PSYchology

At each stage of child development, play activity has its own characteristics and its own capabilities. An adult in a children’s game is far from the last place — he is not only the organizer of the playing space, the first partner in the game, but also the generator of many fresh ideas. Let’s see how the play activity of children develops from birth.

From 0 0,5 years up play is always initiated by the adult and involves the infant’s reactions: visual focus, listening, grasping.

Game exercises with a baby look like this: an adult calls concentration child’s gaze on an object tracking behind him, brings him to a distance at which the child begins guide the hands to the object, pushes the object away, forcing the child reach out to him; if the child directs his hands to the object, then the adult touches them with the object, etc. This is how development occurs orientation of the child in space and independent motion control based on this orientation. In all these situations the center is the adult.

From 0,5 years to 1 year there are such forms of behavior as repeated and chain movements: the baby pats the object, swings it, shifts from one hand to another, repeatedly pushes the object hanging above him, hits one object against another, etc. Then, a sequential chain of movements develops , which indicates the appearance of a child orientation research activities. But the novelty of objects and the variety of their inherent qualities are absolutely necessary for a young researcher, so game materials must be updated frequently.

It is important to know that things attract the child more if they appear together with a close adult who manipulates them in front of the child, accompanying their actions with speech. But all this is not a game yet, but game exercises.

The most important acquisition of the 1st year of life is the child’s search for an adult’s assessment (attention, approval, joy). Then the adult acts for the child as a carrier of patterns of action with objects, and the child begins to learn by imitation.

NOT the norm: in the absence of play activities with children, the development of their movements is delayed. Children can spend whole hours in a state of inactivity, satisfied with sucking their fingers and rocking their torso monotonously.

An excess of toys in the room with a lack of playful communication between adults and a child leads to the fact that the baby goes through the play material, quickly changing objects, without focusing on any of them. In this case, the appearance of the child’s busyness with the game is created, but in fact there are no play actions.

From 1 3 years up become the main game of the child actions with objects by their value: all kinds of frames and inserts, pyramids and nesting dolls, cars and cubes, musical instruments, kitchen utensils — everything is interesting for a kid to master together with adults. But! The game does not appear spontaneously!

Independent child’s discovery of the meaning of objects is not fundamental to its development. If a child has never seen what adults do with a fork, screwdriver, pipe, scoop and any other items, he is unlikely to independently invent the correct action with them. main path mastering actions with objects — Team work with an adult, where an adult shows the child a pattern of actions, controls and corrects his performance, and then encourages when the baby does it right.

There are certain stages of mastering object-cannon actions child from 1 to 3 years old:

  1. Mastering a common schemes of action with an object — its meaning: they eat with a spoon, they bring it to their mouth. The general scheme is mastered by the baby quickly.
  2. Expectation evaluation on the part of an adult: the baby compares his actions with the actions of an adult, looking for his approval.
  3. Mastering technical side actions, skill: correctly grab the handle of a spoon, conveniently bring it to your mouth, do not spill …. The skill is formed for a long time, may be formed incorrectly and require relearning (for example, holding a spoon in a fist).
  4. At this stage, development Action on any objects can occur by observation for an adult. Watching, the baby in the game undresses the doll, digs a hole, hides, throws a ball, cuts toy vegetables, stirs soup with a ladle, etc. This is quite accessible to children at the age of 1 year.
  5. An important leap in the intellectual development of the child is rescheduling from one object to another: combing a doll, yourself, a bear, a towel, etc. As a rule, such a jump is available to a child closer to 1,5 years.
  6. Even more complex intellectual work requires the transfer of action to substitute subject: combing with a comb, wand, hand, spoon … here the child’s imagination is already turned on with might and main, which means that his ability to mentally imagine the necessary actions and objects develops.
  7. The next stage in the development of the child’s play actions is action chain with the hero, logically unrelated. For example, a girl, playing with a doll, can first put her to bed, then dress her in a dress, feed and bathe.
  8. A leap in the development of gaming ability is the appearance of a chain logically related game activities. Now the game with the doll obeys the laws of life: first they feed her, then undress and bathe, and then put her to bed. The logical chain of game actions is available to children closer to 2 years of age.
  9. At this stage, the beginnings of a game plot appear: “the doll is sick”, “porridge is hot”, “the bunny is scared” …
  10. Further, it becomes possible for the child to use substitute subjects: a stick can become for a playing baby and a gun, and a spoon, and a thermometer, and an airplane, and a pen, and a shovel, etc. But! Children can do this (name and perform an action with a substitute object), only after it has been said and done by an adult or another child.
  11. The pinnacle of mastering object-tool actions by a child is the appearance of the rudiments of a game role of: actions with dolls on behalf of the role (“mother came from work”) and conversation on behalf of the role (“who is at home?”).

