project reflection

The role of play in learning assignment was a great experience for me to be able to reflect upon children's play and understand and learn how they are developing through their play.  Through understand the stages of development from Piaget and taking into consideration Dewey's ideals on children's play in development, I was able to compare and contrast things I saw in my observations to their theories.

While observing at the pre-school at SNC, I was able to see that while children were 'tattling' on each other to the adult it is normal in their development because at their stages they are not able to take the viewpoints of others very well.  This makes it hard to understand why a child may be doing something another student may not understand.  But simply through talking to each other they are always able to resolve their issues.  Also, children at this stage love to make-believe play and use their imaginations with one another.  It was very neat to watch the children interact with each other during their own made up games.  Thinking back on my childhood, I hardly recall play like this, so viewing it through observation was very refreshing.

I found it interesting that these children did not mind that an adult was watching them, they acted almost as if I was not there.  It is fascinating to hear and see the ideas these children have during play.  Their minds have endless possibilites and their imaginations take them every where.

I would have to say my favorite observation was while I was watching my nieces.  Because I have known them since they were babies, it was very cool to make connections to their different stages Jasmin has gone through, and to make connections with Peyton as she moves through the sensori-motor stage.  Through time Peyton has been able to find that shaking things makes noises, and I have seen her develop the idea of object permanence with her different toys.  During play she tends to play with things that stack, but loves to try and interact with her sister as well, even if she has no idea what Jasmin is doing.

Jasmin was the most interesting to learn from though, because I made an observation during her play that I have not quite been able to figure out, yet I find it very interesting.  While she is playing by herself, she tends to read books and draw.  She does things that do not involve make-believe nor does she let her imagination run wild.  However, when playing with peers, she loves to use make-believe play and her imagination is everywhere.  According to Piaget's stages of development, she has a difficult taking the viewpoints of others, which I can see as well.  She tends to hide from her little sister, Peyton, when she tries to come play with her.  She finds Peyton to be annoying and that she gets in the way.  Perhaps Jasmin just cannot understand that Peyton is younger and does not have the understanding of being annoying or mean during play, she is just trying to be by Jasmin, but Jasmin sees her as a bother.

Overall I feel like I have learned that observation is extremely important in understanding children in multiple different ways.  Not only do we need to be sure to observe children in a learning situation, but we need to be sure that we are observing them during play too.  Play is one of the best learning opportunities for children, and if we are watching this happen, we can better understand them.  Using a theorist like Piaget was very helpful in understanding the stages children go through as they get older.  Although not all children move through the stages at the same pace, comparing their abilities to general stage characteristics was very cool to do as well.

After this project, it was clearer to me how children can and do learn through play.  As my niece played with the same toy, she eventually learned to correlation of objects to their shape.  She also learned about the world around her through sensory movement with the objects.  Often throwing and sucking on objects helped her learn about the world around her.  As for my older niece, she has a hard time relating to the point of view of her younger sisters, and that is apparent as she locks herself away from them.  Also, The children in the pre-school show their difficulty to relate to other view points as they tattle on one another for saying something the other does not agree with.  

Through watching the make-believe play in the SNC children's center, I was also able to see that the children love to learn through playing with their imagination.  They play through being different people, in a made up situation they CHOOSE to be in.  This is one of the most interesting things I have encountered.  Children are able to do and relate to so many things when they are a character outside of themselves.  But in reality, they find it very difficult to do so.

The learning that took place for me in this project was great, and I know look at observation of children playing in a completely different way.

babysitting

I chose to observe my three nieces as I babysat them, because watching them interact and how they have developed is very interesting to me.

Jordan (1 mo)

Very in touch with environment around her.

Watches what you're doing when awake.

Cries a lot of the time for no reason.

