Children And Play In the first 2 years
In the first two years of life play is both a reflection of and an influence on all areas of infant development: intellectual, social, emotional and physical. Play is a central, all-encompassing characteristic of infant development, allowing children to learn about the world and themselves. Even during the first half-year of life infant's really do play, even though the interpretation of what is play and what is exploration must first be established. The focus of this paper is to discuss three forms of play that occur during the first two years of life. The work of Jean Piaget and other psychologists in supporting and developing these ideas is critical. The first of these is sensorimotor play which begins with the infant's accidental discovery of an activity that is inherently satisfying, and consists of the continuos repetition of that activity for the sheer joy of doing so (Hughes, 1991). The second is play with objects involves the intentional handling of an object that leads to satisfaction from the handling. Finally symbolic play is the use of mental representation, in which one object represents another (Hughes, 1991).
The third element in symbolic play is integration. This is defined as meaning that as when a child gets older their play becomes organized into patterns (Hughes, 1991). During most of the first two years of life, children drift from one activity to another without any links between their activities. Yet, about eighteen or 19 months simple pairing of related activities emerges. An example is a child who has their teddy bear jump off a stack of blocks, followed by other stuffed animals. Thus, a theme of jumping links a succession of activities together. A second ability that develops in object play during the second year is the appropriate use of objects. Children begin to realize the function of objects, for example that a ball is to be bounced, and can distinguish between the appropriate and inappropriate use of these objects. "Perhaps it is not surprising that indiscriminate and investigative behaviors in object play decline throughout the second year and appropriate behaviors increase in frequency" (Rosenblatt, 1977). Laurent seems to be fascinated by the actions of grasping, scratching and letting go of the object and shows little attention for the actual object he does it to. There is no actual attraction to the object since Laurent would likely react to any object in a similar fashion as long as it was put directly in front of him. Put a rattle in front of a three-month-old baby and the child will play with it by shaking, chewing, or looking at it (Hughes, 1991). During the first year of life children engage in sensorimotor play: the repetition of an activity for the pleasure of doing so. At about five months children begin to play with objects, but their play is not well developed since they are less interested in the physical properties of objects themselves than they are in their actions upon the objects. By the age of nine or ten months, their interests change towards the differentiation between the objects themselves. Children prefer new objects, and handle each one differently in order to acquire as much information about the object as possible. Object play in the second year even more sophisticated, as children combine objects in play, use them appropriately, and begin incorporating them into symbolic play. The third and final stage is tertiary circular reactions, which appears in children between eight and twelve months. Now the repetition of the previous stage is accompanied by an attempt to vary the activity without repeating it precisely. This form of play is very clear as the child experiences novelty and actively looks for new ways of producing experiences. Consider Piaget's thirteen-month-old daughter Jacqueline as she plays in her bath: "Jacqueline engages in many experiments with celluloid toys floating on the water...Not only does she drop her toys from a height to see the water splash or displace them with her hand in order to make them swim, but she pushes them halfway down in order to see them rise to the surface. Between the ages of a year and a year and a half, she amuses herself by filling with water pails, flasks, watering cans, etc... by filling her sponge with water and pressing it against her chest, by running water from the faucet...along her arm, etc" (Piaget, 1963, p.273). Play and exploration often resemble one another, but also differ in a few areas. In exploring, children appear serious, they watch very closely to what they are doing, and they engage in what can be described as almost ritualistic behaviors. At play children are more joyful, easier to distract and variant in their behavior.
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2591
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)
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