All My Children

Children need to develop a range of skills in order to utilise play experiences to the full. These can be considered in six areas and generally, there needs to be a fairly balanced development in each one. The six areas are:

Social — where the child shows an interest in other people and begins to develop empathy

Communication — where the child wants to communicate through verbal and non-verbal communication

Fine motor skills — where the child develops fine motor co-ordination and dexterity

Gross motor skills — which are related to mobility and body posture Imagination and thinking skills — needed for pretend play

Attention — where the child develops concentration and focused attention

It can be very useful to use the following tables as a checklist to consider children’s strengths and the areas in which they may need support at different ages and stages. Continue Reading »

The adult asks the children to draw a picture of themselves in the middle circle and the people closest to them (i.e. those who live with them) in the second circle. In the third circle the children draw people they see most days (these could be neighbours, relatives, pre-school friends and staff etc.). The children draw people they sometimes see in the next circle (e.g. doctors, shopkeepers, the postman). A final outer circle could be added for the children to draw people who they rarely see (e.g. relatives living abroad). Children who find drawing too challenging can be provided with a jar of buttons to represent themselves, their famly and their friends. Continue Reading »

Week Three

If all the children got on well in the second week and all seemed to benefit from playing together, it may be a good idea to keep the same grouping for the rest of the programme. On the other hand, if the adult feels that introducing a different child, either as well as or instead of the original friends, would be a good idea then this would be an ideal opportunity to do so.

By the end of Week Three it will probably become apparent if this input is having any effect. A short, formal observation using the same chart as before may be helpful to see if there are any pockets of major improvement or a noticeable lack of it. Continue Reading »

Top tips for managing staff

Make sure that all staff are enthusiastic and are encouraged to work outside

Staff need to be briefed and be clear about the reason for carrying out activities (is the aim of the task counting/caring for the environment etc.?) Staff require very specific teaching aims and objectives and need to share these with the children

Staff should be role models for language/behaviours/interaction skills

Children should be expected to do their own work (how many Mother’s Day cards are made by the adults?) Continue Reading »

This sets out in brief format some ideas you might like to think about when planning a challenging play and learning environment. The way in which you organise this is key to children’s learning and development. Some questions you may ask are as follows.

How can I:

• support and extend learning though planning play activities?
• help children to be spontaneous?
• extend children’s language and communication through play?
• help children make sense of the world around them?
• make children aware of the risks and challenges that (especially the outside) world presents?
• make sure that children experience things in a safe situation?

Continue Reading »

Some characteristics of play cut across different ages. Play integrates brain functions and blends the rational and the imaginative, the intellectual and the emotional, the linear (logical) and the nonlinear (imaginative, intuitive, and aesthetic), the mundane and the creative. As a process, play serves as a lymphatic system that lubricates, transports, and transforms the transitions of one phase of understanding into another. As a product, play—especially sociodramatic play—enhances development in language, cognition, social competence, and creative fluency. Continue Reading »

Play Is Voluntary

Whichever age group you visit, you might easily identify when children are playing; it seems so evident. When children are playing, they usually appear to be fully engaged and focused on their activity. It is typically an activity that they have chosen. Often, children will select an activity because they want to “hang out” with the other children who are participating. Therefore, the voluntary nature of play exists in relation to a particular context. Continue Reading »

How important such play is in establishing selfhood was demonstrated to me by an eight-year-old autistic girl. As often happens, the severe pathology of her case permitted observing a phenomenon also seen in normal behavior but as if it were under microscopic enlargement, or thrown into bold relief by a bright light. This girl had been virtually mute all her life. She completely rejected all efforts to reach her physically or verbally, and was unresponsive to all aspects of her environment. She resented all efforts to make contact with her; if one reached out to her actively, she responded with angry, terrified withdrawal. Continue Reading »

While just this or that poor impulse,

Which for once had play unstifled,

Seems the sole work of a life-time

That away the rest have trifled.

In the days when parents and children played the same games, they shared a virtually automatic understanding of the purposes of play: to be both meaningful and enjoyable. This is still true concerning the most primitive, earliest, and hence most important play, that of the infant—and woe unto the child if it is not.

When a baby tosses a rattle out of his crib and his mother hands it back to him, in their moment of mutual delight the mother hardly notices the fact that in this new achievement, her infant is asking himself some very important questions: “Can I influence my objective environment without dire consequences to myself? Can I safely assert my will and manipulate objects without suffering for it? Can I rid myself of something that annoys me? Can I relinquish control of my belongings temporarily without losing them altogether?” Continue Reading »

Since the child often cannot really know what will be done to him, many events not actually painful will nevertheless make him fearful. After such an event, a child will typically play out the experience in fantasy. Following a visit to the dentist, for example, the child might play at fixing another child’s teeth, telling him to keep his mouth wide open, as he himself was instructed, and inserting little pieces of cardboard to take X rays. If no other “patient” is available, a toy animal will do. The many hours a child may spend in such play is a clear indication of how much actual time he would have needed in the dentist’s chair in order to truly understand what was done to him and why, and to deal appropriately with all the emotions the experience aroused. Just as we can understand and analyze events that move too fast for our comprehension by watching them in slow-motion replays, so the child learns to understand and analyze, through long hours of repetitious playback, events previously beyond his comprehension. Continue Reading »