CURRICULUM GUIDE FOR S.C. TEACHER CADET COURSE | EXPERIENCING EDUCATION, TENTH EDITION
Children’s Play: Purposes, Types, Advice
Purposes of Children’s Play:
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Express their thoughts
Express their feelings and emotions
Work through and master psychological issues (past and present)
Cope with change (ex. adjusting to a newborn baby in the household)
Prepare for future tasks and roles
Develop cognitive abilities and intelligence
Develop motor skills and physical fitness
Develop stick-to-itiveness (perseverance); learn not to give up
Enhance creativity
Enhance self-discovery and self-concept
Experience fun
Relax; reduce stress
Develop socialization; develop interaction skills
Experiment with different roles
Learn differences between what is “good” and “bad”
Learn concepts of reality and make-believe
Free aggression (or allow one to discover its source)
Build a sense of security between the child and parent(s)
Enhance personality and individualism
Deal with pressing family issues
Identify with others and their situations and roles
Develop competency in self
Construct physical, language, and logic-mathematical knowledge
Display understanding (active construction of meaning by creating hypotheses and
testing it by interacting with the materials and events)
Experiment; engage in trial and error
Solve problems
Construct understanding of relationships (logic-mathematical knowledge)
Explore/Experiment with language without fear of correction or constraint
Accomplish shared goals
Construct understanding through written language (ex. rules of a game)
Enhances ideas and connections across content areas
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Theme I: Experiencing Learning
Unit 3: Growth and Development
Background Information:
Children need to feel ownership and responsibility for their own actions in their classes. They
need to feel safe and confident to take risks, as they do in their play. They must feel a sense
of community in having their own ideas, trying them out, feeling good, caring about each other,
and sharing in collaborative activity. Without such a classroom culture, the children will not experiment, remain engaged, or show interest. Play offers the child the opportunity to make sense
of the world by using available “tools.” Understanding is created by being completely involved
in doing, either by one’s self or with others. Through play, the child understands the world better,
and the adult understands the child better.