Play, for children, is not just recreation - it's their approach to life! Every action is undertaken with the whole being: mind, body, and spirit. Play is basic to children's well-being. It's their way to discover the world around them and to express how they feel and, sometimes, to cope with difficulty.
Although children's play just 'happens' spontaneously, it is complex and comes in myriad forms. One universal type is open-ended play, also known as free-flow play (Bruce 1991), in which the children themselves determine what to do, how to do it, and what to use.
Open-ended means 'not having a fixed answer; unrestricted; allowing for future change'. In the course of such play, children have no fear of doing it wrong, since there is no 'correct' method or outcome. Observant adults are privileged with insights into children's development and thinking.
ACTIVE LEARNING
Children perceive life differently from grown-ups. To adult eyes, a sheet hanging on the clothesline is there to dry; for a child, that sheet offers intriguing possibilities. Children need opportunities to apply their own logic.
The Scottish guideline, A Curriculum for Excellence, advocates children as leaders of their own learning. The Welsh Foundation Phase Framework for Children's Learning 3-7 Years also demonstrates respect for childhood, stating, 'Children learn through first-hand experiential activities, with the serious business of "play" providing the vehicle.'
This active learning starts from birth as babies use all their senses to discover the world around them. As they grow, children continue to need ample opportunity to playfully investigate and create in their own ways, at their own pace. This is what Friedrich Froebel meant by 'self activity'.
IMAGINATION
Imagination, the ability to override the boundary between reality and fantasy, is an attribute of childhood worldwide. Imagination is the key to empathy. Albert Einstein said, 'Imagination is more important than knowledge.'
Sally Jenkinson's perceptive book The Genius of Play states that 'Social imagination, which first appears in germinal form in the imaginative games of early childhood, is the kernel around which all mature and tolerant societies are formed.'
Open-ended play gives imagination free rein.
MATERIALS
Margaret McMillan said, 'Most of the best opportunities for achievement lie in the domain of free play, with access to varied materials.' These materials need not be complicated or fancy. In fact, sophisticated resources tend to thwart true play; children often become bored with prescribed games or become mesmerised by electronic paraphernalia.
Where detail is built in, children's ideas cannot freely guide the play. If a nursery has elaborate costumes for every storybook and cartoon character, for example, little is left to imagination.
Dressed in an ornate knight's outfit, a child can only be a knight. However, with tea cosy on head and stick in hand, he can be a knight now and a fireman later - or anything he pleases.
Likewise, a plastic fried egg can never be anything but a fried egg! Open-ended materials such as sand, dough, clay, acorns, corks, lids and scraps of cloth readily become anything a child envisions. The simpler the plaything, the more versatile it is, supporting play that is sustained over time. A piece of wood may be a mobile phone, a camera, a bulldozer - even a baby - so children use it repeatedly.
TIME
Children who have always been told what to do, or who are used to commercial toys and screen activities, may need time to get involved in open-ended play. Children who are familiar and happy with free-flow play still need lots and lots of time to experiment, discover, create and re-create. Children live in their play; the more engrossed they are, the more frustrating interruptions become.
NATURE
Nature provides endless scope for free-flow play. It also fosters emotional well-being (something technology cannot do). Children's favourite climbing frames are trees, boulders and logs, which through imagination become mountains, horses, fishing boats, castles or fire engines.
Twigs, pebbles, seashells, acorns, conkers and fir cones are among children's favourite outdoor playthings. Children often use these materials to build miniature villages and fairy gardens. And everyone has seen sandcastles at the beach decorated with bottle caps, seashells and bits of glass, or in the sandpit adorned with daisies and buttercups. When children create these small worlds, they are the 'big people' controlling what happens.
CONSTRUCTION AND SMALL WORLD
Similar play occurs indoors in the construction and small-world areas, where children set up an environment with unit blocks or similar materials and use miniatures figures to act out their experiences and fantasies.
When young children encounter unit blocks in the construction area, they may first acquaint themselves with the shapes and play with them as individual pieces.
Eventually a child will begin to stack and then create. Pat Gura writes, 'Repetition appears to be an important feature of materials mastery. As each block form is discovered, there is much practising, refining and variation within the familiar. A particular block form may be constructed so often that the procedure becomes effortless.' (Exploring Learning: Young Children and Blockplay)
Completion of structures is not the end of the play. Children often decorate a tower with beads, buttons, scraps of cloth, pine cones, coloured yarn - whatever is accessible. They might use little vehicles and human or animal figures to enact their thoughts. Sometimes these figures are just clothespins or Plasticine people.
LARGE CONSTRUCTION
Where small construction enables children to build miniature worlds, large construction empowers them to create environments they can actually inhabit. When children engage in large construction, they themselves are the actors; construction and role play flow together, opening tremendous possibilities for total involvement.
Important statements about play in the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework are particularly true of large construction:
- Children have to experience play physically and emotionally.
- Children may play alone or with others.
- In their play, children use the experiences they have and extend them to build up ideas, concepts and skills.
- While playing, children can express fears and re-live anxious experiences.
- They can try things out, solve problems and be creative, and can take risks and use trial and error to find things out.
DENS
One universal form of large construction is building dens. Helen Tovey writes, 'These small, secret worlds are calm, ordered and reassuringly secure. They allow for privacy, imagination and temporary ownership, and are important ways that children can feel a sense of agency in shaping and creating their own special place, making their mark on the world.' (Playing Outdoors: Spaces and Places, Risk and Challenge)
Play at its highest
Colleen Marin, who compiled Writing in the Air, believes that boys' potential for attainment in oral skills and writing is increased if they are given sufficient block play at a young age. The confidence established as children express their ideas with blocks will support their self-expression in spoken - and eventually written - language.
But the building phase, though so important, just sets the stage for dramatic play, which is play at its highest. As Jean Piaget (1962) said, 'Dramatic play permits children to fit the reality of the world into their own interests and knowledge. One of the purest forms of symbolic thought available to young children, dramatic play contributes strongly to their intellectual development.'
This is an edited extract from I made a unicorn! (see above)
Tina Bruce is honorary visiting professor at Roehampton University, Lynn McNair is head of centre at Cowgate Under 5s Centre, Edinburgh and lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, and Sian Wyn Siencyn is head of early years learning at Trinity College Wales.
If left free to experiment, children soon start using the blocks to construct interesting patterns or purposeful projects - not only roads and houses, but imaginary ideas as well.
Karen Miller says that block play 'could really form the core of your curriculum. Everything could be built around blocks!'
I MADE A UNICORN!
I made a unicorn! by Community Playthings with Tina Bruce, Lynn McNair and Sian Wyn Siencyn is a booklet that can be downloaded free from www.communityplaythings.co.uk.