Most young children will have engaged with small-world play before they ever arrive in an educational setting. It is unlikely, however, that their families will ever have called it that! Playing with cars, trains, doll's houses, farm and zoo animals and a range of commercially produced toy people will simply have been an integral part of childhood.
If children appear interested in one particular theme - for example, trains or dinosaurs - then this interest is likely to be supported by families, not only with new toys being bought to feed the play, but also by being encouraged to return to their favourites again and again. It seems logical that such provision should find itself in educational settings too, allowing children to bring their enthusiasms with them. Small-world play is rightly an indispensable part of continuous provision in early years settings.
Essentially, this involves children engaging in play with small toys in miniature environments. These environments may:
* replicate real life (a farm, a jungle or a doll's house)
* exist only in fantasy (a land where dragons play or unicorns frolic)
* be created by practitioners to reflect predictable centres of interest that arise in the setting (a space scene or a prehistoric forest full of dinosaurs)
* be created by the children themselves using a wide variety of materials to reflect their own interests and concerns
* be based on favourite stories, such as 'The Three Billy Goats Gruff' or John Burningham's Mr Gumpy's Outing (Red Fox, 5.99).
Whichever small world is provided, and however it is created, there can be no doubt that this activity can significantly enhance children's learning right across the curriculum, if given the status it deserves.
IMPORTANCE
Small-world play offers young children the opportunity to be 'in control', to take charge of an environment, and to make things happen how and when they choose. Practitioners observing small-world play will notice the way children concentrate for long periods of time, carefully positioning aspects of the physical environment and its tiny toy inhabitants until they are satisfied with the results.
Hypotheses are created (this kind of play is full of 'what ifs'), ideas are explored and imaginations are both exercised and fed as children share ideas and play alongside each other.
As they enter these possible worlds, children begin to create stories. The small world becomes a stage, and the toys the actors. If listening carefully, practitioners will hear children giving stage directions: 'Let's pretend the cow hides behind the fence...' or 'Say the animals line up...'
It is from this kind of talk that narratives are made and this is one of the ways in which children can begin to see themselves as authors, if adults give their play the status that it deserves. Coming to any miniature environment is always akin to entering the world of 'Once upon a time'.
Each landscape is an empty page, waiting for a story to be written upon it.
When engaging in small-world play, there are also problems to be solved, and decisions to be made. This can be particularly apparent if animals and figures are incorporated into the block play area. Livestock need fences, stables or cages. People need homes, and if fairytale figures are added, they will need palaces and castles.
In creating 'homes' for their toys, children use their growing understanding of mathematical concepts. Counting, measuring and estimating all become more meaningful when embedded in such play. Given the opportunity, children learn they can use mathematics for their own purposes, in authentic situations.
Offering children the opportunity to create small worlds of their own gives them the chance to show how creative they can be with the resources available. It offers the practitioner an insight into how children view and interpret their world, through looking at the materials selected and decisions made about how to represent the chosen environment.
CURRICULUM
Small-world play offers endless opportunities to link all areas of the Foundation Stage Curriculum:
Personal, social and emotional development
If children are encouraged to play alongside, in parallel and in collaboration with others, they will learn to share resources and take turns. This kind of behaviour can be encouraged by carefully considering the context for small-world play.
The more space available around the small world, the more children will be inclined to collaborate. Small-world play can also offer an invaluable context for exploring a range of feelings and emotions. Children can use small toys to replay and revisit experiences that have been significant to them, and by breathing life into toys of all kinds, they can try out a wide range of behaviours, attitudes and feelings in a safe environment. This kind of play is stimulating and motivational.
Communication, language and literacy
Small-world play is extremely significant in children's development as speakers and listeners, readers and writers. Talk is used for a wide range of purposes -problem-solving, questioning, thinking, sharing, joking and storytelling - and children take on a variety of roles and voices.
Storybooks that are popular with the children can be created as a small world. Such story environments enable children to inhabit the story setting, retell the story and wallow in the language of the story. Children who engage in this kind of play regularly will acquire an understanding of story structure and develop empathy with a huge range of characters. They will learn to improvise new episodes for well-known stories and create their own adaptations.
Being a successful writer requires ideas, a rich vocabulary and an ability to bring an imaginary world to life. Writers plan, draft and edit their stories, working through numerous possible plots before settling on the final version. All this can take place in small-world play without recourse to pencil and paper.
Mathematical development
Practitioners wanting to create a context in which to observe a range of mathematical behaviours will also find small worlds invaluable. Children naturally solve problems as they play and will use their developing understanding of mathematical concepts to do so.
Practitioners can offer environments that encourage and promote counting, one-to-one correspondence and the language of position, so offering authentic opportunities for children to explore and investigate a range of developing concepts.
Creative development
Practitioners have a key role in encouraging a child's creative development. Children need to be allowed to innovate with resources, rather than merely copy the adults' model, so practitioners should support children's creativity by allowing them to explore a wide range of unusual substances, such as compost, moss, gravel and junk modelling materials as well as the more conventional sand, water and block play resources.
Practitioners should also promote unusual combinations of resources, to demonstrate to children that small-world play knows no boundaries, either inside or outdoors.
Knowledge and understanding of the world
There can be no better context in which to develop a sense of extraordinary places than a small-world play environment. Through such scenarios children can travel in their imaginations to deserts, rainforests and frozen wastes.
They can also inhabit castles or farmhouses and live the lives of train, bus and lorry drivers.
ICT can readily be incorporated into small-world play, which particularly lends itself to being combined with photography, in both still and film form. Practitioners familiar with the 2simple software will be able to combine photographs of small-world play with programmes such as 2createastory and 2animate (see Resources). In this way, children can create their own books and films from the stories that they have made.
Physical development
Small-world play entails manipulating a wide variety of small toys and equipment to create miniature worlds. The range of tools and resources used to create these worlds can be enhanced further if this kind of play is encouraged outside. There, children can draw on a greater variety of natural materials, for example, as ingredients with which to build their mini-worlds.
Small-world play is much more than merely adding dinosaurs to wet sand! Practitioners need to value the opportunities that such a context offers to children by reflecting on their current provision and considering carefully how they might involve themselves in such play, without, of course, appropriating it for their own ends.