About playing activities of children in general a lot is said by educationalists and psychologists like Vygotsky, Piaget and Erikson
Play, for Vygotsky, is a vehicle for a child that enables it to behave more maturely than in other situations. In fantasy play children can work at the top of their developmental possibilities. “It feels like they are a head taller than in reality.”
Play and imitation are an important part of Piaget’s theory, he believed that play is almost pure assimilation without any attempt to adapt to outer reality. The child who plays “airplane” with a wooden block believes this wooden block to be an airplane. The opposite is imitation; the child’s serious attempt to accommodate to the reality. When there has been an accident and the children play with the blocs they really imitate the collision and the activities of the police and the ambulance. Assimilation and accommodation unite the individual child to the environment and to the child’s reality. It is the way the child learns about the child’s world.
Erikson believed that play offers the child a safe place to work through conflicts of the child’s life. A child can often be seen pushing a doll in the preschool in the same way that the child was pushed earlier. Play also is a safe environment where the consequences are not too strong or the limits too rigid. The play situation puts the child in charge. An environment with materials, equipment, space, time, and understanding adults allows the child to organize the child’s ideas, feelings, and fantasies into a plan for play that affords the exploration and manipulation of ideas and relationships without too much doubt, shame, guilt even though the child is yet unskilled.
All three agree that the child uses play for self teaching. There are a lot of similarities in a child that plays and an adult who has to find solutions in a situation. Play, and especially fantasy play is a symbolic representation; the child represents objects and ideas by play situations.
Playing in young children and also playing of children with special needs; whether it is just sucking a pacifier, kicking with his feet against a mobile or manipulating objects is much more than only producing serotonin and endorphin; it also is a natural need to explore the possibilities of the own body and senses and the contact of it with the world around. Playing is the essence of the child’s development in thinking and learning, in gross and fine motorics, in language and speech, and in visual and auditory skills.
Because all children, especially children with special needs, develop in different pace, we would like to give you tips that are related to rather play development stages than age related. These play stages are:
- The experience stage: “What is it?
Your child uses the senses to explore the toy and the physical features visual, auditory and tactile aspects.
- The discovery stage: “What does it?”
The child discovers ways to use the object , like, where to touch, turn or twist it, where to put things in or take them out.
- The imagination stage: “What can I do more with it?”
The child uses imagination and creativity to find more ways to use the object.
