Play is vital to children’s development and we need to make sure we are placing value on it during online or hybrid schooling and a social distance summer.
It is 7:15 a.m. and I’ve just made my first cup of coffee. My children are sleeping and I need to make sure my lessons are posted for the day in my online platform for kindergarten instruction. This is not how I would choose to do kindergarten instruction but I do think we are doing the best we can given the time and circumstances surrounding the covid-19 stay at home orders. What I am missing most and feeling the most guilt about is that I am not able to meet the needs of my students when it comes to social and emotional support and opportunities for learning through play.
After my lessons are posted and I provide feedback on yesterday’s lessons, I then hop on to my college courses online to see if I can get some of that done. I’ll sit in my work area for hours today, on my computer. My children will get up at some point and eat breakfast. They will then get onto their online class pages and I will help them complete their assignments. I will have some zoom meetings throughout the day and so will my kids. My husband is in the basement working his marketing job from home. This requires a lot of working on the computer and being on virtual and phone meetings.
While my husband and I juggle work and school, my children spend a lot of time on their devices, watching television, and coming in to tell me they are bored. I understand but I’m not able to provide them with entertainment at the moment. I realize that we can provide all of the content they are missing over the internet for any grade level, but what we cannot replicate is the in-person social and play experiences they get with their peers. It is irreplaceable and invaluable. My children are lucky, they are twins, so they have a built in, same age peer to play with. It is not enough.
As we move forward and we head toward a summer of social distancing with an uncertain fall ahead, I would like to break down why play is so important to children and how we can foster it, advocate for it, and provide opportunities for it in a developmentally appropriate way.
What does play look like?
Play involves activities that are usually pleasurable, self-chosen, engaging, intrinsically motivating, and can involve the creative use of objects, role-playing, and goal achievement. (White, n.d.).
What is does play have to do with social-emotional development?
Play can look and sound different based on the age of your children. Normally developing children go through stages of social-emotional development that can involve typical types of play. If your child has developmental delays or disabilities, the age may not match the stage, and you should not be discouraged by this, this is just a guide. You know what your child is able to do and not do and should have realistic expectations for them.
Peter Gray, Ph.D. says that in play children learn how to regulate their fear and anger and thereby how to maintain emotional control in threatening real-life situations (Gray, 2012). He also says that children everywhere, throughout human history until very recently, spent huge amounts of time outdoors, with peers, away from adult control, and that is how children have always learned the most important lessons that we all must learn for a satisfying life (Gray, 2019)
Ages and play
I will be talking about play from a school aged child perspective, but please know that if your child is below the age of 4, you are their most important playmate! You smiling at them, talking to them, playing on the floor with them, reading them books, and encouraging them in all their physical endeavors is the most important thing you can do for young children.
Image credit: Google Images
Preschool and Early Kindergarten
∙Parallel play: preschool age children engage in parallel play and pretend play. They will start at parallel play (White, n.d.), which is playing next to another child, possibly with the same toys even but not engaging with the other child much.
∙Limited language
∙Pretend play
∙Use realistic props for role play, dress up, acting out real life scenarios
∙Early literacy development
Image credit: Google Images
Primary Grade Children
∙Organized play with structure and rules (White, n.d.) that satisfies their growing appreciation of logic.
∙Build social skills
∙Learn negotiation
∙Learn compromise
∙Learn how to take turns
∙Learn how to wait
∙Literacy development
Image Credit: Google Images
Middle School Children
∙organized games or sports activities that support group membership
∙children at this age have an advanced ability to assess themselves and their abilities (White, n.d.)
∙group memebership
For 10 things every parent should know about play from the NAEYC see: https://www.naeyc.org/our-work/families/10-things-every-parent-play.
What if my child has developmental disabilities or delays?
1. Learn about typical levels of play.
2. Understand how your child’s disability may affect their play.
3. Watch what your child likes to do with the toys they have available at home.
4. Join your child in playing at his or her level of play with the toys available.
5. Select toys and play activities that are not only appropriate for your child’s developmental level, but that are also likely to appeal to their interests. (Pierce-Jordan, 2013)
How can I help at home?
This is our dilemma right now. Schools provide our children opportunities all day long to develop these social-emotional skills with their peers. It can feel like an impossible task to replicate those experiences at home and in some ways, it is. You will never be able to set up your home like a school if that is not your full time job and commitment-I see you home school parents-but even our home school communities are not able to meet up with other families or take advantage of community spaces right now in their teaching. So let’s look at some ways we can encourage play at home.
