GAMES AND TOYS IN THE EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM
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BATHTIME
TELETUBBIES
6 month + |
If the goal of early childhood
educators is not to transmit different contents to children so
that they can learn thanks to that information, but to facilitate
activities and experiences that are connected as much as possible
to the needs, interests and motivations of children, helping them
to learn and develop themselves.
The educator has to ensure that
the activities are one of the main sources of learning and development.
These activities have to be creative ones, because is through
action and experimentation that children express their interests
and motivations, and, on the other hand, discover features of
objects, relations, etc. All of us know that the essential activity
of a child is play. Children, by playing, become aware of the
real world, involving themselves in the action and elaborate their
reasoning and judgements.
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PINGÜINO
BAÑOS DIVERTIDO
9 month + |
Very seldom, except for games,
are the conditions required by real didactic activity fulfilled.
Play has been defined as an "attractive and substitutive
process of adaptation and dominion". That is why it is very
valuable as a learning tool, since learning is understood as the
fact of facing and dominating different situations. The game is
also substitutive because during the first and second childhood
it is an introduction to adult situations (for example playing
with dolls, role-plays, etc).
Rejecting play is depriving education
of one of its most efficient instruments, according to Manjun,
Föebel, Montessori and Decroly. These people have created
some of the most important play materials for these ages. That
does not mean, of course, that other age groups have to be excluded
from play; what happens is that the game changes according to
the general maturity of a child and the evolution of his interests.
Play is a global activity; that
is why teachers should not try to separate games and work at the
nursery schools, because it is not true that games are fun and
informal things while work is a serious activity; at least not
at these ages. There is nothing more serious for a child than
play. Thanks to it, children develop their abilities. According
to Götler "the more numerous the energies a child uses
when playing, the more valuable a game is; and, on the other side,
the less space it concedes to inventiveness and dexterity, the
less worthwhile it is". Play is a creative resource in both
senses: the physical one (sensory, motor, muscular and psychomotor
coordination development) and the mental one, because the child
uses all his inventiveness, originality, intellectual capacity
and imagination. Besides, games have a high social value because
they contribute to shape cooperation and help habits in children
and make them face problematic and real situations and, as a consequence,
they lead children to a more realistic view of the world. Finally,
games are a mean of affective-evolving expression, so they are
a very useful projective technique for teachers and psychologists
when they want to learn about the problems affecting children.
Since the main activity
of a child is play, we will use it as a basic methodological resource,
as the base for motivation and learning and as a way to foster
significant learnings.
Play provides the appropriate context
to fulfill the basic educational necessities of infant learning.
It has to be taken into account as a mediating tool because of
several conditions that ease learning:
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its motivational character
stimulates children and their participation in apparently
boring activities; so games are an alternative to such ordinary
and little stimulating activities.
-
through play children understand
the value of "the others" as opposed to themselves;
they also internalize attitudes, values and rules that contribute
to their affective and social development and to the social
process they are starting.
Playful activities allow
the rehearsal of situations in which mistakes are not considered
frustrating.