The environment has a powerful effect on children's play. It can stimulate their senses, support their social and emotional development, and cultivate their desire to explore the world around them. But what makes a successful play environment?
First, there is a need to perceive play as having an essential part within the structure and organisation of the setting. When this is coupled with support and direction provided by practitioners who are intuitive and sensitive to the play needs of children, it can lead to what Paley (2005) suggests is sustained interest, where learning opportunities can be nurtured.
Shackell et al (2008), as well as Brown (2003), take this view further and explain that successful play spaces which support children's learning and development generally follow a number of principles. These include:
- Play spaces designed to enhance the setting
It is essential that play spaces are considered from the viewpoint of the child, and work with the indoor and outdoor space available. This may require creative solutions to utilise odd-shaped spaces and to think like a child when planning your resources.
Children can provide solutions where adults struggle to see the potential. For example, a setting that had a large, built-in floor-to-ceiling cupboard that wasn't really used was transformed in consultation with the children. They removed the doors and created a 'tree' house, painting the back wall with a tree and using it as a quiet space.
- A space that can be used in different ways
Play spaces should contain non-directive play equipment where children can control their play and where the environment stimulates their imagination and creativity. For practitioners, a space that is not 'fixed' allows flexibility for new themes to develop, children's interests to be followed, and restrictions (because of the environment) to be minimised. Resources that are versatile can enable practitioners to use their imaginations in supporting different types of play. Different textures and sizes of material, cardboard boxes and scrap store items make great resources for role play, den making, and arts and crafts that rely on children's inspiration.
- An environment that can involve the community and generate ownership among children and families
An Early Years Professional candidate recently recounted her experience of facilitating a 'growing' project which had begun from a discussion with children about what they had eaten for dinner. This led to examining where food came from, how it grew, and what it needed to grow. This resulted in the children preparing a vegetable plot in the setting, growing their own plants, involving their parents in growing seedlings at home, and then bringing these into the setting, and selling the plants once they were harvested.
The project supported the six areas of learning in the EYFS, but more importantly involved everyone associated with the setting in caring about how the plants were doing. It also generated a conversation between practitioners, parents and children, provided a link which crossed cultures and reignited interest in how the setting was supporting their children's development.
BELIEVING IN A PLAY ENVIRONMENT
Providing enabling environments relies not only on the physical space and resources available, but also on practitioners' attitudes to helping children to realise their full potential. Practitioners are the way in which an environment becomes enabling, to support children in a setting's routine.
Play may form only a small part of the day, but it relies on practitioner values and beliefs about how that play can be facilitated to ensure the experience is child-centred. The effective practitioner, therefore, not only has to reflect on their personal values and beliefs, but also on how these are transmitted into the setting's environment.
For example, one practitioner, Sarah, reflected that children were demonstrating their preferences about the location of the arts and crafts in her setting by not using it or fulfilling its potential. However, from an adult perspective, the space provided typical craft and scrap store resources, it met health and safety requirements, and it supplied enough space for children to develop their interests. Sarah discovered when the arts and crafts were moved that the new location provided more open-ended possibilities for children to explore. It stimulated their interests in experimenting with different materials because they had more freedom and room under the canopy in the outside space.
The environment played a significant factor in meeting the creative development aspect of the EYFS, which states that 'creativity emerges as children become absorbed in action and explorations of their own ideas, expressing them through movement, making and transforming things using media and materials such as crayons, paints, scissors, words, sounds, movement, props and makebelieve' (DCSF, 2008e: 104).
The original space provided a limited opportunity for children to realise their own ideas, but being able to combine the inside and outside space broadened the creative opportunities.
SUPPORTING A 'CHILD'S WORLD'
The way in which children use spaces available to them is important in maintaining their 'world' of play. Cohen and MacKeith (1991), when considering creativity and imagination, identify children as 'world weavers', but children will also demonstrate the same skills in play when they create imaginary worlds, suspend their reality, and create their own rules, logic and language for their play.
Hutt (1979) developed three broad areas of play to reflect how children can use their environment to make meaning. She defined these as:
- - ludic play - when children are using their imaginations, resources, and environment to create characters or situations which are important to them and reflect their mood and feelings, but which may not always be obvious to an adult observer
- - epistemic play - where children explore the world around them, their resources, and environment to make meaning from experience
- - structured activities - which may comprise games with rules or adult-led agendas.
When children have the time and space to develop ludic or epistemic play, they will engage with different ways of seeing the world. Maslow (1971) concludes that the main function of play is to enhance the process of self-discovery and self-realisation. He argues that by engaging in imaginary worlds, children can practise the skills necessary to deal with the external or real world.
Winnicott (1971) uses play to understand the inner world of the child and says this is a way for children to express and make sense of their emotions. He argues that the play environment should provide a transitional space where children can feel safe to explore and work through their emotions.
MacMahon (1992) has focused on emotional well-being in play and argues that the process of play can help children deal with difficult aspects of their lives or specific instances that have happened, such as bereavement or a separation in the family. Children will often engage in ludic play when they are trying to understand their emotions because the imaginary world separates them from the reality of a situation. MacMahon has argued that in supporting children through aspects of therapeutic play, practitioners can re-skill and empower them by providing a greater sense of well-being in a safe and contained environment.
Wood and Attfield (2005) suggest that supporting children to consider feelings and develop relationships can contribute to their empowerment and therefore develop an emotional literacy to underpin a positive self-concept, self-esteem, and confidence.
Involving children in helping to understand different emotions and perspectives supports them in having ownership of situations.
QUESTION TO CONSIDER
Do children naturally want to play in your environment?
This builds on the theme of designing play spaces from a child's perspective. A good starting point is to consider the five senses in evaluating what you have in your environment and how it could be improved. For example, from a child's perspective, what does it look like? Is it overstimulating, with bright colours on the walls? Are there children's pictures displayed at child height? Is there natural light, and how could this be maximised? By posing some of these questions you will develop a more enabling environment where children will feel comfortable in participating.
Another way is to consult with the children in your setting and ask them about what they like/dislike about it. You have designed the space based on adult necessities, but what works for the children? You might have realised some of the things that come up by observing them using the space, but in gaining their opinions you are not only developing more of a child-centred view but also developing their sense of ownership over the setting.
This is an edited extract from 'Inspiring environments for inspirational play, Chapter 9 of Play and Practice in the Early Years Foundation Stage, edited by Natalie Canning (Sage, £19.99)
INFORMATION
Play and Practice in the Early Years Foundation Stage edited by Natalie Canning (Sage, £19.99) investigates the values and beliefs that underpin play and demonstrates through case studies how play opportunities can be observed, planned and assessed in a meaningful context for the child. Chapters are divided into the four principles of the EYFS and show how play underpins each.
The title is available online from http://tinyurl.com/2whqska