‘We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.’ – George Bernard Shaw
I love this quote. We all know that play does not mean just one thing and that it changes throughout the day, ebbing and flowing. Over days, weeks, months and years and in different settings, you will see many different types of play.
It is generally accepted that there are six stages of play. Beginning with babies, we talk about unoccupied play – where they engage with light or sound and later their fingers become toys, which is not always what we think about as play. Solitary play, as suggested, is more common in one- to three-year-olds as they play alone, independently. This can be with a book or toy or in some imaginative pursuit; in this play, which many children enjoy going back to, they develop skills and their imagination. Developing the capacity to play alone is an important skill. Onlooker play is an important development and where children can watch other children and adults at play and learn from this. Parents often worry about this onlooker stage, but children are developing skills by observing and building their confidence to join play later. Parallel play is usually observed at the beginning of the three-year-old kindergarten year. Children play alongside each other but not together. They might be using the same equipment, block or dress-ups, but are independent. During associative play, often noticed around four to five years, children are showing more interest in their peers and learning the ‘rules’ of socialisation, sharing and co-operation. They generally are playing their own game but begin to engage with another child who is close by, they may share some equipment or engage in developing their play creation together. Co-operative play is often seen halfway through three-year-old kindergarten and well into four-year-old kindergarten, where children’s play is more organised, they have roles and allocate roles, rules are established and guide the play, and the noise level increases as children negotiate and argue around their shared activity of play.
Within the six play types are different activity types, many of which you will recognise including competitive, dramatic ritual, exploratorily, physical, digital and mastery, to name a few.
I was interested the other day to read a blog from Tracy from Raised Good called ‘The fewer toys children have, the more they play’ where she explains the two stages of what she calls ‘toy discovery’, with references to the work of Kathy Sylva, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Oxford, and Dr John Ritcher, a paediatric psychologist from Radcliff hospital in Oxford. She explains ‘exploration mode’, where a child engages in understanding what the toy can do, and then the next stage is ‘play mode’, where they work out what they can do with the toy.
The opportunity for children to be in play mode where they’re being creative and using their imagination is important, and the fewer toys children have the more likely they are to engage in sustained and deeper play without being distracted and jumping to the next thing. ‘When children are confronted with too many toys, they spend more time exploring and less time playing,’ Tracy writes.
We also know that some types of toys are more likely to provide more open-ended opportunities for exploration, imagination and developing a range of skills in both solitary and co-operative play. I encourage you to read the article linked above to learn more.
What are your memories of play and toys from your childhood?
Wendy Seidler
Director of ELC Kew
