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A Box with Three Lives On a Monday morning, Owen’s dad brought a large cardboard box to the class after a weekend delivery of a new washing machine. The teacher, Ms. Mary, set the box in the middle of the meeting circle and said, “H-mmm, I wonder what we could do with this, would you […]

The Challenge of Time Time is one of the biggest challenges for teachers who want to use play as the foundation for their curricula. Curricula may be divided into segmented blocks of time that may be inadequate for optimal focus and engagement. Consider children playing with blocks. Block building involves a developmental sequence of increasingly

Types of Activity Centers Materials Play requires materials that children can use to explore their physical limits, to learn about natural phenomena, to employ imagination and make believe, and to develop language and conceptual understandings. An extensive commercial market offers an array of choices targeted to the needs and interests of young children. However, a

Types of Activity Centers Types of Activity Centers Dedicated Space Play Focus Dramatic play Pretend play with props (themed materials) that allows children to take on roles and develop play scenarios about familiar themes Construction Building with blocks and other materials that can be put together and taken apart; woodworking Language and literacy Reading, listening

Play as an Organizing Element of the Curriculum Ross Whitaker / Getty Images Classroom space is defined for specific activities, in this case an area for block play. A convincing body of evidence confirms the importance of play in the setting of early childhood education. As the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) stated in a

Social Perspectives In 1932 Mildred Parten described a continuum of four increasingly interactive social levels of play. She named these solitary, parallel, associative, and cooperative to correspond with children’s level of involvement with others during play. Although the time frames Parten initially described have been shown to be more fluid than was first thought, early

Cognitive Perspectives Piaget described qualitative changes to play over the early childhood period; he saw play development as a series of stages that paralleled the child’s increasing complexity of thought and reasoning. Practice play is characterized by reflexive, repetitive, or functional actions, as when a toddler pounds large pegs into a block of wood with

Play Perspectives Most modern research and theory about play falls into two categories: play as cognitive construct and play as social construct. Both of these perspectives are important and provide a useful framework for teachers to observe and interpret children’s play as a part of the curriculum planning and implementation process. Place Your Order Here!

Benefits of Play Neuroscientists have become increasingly focused on the connections between play and brain development. A theory of mind has emerged that describes how the child’s process of understanding the difference between reality and the abstract develops through symbolic play (Bodrova & Leong, 2007). When a 3-year-old begins to use wooden blocks to represent

What Is Play? Most early childhood educators agree that play is an active and enjoyable activity that is internally motivated, process-oriented, and directed by the players. The International Play Association (2009) has this to say about play: [It should be] controlled by children rather than adults, and . . . undertaken for its own sake