NOT the norm. Alarming signals for parents should be the following options for the child’s attitude to the game: a baby from 1 to 3 years old has no interest in the game, or this interest quickly fades away, or there are a lot of foolish and chaotic or primitively monotonous game actions, the absence of the beginnings of a plot, there is no motive for turning to adults to evaluate their actions. In this case, psychological and pedagogical assistance is required for parents and the child, because the reasons for the underdevelopment of children’s play can be both simple (improperly organized child’s play activity) and very serious (for example, childhood depression, violations of parent-child relationships in the family, some types of neuropsychiatric diseases of the child).

From 3 7 years up the main developmental activity of the child is role-playing game. The peak of the role-playing game falls on the age of 5-6 years. What are the main role-play principles?

  • Role-playing game social in its origin and in its content, i.e. children take plots for the game from the life of adults.
  • The game arises not spontaneously, but under the influence of a teacher (an adult or a more experienced child in the game).
  • The main content of the game is an adult — his activities and relationships, Therefore, play is a form of mastering the tasks and motives of human life by the child. That is why children’s play often fills the whole subsequent life of a person with meaning — our (adult) dreams are born and grow stronger in it. There are many examples of this from the life of great people.
  • The game develops a game technique (imagination, generalization, curtailment of actions, modeling child of social relations).
  • The child receives practice real relationship, experience collective action.

Role play has its structure (the framework on which everything is built). This is an imaginary situation; plot; role: role image and role speech; game objects, partner and game relations with him.

To help a group of children learn to role-play, there are a few steps to take:

  1. Create interest in the game — the emotional attitude of children to a toy or game action;
  2. show accessible to the child chain game actions (for example, carry a doll in a car and drop it off at a bus stop);
  3. give role title this chain of actions: “Who are you? driver?»;
  4. pull the child into joint creation of a game situation and its introduction into the role: “I’m dad, I’ll fix the closet, and who are you?”, “I’m a doctor, I have sick animals here, a lot of work, can you treat animals? Who are you?»;
  5. lengthen and develop the plot of the game;
  6. teach children to rename objects into “substitutes”: “this stick will be my thermometer”;
  7. to teach children how to collapse “unimportant” actions into a generalized verbal form (“well, as if I had already slept and woke up”);
  8. over time, actions with objects will recede into the background, and relationships will come to the fore;
  9. when the role-playing game has already captivated the children, it is possible and necessary to introduce role-playing rules and sanctions in the game: “if you swear at everyone, you will not be a doctor”;
  10. having a similar experience, children can already come up with their own game rules;
  11. the emergence of a spontaneous role-playing game occurs after the children get to know relations people rather than familiarity with objects.

For example, in one psychological experiment, children were given a set to play railroad. The children rolled the train on the rails for a bit and lost interest in the game. Then the children were taken on an excursion to the railway station and were shown various trains, steam locomotives and the station premises. The tour did not affect the children’s play in any way. Then the children were again taken on an excursion to the railway station and introduced to the work of people: cashiers, controllers, conductors, a driver, a dispatcher, passengers, members of the repair team. After that, the children began to play railroad every day, modeling and developing adult professional relationships in the game.

NOT the norm. Alarming signals for parents should be: single games of the child in a group of children, getting stuck on manipulations with objects, substitution of experiences in the game with the experiences of the observer (the child clearly prefers TV to the game), narrowness of roles, poverty of game means, substitution of socially significant plots of games with plots from popular films and cartoons, the predominance of aggressive and anti-social plots in the game….

Playing with a child is an infinitely rewarding activity for an adult! It is in the game that the unshakable authority of an adult in the eyes of a child is acquired, it is in the game that soft «psychotherapy» of the angularities of a child’s character is possible, it is in the game that you can teach a child to follow the rules and any skills.

References

  1. Gippenreiter Yu.B. How to be a child.
  2. Karabanova O.A. A game in the correction of the mental development of the child. M.: Ros. ped. agency.1997.
  3. Polinsky Liesel Game and movement. More than 100 educational games for children of the first year of life
  4. Medvedeva I. and Shishova T. Multi-colored white crows. A book for difficult parents. M. 2004.
  5. Marilyn Segal. The child plays from birth to a year.
  6. Fesyukov. Fairy tale education.
  7. Elkonin D.B. The psychology of the game.

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