Three categories of Play

Play give students the opportunity to make sense of their surroundings whatever they may be. It is the time kids are given to exercise their imagination by exploring or pretending, and yes rough housing with their siblings and cousins.

As a teacher, I do hope that by the time they get to Kindergarten they have had plenty of play at home, at Preschool if they have gone to one. However, I know for a fact that I have gotten some students that do not know how to play. Well, they just get introduce to play in my classroom.

These are a couple of great books to read to get students going in using their imagination. No, I do not get any commission on any books. You can check them out from a Public Library.

I personally enjoy building Marble Runs, wooden marble runs. I wish I had the space to just build a marble run and let it be. But the majority of the time we need that space for something else.

Physical Play: Children need to play physically, the rumble and tumble kind of play.  Usually done at home, this is the one kind that definitely happens at home. At our schools we do not encourage it, and if there are any parents out there that think that this is ok. It is not. This must happen at home under an adult supervision ready to intervene in case someone breaks a bone. As a teacher, and occasionally as the Principal of the day, all of the issues are with students who get to the Principal's office because students think it is ok to play fight and be physical at school.

Exploratory Play: Children use an object to play. This object can be a toy, a box, a rock, a key, iPad, blocks, etc.

• Block Play have Seven Stages of development. Check these resources for block stages. I like the original Block Play Book, the new edited one, has one stage less: claiming six stages.  I like the original better.
• Another point to notice is that these stages start when children begin playing with blocks, no matter their age. 

1. Stage 1: Carry the blocks around from one side to the other.
2. Stage 2: Stacking either vertically or horizontally
3. Stage 3: Bridging using chairs to tables, tables to benches, etc.
4. Stage 4: Enclosures like a house, patio, garden, a zoo. Whatever their experience has been.
5. Stage 5: Enclosures with decorative doors and windows representing a theater, skyscraper building, a church, synagogue, a court house, etc.
6. Stage 6: Building places they know and adding other elements from other toys, like cars, dolls, stop signs, etc
7. Stage 7: Complex building places they know, and adding other elements from other toys to create a real place to role play like an airport, train station, a zoo, an apartment building, a school.

Pretend Play: Children pretend to be people, animals, and objects around them. There are also stages of development. This is fun when you join in. You get to be a tree or a rock. Fascinating!

• Stage 1: Using realistic objects like a real phone or play phone.
• Stage 2: Make-believe objects like using a rectangle piece of paper and pretending that is a cell phone.
• Stage 3: Social Play including other children. Starting to have a conversation about what they are playing. This stage is crucial because negotiation skills get tested, sharing toys, and taking turns become noticeable for the first time and that is when sometimes "Guided Play" an adult, parent, teacher must intervene to guide children to decide what to do. Students must decide with the guide of an adult. Some students do not need this guidance, only a few.
• Stage 4: Playing fictional characters, e.g. Dora the Explorer, Nemo, Dory, and any other character that students know from plays, books, movies.
• Stage 5: Real acting, with voice changes, and interpreting the real people around them. Children imitating mom, dad, brother, sister, their dog, their teacher. When students have been given the opportunity to play, by the time they get to Kindergarten they are already at this stage. The more mature children in Kindergarten are masters of pretending.

In the 20 years as a teacher, observing students playing, doing, talking, fighting, negotiating I have notice that the stages of development for the blocks, overlaps to other toys. I have always had a set of plastic animals in the classroom, through the years it has increased. My students have gone through the first 3 stages of block play with the animals. I will show you in the next blog.

In other words, the stages of development is not exclusively for block play only, it is also useful for other toys, in my case with the gigantic set of animals we have.

What is your favorite toy now as an adult?

Resources

The gardener and the carpenter by Alison Gopnik

The block book by Elisabeht S. Hirsch

Not a box by A. Portis

Not a stick by A. Portis