In this blog I am going to talk about the benefits of developmentally appropriate play activities and how all children develop at different stages and the importance of play for children.

Maria Montessori believes that “Play is the work of the child”. She also believes that play is essential to developmental needs for children and adolescents. During play activities children develop on their motor skills, language skills, socialization, emotional well-being, being creative and their problem-solving skills. Maria Montessori also believes play shouldn’t be forced and must be enjoyable and purposeful to the children and should use their skills as much as possible to extend on their own learning and be open ended. Toys encourage children to use their imagination, solve problems, social skills and build muscle control. Play helps build children’s confidence and encourages them to explore all their skills such as physical, numeracy, sensory and social skills. Children can play in groups or on their own and still enjoy it just as much. (Childdevelopmentinfo.com, 2011)

For infants, they need a lot of assistance and one to one time in order to feel a secure attachment and feel safe in a setting. Equipment to extent development in infants would be items such as books, singing songs, sensory and messy play, motor skills, blocks and real materials with different textures to encourage exploring. (Casby, 2018)

For toddlers they are energetic, curious and will imitate what adult does or says. Equipment to support this is a curious box with materials they never had before to expand on learning, age appropriate jigsaws, sand, water and gloop as these encourage use of motor and intellectual skills. (Casby, 2018)

Aistear promotes four themes, well-being, communication, exploring and thinking and identity and belonging. These all encourage independency, motor and social skills and curiosity. (NCCA,2009)

Síolta promotes 12 standards such as environments, rights of the child, partner ship with parents and more. For example in a toddler room, children must be able to reach and get everything themselves and all shelving and art supplies are at their level as we act on the interest of the children and like to give them the freedom to express what they want to do by getting it if they are not verbal. (Early Childhood Ireland – Inspiring and enabling members to provide quality experiences for young children and their families, 2017)

Bibliography

Childdevelopmentinfo.com. (2011). [online] Available at: https://childdevelopmentinfo.com/child-development/play-work-of-children/#.XMrChI5KjIU [Accessed 1 May 2019].

Casby, M. (2018). The Development of Play in Infants, Toddlers, and Young Children. [online] Talkingtogetherdotca.files.wordpress.com. Available at:

Click to access development-of-play-in-infants-toddlers.pdf

[Accessed 2 May 2019].

NCCA. (2009). Aistear | NCCA. [online] Available at: https://www.ncca.ie/en/early-childhood/aistear [Accessed 26 Apr. 2019].

Early Childhood Ireland – Inspiring and enabling members to provide quality experiences for young children and their families. (2017). Síolta – Early Childhood Ireland – Inspiring and enabling members to provide quality experiences for young children and their families. [online] Available at: https://www.earlychildhoodireland.ie/work/quality-practice/national-frameworks/siolta/ [Accessed 27 Apr. 2019].

Studies show that the first six years of a child’s life are the most important and crucial years for development, this is the time when children thrive in their holistic development and have endless creativity and imaginative skills and show confidence in what they do. It is now proven that Early childcare and education settings extend on the development of children’s socialisation skills, they learn self-help skills such as hand washing, brushing teeth and more. And finally, they learn about their family, their background and their community. (McDermott, 2010)

Personally, I believe that parents don’t treat an ECCE setting as an important part of their child’s life, some parents just see it as a drop off centre while they are working. The reason I believe this is as I work in an ECCE setting, I see it day in and day out when we are trying to interact with parents about their child’s day and they are just trying to rush out the door and don’t really want to hear about it. (McDermott, 2010)

In the setting I work in we have an online application that is used in the service to allow parent to be part of their children’s day and part of their learning and be able to see what they have ate, their nappy changes, their activities they do through pictures and their sleeping times. Parent are encouraged to interact with caregiver as much as possible about interests their child has or celebrations in their family/culture so the care givers can act on their interests and implement an activity based on that to further child’s learning.

A good relationship between parents and care giver is paramount and can have a positive impact on a child’s development. This can be easily done by making eye contact and listening and ensuring parents get all relevant information on how their child is coping and developing while in the ECCE setting as it is vital for parents to know. (McDermott, 2010)

Men make up less than 2% of Early years educators. This can be a factor of why father involvement may be seen less in ECCE settings. In some studies, there is a huge gap between father and mother involvement in early years education for many reasons such as work, conflict, family problems and more. In the setting I work the children are lucky as I feel like there is a lot of father involvement and in some cases, you can clearly see the closer bond the child has with father compared to mother however I know this is not always the case. We encourage parent to be open about their jobs and roles around the house to interact about this with children and to add their parent jobs into our role play corner to ensure the children their parents are respected and a big part of their life in the ECCE setting as well as their home life. (Ecdip.org, 2002)

Bibliography

McDermott, M. (2010). Early Childhood Staff’s Understandings and Practices of Parent Involvement in Private Early Childhood Services: an Exploratory Study. [online] Arrow.dit.ie. Available at: https://arrow.dit.ie/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1038&context=appamas [Accessed 1 Apr. 2019].

Ecdip.org. (2002). The Effects of Father Involvement: A Summary of the Research Evidence. [online] Available at: http://ecdip.org/docs/pdf/IF%20Father%20Res%20Summary%20(KD).pdf [Accessed 4 Apr. 2019].

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton