Child's Play:

The Work of Childhood

Play is the work of childhood.

Moms and Dads play with little babies.
Older infants explore their immediate surroundings by
playing with toys.
Toddlers like to run, jump, and climb - a form of
sensorimotor play.
Young children learn to relate to peers using simple
games such as Simon Says.
The text lists 6 criteria that define the nature of play
in childhood.
1. Child's play is intrinsically motivated because
youngsters find it enjoyable.
2. Child's play is pragmatic. Children are more
interested in the process of playing than in the
product of play.
3. Child's play is creative; it resembles real-life
activities but is not bound by reality.
4. Rules govern most of children's play, but they
are implicit. When children are playing "school"
they all seem to understand the rules, but seldom
are they stated as in a game of chess.
 5. Spontaneity is an important element of child's
play, it occurs freely and is under the control of the
child.
6. Play is a behavior that is free of emotional
distress.
While all developmental theorists agree that play is
essential to the socialization process, they differ in
explaining why children play.
One of the earliest theoretical positions on play was the
surplus energy theory.
According to this theory, play is possible only when the
biological system builds up an excess or surplus of
energy. After such an accumulation of energy within
the system, the organism engages in play behavior to
dissipate or release this surplus energy.
Similar to the surplus energy theory, the relaxation
theory of play uses the energy concept and
characterizes play as necessary for the replenishment
of lost energy in the discharge of daily activities.
William James: The instinct theory of play
-attributes play to a set of preexistent structures that
are bestowed upon a child by the parents; Eg: a child
bouncing a ball would be responding to that ball (in
play) with a set of motoric behaviors available to him or
her from the structures of heredity.
The psychoanalytic theory of play emphasizes the
importance of play in social and emotional life.
Psychoanalysis believes that play allows the child to
gain mastery over objects and social situations by
manipulating them in play; allows the child to gratify
wishes and desires that are not possible to fulfill in
reality. So a little boy can "kill" an action figure that is a
soldier and then bring him back to life.
The learning theory of play assumes that the child
acquires new behaviors or ways of relating to others by
being praised (reinforcement), copying the behaviors of
others (observational learning) or through the
experience of setting goals and working towards them.
Many play activities afford children the opportunity to
learn (acquire information) that will be useful to them
later in childhood or in adult life.
Piaget and other cognitive theorists believe that play is
very important in enhancing the intellectual processes
of the child.
The cognitive theory of play assumes that there are
four types of play, ranked from simple (i.e. less
intellectually challenging) to complex (i.e. requiring
understanding of rules and logic).
Functional play involves simple, repetitive movements
that do not require constructing reality in symbolic
ways. The infant who continues to drop objects from
the highchair and laughs at the sound each one makes
is participating in functional play. Piaget calls those
repetitive behaviors, from which the young child derives
pleasurable, circular reactions.
According to the cognitive theory of play, constructive
play follows functional play.
Constructive play involves manipulation of physical
objects to build or construct something. Constructive
play may occur with peers. Most often its importance is
in teaching the child the mastery motive or that he or
she can conquer a challenge.
In the preoperational stage of development, pretend or
symbolic play appears.
Pretend play, also referred to in developmental
psychology as fantasy or dramatic play substitutes
imaginary situations for real ones. It is a direct result of
the child acquiring figurative thought. Often during this
stage of development children's creative energy and
fantasies create imaginary playmates.
At the beginning of Middle Childhood, as children enter
Piaget's concrete operational stage, they engage in
rule-governed play and games. Many times they
enjoy arguing about the rules more than they enjoy the
social interaction of the game.
In 1932, Mildren Parten proposed that children progress
through 6 social levels of play, each of which is more
complex than the previous one.
Parten's Social Levels of Play are unoccupied play,
solitary play, onlooker play, parallel play, associative
play and cooperative play. At each of these levels of
play more social skills are required for the child to
interact successfully with his or her peer group.
http://psyed.org/r/lsdev/ply/plyd/ply_types.html