2014, 3
2014, 3
p. 32–37
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Toys and play activities for children have received considerable attention since antiquity. The author notes that in today’s schools and kindergartens play acts as a means of acquiring new skills, forming useful skills. Psychologists and neuroscientists prove an important role of play in the mental development. The article discusses how play changes with children growth. The author emphasizes that toys should not be working copies of adult objects to sharpen useful skills of adult life. What a child receives through the play is much more important – understanding of the meaning of human activities and relationships between people. Children’s play should be varied to have socially approvable subject but not limited to the performance of certain actions with toys. In order a toy to serve as an instrument of mental development it is necessary to teach children to play with them.
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2014, 3
p. 52–57
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715
Today many parents are faced with persistent reminder from educators and psychologists about the need to play in the preschool years. Sometimes it sounds unmodernly. Indeed, why we should waste time on fun when the child is already able to establish contact with adults and peers, is keenly interested in technology, numeracy and reading, dreams about high marks, and besides, is not willing to play, and does not believe in “make-believe”? Perhaps the child has already outgrown the play? May be today’s children do not need the play at all? Or computer games fully satisfy the need for the play? In the article authors try to find answers on these questions.
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2014, 3
p. 68–78
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341
This paper looks at young children’s creative thinking as inferred through observations of their activities. A total of 52 episodes of child-initiated and adult-initiated activities in 3- to 4-year-olds in an English Children’s Centre were analysed using the Analysing Children’s Creative Thinking (ACCT) Framework. Results showed that activities such as gardening and construction were as valuable for supporting creative thinking as ones traditionally associated with creativity, for example, music and painting. Outdoor play of all kinds and socio-dramatic play were particularly effective contexts. All adults played a significant role in facilitating children’s initial engagement in activities, and at supporting their speculative thinking and use of prior knowledge. Teachers were often more successful than other adults in supporting the acquisition of new knowledge. Child-initiated activities featured the highest levels of involvement, and were associated with trying out and analysing ideas, flexibility and originality, imagining and hypothesising. This was particularly evident in group or pair play. Children were also more persistent in child-initiated activities. Evidence of risk-taking behaviour was low, although more apparent in child-initiated activities than adult-initiated activities, or activities in which adults were present.
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