Play is a hot topic these days. The debate revolves around time. Is play a frivolous waste of time in favor of more quantifiable academic achievements? According to Dr. Maria Montessori, play is the work of the child. Children are naturally curious and driven to learn. They seek out things that are interesting to them. They explore, create, dismantle, and reconstruct. They test their own theories only to try again and retest new theories. They are little artists, little scientists, little engineers. They are constantly advancing their learning through their games, their creations, and their social interactions.
What does a child learn when they play by splashing in a puddle? Youngest children learn what their feet can do and they are marveled by it! Older children are curious as a scientist would be about the way water splashes and what it takes for their feet to make larger splashes. Water play always fascinates children. Why is that? Because water is a sensory medium. Children need to do play.
Young children need to move things with their hands, touch textures, feel the different weights and shapes of blocks, create with a variety of art mediums, dig dirt, water plants, and the list could go on and on. They learn by personal experience and interaction with their environment. Children enjoy doing housework! For them it is a game. They enjoy washing dishes and scrubbing tables! Raking leaves becomes an amazing game if they can rake the leaves in piles and are then allowed to roll in them. What a sensory delight! They experiment with pulling and pushing the rake. What is the best way to gather the leaves? What happens if the tines are turned up? It all becomes an interesting and exquisite sensory experience- something they want to repeat again and again!
They are also learning how to master their own bodies. Muscle movement is being developed and refined. Gross motor muscles, like legs and arms, are getting stronger and developing better balance and control. Children look for things to climb on, things to jump from, things to hang from. Children will find things to accomplish this work. As adults, it is up to us to provide those safe places as guided motives to this most important work of the child. We need to provide them graduated challenges that pique their interest and hand them the freedom to move through those challenges. If we adults encapsulate them for fear they will “get hurt” we hinder more than just their physical development. We stunt their spatial and proprioceptive awareness. This is the awareness a person has of their body in space. Because the child may lack experience in their awareness of their body in relation to things around them, movements may seem more clumsy than they typically would. No academic lesson can teach this. This is part of the “doing” of play.
Children constantly challenge themselves. If they think that there is any possibility that they can do it, they will try it! Dr. Montessori would spend time observing the way children naturally moved and what activities they sought out. She noticed how children enjoyed climbing on gates and fences- and it seemed universal- all children seemed to be drawn to climbing and standing on gates and fences- so she designed one of the first “jungle gym” climbers just to meet this natural, innate drive children have to climb.
We must be observers of children, too- especially of the children we are around and working with everyday. What are their tendencies? What activities do they gravitate to? If you find the children are returning again and again to a motion, activity, or game- especially if it’s one they’ve invented- see how you can expand on it to add extensions to it. Also be aware that some things that adults may interpret as “naughtiness” may actually be an internal drive that is seeking an outlet. Step back and observe the behavior and see if you can interpret what the need is and see if an activity can be developed to meet that need.
Finally, play is very social. It is the safe place where children can learn, practice, and work out newly forming social interactions. When children come together in play they are refining their negotiation skills, learning how to control their own desires while allowing someone else’s desires to be met, they are learning to share space, materials, and even each other! Young children are just learning what can be expected from a friend and what a friend should and should not expect from them. They ask questions such as, “if I’m not playing with Jimmy, is he still my friend?” Helping them understand that Mary can still be her friend even though she wants to play with Susie at the moment is a big concept and sometimes it takes skill and patience from an understanding adult to help the abandoned playmate work through hurt feelings or jealousy.
So, now where do you stand on the idea of play? Are you more willing to allow children to move freely and play their childhood games? Best practice and developmental theory highly promotes childhood play for all child development: physical, socio-emotional, and cognitive. Academic skills will come- but for our young children, play is too vital for their development to sacrifice.
Until next time-
Lorraine
