Sian's Assignment

Sian’s Assignment: Learning through Play

                A child’s first experience of learning is through play, whether it is an individual child playing alone or a group of children and every child needs an adult to help with them develop their play. Play is important throughout the world and has a lot of influence from the cultural settings and atmosphere. Everyone can remember the times when you played as a child and what you felt, we can also remember what we see when we watch children play. We remember having fun and using our imaginations and we can see other children socialising and interacting with others, being creative and taking control, these are the first steps of learning for children. There are many characteristics which make learning through play different to learning in a class room for example play is unstructured and more imaginative and involves actions between a group of children or just one individual, children also make their own rules within play whereas learning within a class room is structured and there is an adult leading the class so the children aren’t learning things for themselves. Ward S (2013) states that “Play is an integrating mechanism that helps children to consolidate, coordinate and get together what they know, feel and understand in ways which give them a sense of control over what is happening to them” – (Ward S 2013 P174) Play contributes to many development stages such as firstly cognitive development which improves children’s language, communication skills and logical thinking , secondly physical development which has an impact on co-ordination, team work, balance and special awareness. Thirdly, social development which includes building children’s confidence, social boundaries and trust and lastly cultural development which allows children to accept other children with different ethnic minorities also they gain more knowledge on cultures and learn what is expected of them in their culture such as the norms and values.

                The Link below show’s children learning literacy, with a  treasure map, through play outdoors, it shows the children making their own rules within play, we can see this when one child is telling another child “you’re not supposed to run” and also telling another child that he has to start again. It also shows the children using their imagination when they are telling the adult that the steps they are climbing is a mountain, this shows that the children are being creative and being imaginative and making use out of the materials they have in order to learn and understand literacy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYLrDiPH9sk

REFERNECES

                Ward, S 2013., 3^rd Ed. A Student’s Guide To Education Studies. Abingdon: Routledge