are attitude and opportunity.
In the best early years practice, children will have enjoyed rich play opportunities to explore and experiment freely, have had time to replay and extend their experiences and had a good chance of finding something that intrigues and absorbs them. But although the child may have these opportunities, finding their element depends on attitude. Children with positive mindsets relish the challenge of new experiences and so dig deeper into learning. Those with fixed mindsets opt to keep in their comfort zone and avoid uncertainties and risk.
Reflection
- What do you do to help children to find and use their talents?
- How well do you encourage parents to provide opportunities for their child at home?
Part 3 of this series will run in the 10-23 August issue of Nursery World
REFERENCES
1. United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (1989), Convention on the Rights of the Child, General Assembly Resolution
2. The National Strategies Early Years, Learning, Playing and Interacting
3. Fisher J, Moving on to Key Stage 1, OUP
4. Vygotsky L S, Mind in Society, Harvard University Press
5. Broadhead P, Early Years Play and Learning, Routledge
6. Dowling M, Young Children's Thinking, Sage
7. Dowling M, Young Children's Personal, Social and Emotional Development. Sage
8. Levitin D, This is your Brain on Music: the science of a human obsession, Atlantic Books
9. Bruce T, Learning Through Play: babies, toddlers and the foundation years, Hodder & Stoughton
10. Bandura A, Self-efficacy: The Exercise of Control, WH Freeman
11. Dweck C, Mindset: the new psychology of success, Random House
12. Moylett H and Stewart N, Understanding the Revised Early Years Foundation Stage, Early Education
13. Robinson K, The Element: how finding your passion changes everything, Penguin
READER OFFER
Nursery World readers can get a 20 per cent discount on Young Children's Personal, Social and Emotional Development by Marion Dowling (Sage, £22.99). To order a copy, go to www.uk.sagepub.com/education and use the code UK15AF33. Offer valid until 31 December 2015.
