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How Play is at Risk in the Twenty-first Century For most of the twentieth century, children in the United States had frequent opportunities for unstructured or free play (Chudacoff, 2007). As the twentieth century came to a close, many of those opportunities for free, unstructured play had been replaced by formal play activities arranged by […]

The Teacher’s Role in Supporting Play arly childhood educators wishing to support children’s play need to first be aware of societal factors placing child-directed play at risk. Second, they should be able to differentiate play from other types of children’s activities. Third, they need to understand and employ a variety of strategies that support and

A Relay Race for Everyone   Angela is a second-grade teacher who long ago learned that each year would require careful observation of the children’s development into the concrete operational stage. This not only applied to the cognitive aspects of learning, but to playing games as well. Relay races seemed the best way to introduce

Constructive Play According to Smilansky (1968), constructive play is undertaken by children because they desire to produce some type of product or structure. Therefore, constructive play is considered to be goal-directed play. A wide variety of materials can be used for construction such as large or small wooden blocks, boards, and plastic blocks or shapes.

Smell the Roses   Five-year-old Mai Li decided to tag along with her father when he went to the flower store to purchase flowers for her grandmother. It was her first visit there, and, Mai Li was amazed by the wonderful smell of so many flowers. A pretty woman wearing a dark green apron with

The Blue Swatch of Cloth   It was a simple thing really; just a one-yard long swatch of blue cloth left over from some long- forgotten home improvement project. I stuck it in my book bag. I figured I would find some use for it at preschool. It lay forgotten in the school bag for

The Blue Swatch of Cloth The Blue Swatch of Cloth   It was a simple thing really; just a one-yard long swatch of blue cloth left over from some long- forgotten home improvement project. I stuck it in my book bag. I figured I would find some use for it at preschool. It lay forgotten

Symbolic and Dramatic Play The basis for dramatic play is children’s ability to engage in symbolic play. As we have seen earlier, this ability typically begins in late infancy when babies pretend that one familiar object is something else, a wooden spoon for a baby bottle, perhaps. As they get older, these abilities increase. For

Three Types of Play Common to Center and School s we have seen, play holds a host of benefits for young children across the cognitive, psychological, and physical domains of development. In the words of James A   L. Hymes, “Play that is beneficial to children is play that is active, creative, and social, engaging

Cognitive and Language Benefits Provided by Play Play has a way of translating children’s thoughts into actions—and their actions into thoughts. Children gain experience traveling between tangible encounters and mental representations of those encounters. Sometimes the thoughts (mental representations) precede the actions (play); and sometimes the actions (play) contribute to their understanding of objects and