Block area with building materials or a science area with experimental materials where children can practice building, creating, and experimenting. This is constructive play (Child Development Institute, n.d.) where children learn to manipulate and control their environment to get desired results. This can be traditional wooden blocks or old Amazon or cereal or shoe boxes or wood pieces or rock from outdoors.
Dress up or dramatic play area with old clothing, shoes, kitchen utensils, pots, pans, aprons, old take out menus, writing pads, a mirror, and maybe tools. This kind of imaginative play emulates family living, society, different cultural heritages and can express imagination (Ktaylor 33197, 2016).
Water or sand area outdoors (or indoors if you don’t mind a mess) give children the opportunity to practice manipulating materials, building, exploring and experimenting. You can do just water or just sand but also the mixture of the two will encourage the play and experimentation even further. Children can send hours manipulating these sensory materials.
An outdoor play space or an indoor space of their own to play free of adults is important for older. Here they can have access to books for reading, music to listen to and maybe even dance to, writing or drawing area with materials and maybe a stash of board or card games, along with sports equipment. Older children could also benefit from a space where they could have materials to create or tinker. In schools we call this a maker space. A maker space might include recyclable materials, tape, staplers. Zip ties, cardboard boxes, old appliances, parts of old toys, etc. These spaces can be messy and require children to able to leave something that they are creating and come back to it if they want to modify it or rebuild it. If you do not have a tolerance for messes, you could have this area in a lesser used part of the house or garage.
Everyone is struggling right now to meet the social and play needs of their children right now. I know that it can see monumental to think of making whole themed areas for your children at home. Do not get me wrong, I am a teacher and my home does not look like a classroom. In fact, we recently had flooding in our basement where the kids had a space of their own with toys, dress up clothes, and a ping pong table and all of that is in a heap in a back room that did not flood waiting for our floors to dry out.
I’m giving myself grace and starting small. My twins are 9 and they really miss their friends. We installed the messenger kids Facebook app so they can video call their friends and talk. Yesterday we did a zoom call on the computer with another family and played Scattergories for an hour. Last weekend we picked a nature area close to our house and went on a family hike. Most of all, I let my kids be bored and encourage them to play without me entertaining them. That is where they learn what they are capable of, what they like, and how to handle being alone. Do your best. Going into summer, let them ride bikes, play with other kids from a safe distance (kicking a ball, talking a six-foot-apart walk together, setting up hammocks in a wooded area and reading books together).
When school resumes in the fall, be an advocate for play in schools or if it continues online, be sure that the program they are using addresses the social-emotional and play needs of children. This video talks about defending children’s right to play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfmnS39aPtM
I would love to hear from you in the comments. What resonated with you? What are your concerns? Questions? Would you like to see more educational content on my blog? Leave a comment below or share the link if you think it was helpful.
References
Bongiorno, Laurel (NAEYC). (n.d.). 10 Things Every Parent Should Know About Play. Retrieved from https://www.naeyc.org/our-work/families/10-things-every-parent-play
Child Development Institute. (n.d.). Types of play. Retrieved from https://childdevelopmentinfo.com/child-development/play-work-of-children/pll/#.WjwdxlWnGwl
DEY Defending Early Years. (2019, December 14). Fighting for Children’s Right to Play. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfmnS39aPtM
Gray, Peter Ph.D. (2012, June 21). [Blog post] Free Play Is Essential for Normal Emotional Development. Why mother nature motivates our children to play in emotionally exciting ways. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/201206/free-play-is-essential-normal-emotional-development
Gray, Peter Ph.D. (2019, May 9) [Blog post] How Can We Restore Children’s Independent Outdoor Play? Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/201905/how-can-we-restore-children-s-independent-outdoor-play
KTaylor 33197. (2016, October). Curriculum and Instruction (Test #3) (Chapters 7 and 8). Retrieved from https://quizlet.com/162025657/curriculum-and-instruction-test-3-chapters-7-and-8-flash-cards/
Pierce-Jordan, Sandra. (2013, September 10). Five tips for promoting play skills in young children with developmental disabilities. Retrieved from https://www.parentingnh.com/five-tips-for-promoting-play-skills-in-young-children-with-developmental-disabilities/
White, R.E. (n.d.). The power of play: A research summary on play and learning. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Children’s Museum. Retrieved from https: www.childrensmuseums.org/images/MCMResearchSummary.pdf