One of the most important types of creative activity for young children is creative play. Creative play is expressed when children engage in role-playing and imaginative play. Nothing reinforces the creative spirit and nourishes a child's soul more than providing large blocks of time to engage in spontaneous, self-directed play throughout the day. The opportunity to play freely is vital to their healthy development.

What are some of the ways we can encourage play in our classrooms? As caregivers, we must be careful to avoid dominating the play ourselves. Play should be the result of the children's ideas and not directed by the adult. Through play, we should try to foster children's abilities to express themselves. We should also try to help children base play on their own inspirations - not ours. Our goal is to stimulate play - not control it - and to encourage children's satisfaction in playing with each other.

Pay attention to play, plan for it, encourage it. Learn how to extend children's play through comments and questions. Stimulate creative ideas by encouraging children to come up with new and unusual uses of equipment. Try to remain open to new and original ideas, and encourage children to come up with more than one solution or answer. Be careful about over-restricting equipment and make sure to have play materials quickly available when children want them. Buy and use equipment in ways that encourage the use of imagination. Avoid toys and activities that spell everything out for the child and leave nothing to the imagination. Provide children with a good range and balance of equipment, and keep equipment exciting by changing it frequently or changing its location.

Article Source: http://www.pbs.org

Educational games are another enjoyable part of being a teacher.  You'll find that it's not only fun to prepare games and instruct students in new games, but it's really fun to watch them have fun.  Because educational games do make learning enjoyable, the benefits go way beyond the fun.  Children are more receptive to learning when they are enjoying themselves.  Peggy Kaye, an educational games author, states that children relax and concentrate when they play well-designed, appropriate games, and that when they do relax and concentrate at the same time, they are "in a perfect frame of mind for learning."

According to Ray Gibson, another learning game author, children who have fun learning beginning math skills are more apt to look favorably and confidently upon learning further math skills.  Both of these authors address the many different skills that children need to learn in early grades and express that games can be a terrific vehicle for reinforcing newly learned skills and providing the repeated practice necessary for skill mastery.  Games also incorporate many values that we want children to learn and provide opportunity for constructive social interaction.  Games may also be used to motivate children to achieve greater independence, better organization, and stronger work study skills.  Pretty wonderful to have fun while doing all that, don't you think?

One aspect of game playing that children are always concerned with is fairness.  Displaying fairness and showing respect are not just nice options but are mandatory for effective caring teachers.  The way children are treated sets the tone for how receptive they are, so being as fair as possible is important every day and for every child, no matter what is going on.  Children, however, will tune into fairness a little more closely on game days.  Just be especially careful to encourage fairness among the children and to be fair yourself during games.  That is not always easy to do, but do the very best you can.

Deann Deloney

Early Childhood Education-Teacher Assisting-Child Care Instructor

Ashworth College