When it comes to infants and toddlers the importance of play is very crucial to their growth and learning.
Play can be defined as a freely activity that can be fun and engaging for infants and toddlers. When it comes to the very young ones, play comes naturally to them. Play helps infants and toddlers with many things like developing skills, learning concepts and it can be the start of early literacy. The best part of play for infants and toddlers is that they get involved in open-ended exploration. When the children explore they discover many new and fascinated things by either touching, mouthing, smelling, seeing and hearing.By letting infants and toddlers explore and discover while the play helps them work on problems, make their own choices, as well as find out what interests them.
Infants and toddlers should spend most of their time in play, not teacher-directed play, but having them explore and discover on their own time. Observations- include at least three observations of infants/toddlers, caregivers and/or parents for your field site. In Grand Street Settlement Early Head Start program, the moment you enter the classroom the caregivers, Carmen and Mia, have the room already set up for the toddlers to explore and make discoveries while playing.When the toddlers come into the classroom they quickly take some toys to play with and then they go from one to toy to the next.
One young boy decided to play with the zoo animals that they have on the shelves. While watching him play with the zoo animals, he decided to take some blocks that were placed near the zoo animals and started building something for the animals. Mia, one of the caregivers, was also watching the young boy for some time and decided to help him because he was struggling for a while trying to keep this one piece of block from falling. After she helped him, she stepped back and he continued to build and play.
Mia asked him before she helped him, if he was trying to build a zoo. The toddler nodded his head yes but it could have been anything that he was thinking, maybe even a playground for the zoo animals. Another young boy, once he entered the classroom quickly realized that the toddler size sofa was turned upside down. He decided to go inside the upside sofa because there is a huge gap in which he could hide there. Because of one toddler several other toddlers began to play in there. The caregiver, Carmen, purposely flipped over the miniature sofa because she knew that the toddlers would enjoy playing in there.
But she did not point it out to them; she let them discover it on their own. A young girl went to a small box that had dramatic play stuff like hats and small hand bags. She grabbed a pair of sunglasses, walked to the mirror and put them on. It did take her a couple of tries to put the sunglasses on but she eventually did it.
Then she took a toy dog that had a leash and she would walk around the classroom pretending she is walking her dog. All these of these toddlers created their own type of play wearing it was hiding, playing dress up, and playing with zoo animals.They all did this by exploring the classroom with little or no help at all from the caregivers. Analysis- Compare and contrast information obtained from your sources.
How does your previous observation support your research? An article titled This Issue and Why It Matters in the website Zero to Three explains in great detail how play is important for infants and toddlers. There are many benefits of play. As discuss in this article, when infants and toddlers play, they are “learning how things work, how to use their bodies, how to solve problems, and how to get along with others”.Play gives infants and toddlers the opportunity to express their emotions, and build relationships with other children and adults. It is said in the article that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child included the right “to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child” as one of the inalienable rights of children”. So every child has the rights to play because it is crucial for them.
The American Academy of Pediatrics published a report stating the importance of play and its benefits.A few benefits of play the reported are that it supports a healthy brain development, lets infants and toddlers engage and interact in their environment, helps build relationships, and it allows infants and toddlers to practice adult roles like the young girl in my field site and lets them safely explore their fears. With play infants and toddlers can use their own bodies in new ways, hear and use new language, and lastly what most of them do which is understanding and manipulating the physical properties of objects like their toys.Two well nown theorists, Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, were strong believers of the importance of play for children.
Piaget believed that “through play, children are practicing new skills and ideas until they really understand them”. Piaget called this constructing knowledge. Vygotsky “felt that the adults who supported play were just as important. Vygotsky thought that while young children could learn some things by themselves, they would learn much more if helped by an adult”. This was called zone of proximal development.
Since the 1800s play has been a huge importance in early childhood. Conclusion- what would you have done differently?Reflect on what you learned through your investigations. Play is a huge importance for infants and toddlers. Having a safe environment for infants and toddlers to play in gives them the freedom to explore and discover new things. Caregivers can encourage interactions and help children out but then they quickly step back to that the children can continue to explore and problem solve on their own. When it comes to play children use their gross and fine motors as well as their five senses.
By letting children move around and find things to play with, we are giving them the freedom to choose and also being independent.Doing play time children learn how to use their bodies. A great example is placing a small bright ball next to an infant, the will move their body by either turning it or crawling to get to the ball. Giving infants and toddlers freedom to play helps them learn how things work as well as build relationships to those around them. There hasn’t been anything I saw at my field site, Grand Street Settlement that I would change.
The caregivers, Mia and Carmen, both let the toddlers roam around the classroom and play. Carmen strongly believes in play that’s why she puts a variety of toys they can play with and new toys at least once a week.She changes the classroom environment so that they can explore more new things. Carmen said that toddlers are very smart and very independent, and she is there to guide them if they really need help and to observe them, as well making sure they are in a safe environment. From the minute the toddlers enter the classroom till they go home, everything they do consist of play, except for snack time and naptime.
I really like the way the caregivers think because they strongly see the importance of play like the two well known theorist Vygotsky and Piaget. Play is a child’s nature and for that we should continue to encourage it.