Peyton-21 months

It has been interesting to watch her develop over the past year. Her attention span has increased tremendously.  When she is left to play on her own, she gravitates toward toys that she can stack and knock over.  She also really enjoys the toys where she fits a shape through its matching shape's hole.  At 18 months, she was not able to do this.  She would get very frustrated with this toy, and begin crying as she sat all alone.  When I came running to see what was wrong, I would find her in tears because she couldn't get the circle to fit through the star.  Now, watching her play with this toy, she understand the concept.  As she is able to fit the shapes through she screams with excitement and continues to play.  When she stacks blocks and stacking toys she loves to knock them over rapidly, and screams with excitement while doing that also.  Her older sister, Jasmin, is one person she always gravitates towards.  She will constantly be running by Jasmin to see what she is doing, and then ruin it.  If Jasmin is coloring, Peyton will rip the book from underneath her and throw it.  This is when I had to step in to her play because this was unacceptable.  Peyton is constantly tormenting Jasmin and getting into what Jasmin is doing, this is why Jasmin distances herself from her younger sisters.  Peyton also loves to go by her baby sister, Jordan, and give her kisses, however, she can also be very rough with her too.  Peyton got upset that I had Jordan laying by me on the floor and tried to come up and slap her.  I feel that Peyton still has to understand that hitting is not acceptable, but I know that many children her age have this same behavior.

Jasmin-5

Jasmin loves to play alone when she is just with her three sisters.  She often locks herself in the walk in closet in the playroom, where we have an easel set up for her to color at.  In this room she will be reading book after book, or coloring or painting.  She loves to look at pictures and draw pictures.  One thing I noticed is that during her non-structured play time alone, she does not play any games that promote using her imagination or make-believe.  With her friends, however, they do play these imaginary dress up games and pretend to be other people.  I find it very interesting that she has two completely different types of play depending upon who she is playing with.  Her friends and her love to play princesses and dress up with their dresses and other dress up clothes they have.  Alone, Jasmin hardly does anything outside of the box.  Even drawing, she always wants to mimic something she has seen in a book, or has drawn before.  Rarely does she take risks and draw up something never seen before.  She does not enjoy playing with toys much at all.  As her play mostly consists of books and drawing, I have tried to introduce toys to her so I could watch her play with things, and she had no interest.  

4 days/wk - SNCCC

I observe at the SNC Children's Center 4 days per week.  In mornings, I decided to arrive a little early in order to watch the children play with one another before school began.  The children who were in the classroom waiting as everyone arrived were playing house with one another in the circle time area.  Each child agreed what family member they were going to be, and they all got along and accepted and wanted to be the role they were given.  The children all get along during the process, yet the girls seem to lead things more than the boys.  Typically, the girls with say, "oh this is going to happen now and we are going to do this."  nothing they say is bossy, and the boys always gladly go along with it.  

When an issue arises, this is when the children will come to involve an adult.  The adult just simply asks the child "did you talk to he/she about how they made you feel?"  When Kenzie came up to me because someone was in her space, I just told her she needed to ask him to move.  She walked back over to Wesley and asked him to move and he said he was sorry and moved.  This is always a great learning experience that children generally are very forgiving, yet children seem to forget this just as fast as they learn how to solve the problem.

2/25/10 -NDE

I observed at Notre Dame Elementary in De Pere as one of my non-structured environments.  After school, the children spend time in one of the classrooms before their parents come to pick them up.  Watching the children interact with one another was very different than my other experiences.  The children were in fourth grade, both boys and girls.  The interesting thing about them which I did not see in my observations of younger children was how they did not agree with anything they wanted to do.  Also, as they engaged in activities, nothing included any type of imaginary play.

Together, they would walk the room until they found something interesting they wanted to play with.  They found a puzzle and decided to put it together on the floor.  During their time putting this together, the girls sat across from the boys.  Also, the boys always fought with the girls about where certain pieces went.  The girls were very persistent, every time, about the boy being wrong.  Although things got very heated, no one yelled at each other or physically hurt anyone over this.

The children definitely showed gender differences in play.  The male and female separation was  impossible to miss and did create a few small problems.  These problems were overcame when the girls explained situations to the boys, and it appeared that the boys just accepted what they were told.

The boys tended to be a bit more explorative in the classroom as they children were finding things to do.  As they searched for things they would pick things up and play with them a  little, and be very precise about knowing exactly what all the gadgets were on the shelf and what they did.  The girls just shuffled through things quickly and laughed with each other as they did so.