It is that time of the
year when young and old alike, look forward to joyously swirl around in circles
and play to the tune of dandiya beats. The thrill of just letting go and truly
enjoying oneself with the company of those you cherish or even by oneself is liberating.
It also captures the essence of play.
The importance of play
has been well documented. Plato (429-347 B.C.) had reportedly observed, “You
can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of
conversation.” In the eighteenth century Rousseau (1762/1930), in his book
‘Emile’ wrote about the importance of observing play as a vehicle to learn
about and understand children. The importance of play in education also has
been well documented. And yet, alarmingly we are now moving toward a culture
which either treats play as an appendage or has more frighteningly, with the
advent of technology, attempted at substituting or overriding it.
Incidentally, last week, I
had presented a ten-minute documentary film (shot in 2 settings - Kangaroo
Kids, Kandivali and the shots of the Aarey milk Adivasi children) on 'Building
perspectives through play' in ‘Kaleidoscope of Play in India – 2014’, a
national conference conducted by the International Play Association (IPA)
,India and Centre for Human Ecology, TISS. We were a group of highly
involved educationists, school administrators, NGOs and advocates promoting
true ‘inclusion’ in education and life beyond school and for the right of
children to play and express themselves.
It was an opportunity for
all Parents, Teachers, Trainers, Facilitators, Students to have a plethora of
information on Play- its benefits and the Right of every child
to play on one platform. Perhaps, the existence of an international NGO
fighting for the rights of children (as defined by Article 31 of the United
Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child), since 1961, itself is rather
unfortunate while telling. To some, this might even seem absurd and
confounding. Don’t children play all the while? Do they? Not if we take
into account the shrinking and disappearing playgrounds, the rising number of
child labourers and the displacement of physical play that technology has
induced.
Play now has disparate
notions. We see children being shuttled from one hobby class to other, with
little time for unstructured play – to just be. We have also seen children as
young as four just hooked onto their gadgets, playing mobile games, beating
each other’s scores and their parents’! On the other hand we also see
well-intentioned albeit misguided parents stacking up children’s bedrooms with
toys up to the ceilings, which most researchers would say hamper the creativity
of children due to overstimulation. Contrastingly, for children from
underprivileged sections play might entail playing with the dirt, rubble, and
whatever leftover materials you could make them or just running around. Such an
environment is marked by a dearth of stimuli. The trick is to find that
balance. If children irrespective of socio-economic backgrounds were left to
themselves, they would love to play with objects most connected with nature or
day-to-day activities, which they could most relate with.
Children love to express
themselves with sand, mud, paint and among toys, building blocks which proves
as a fantastic stimulant. Toy blocks and other construction toys might not be
as flashy as battery-powered robots or video games. But, as developmental
psychologist Rachel Keen notes, parents and teachers "need to design
environments that encourage and enhance problem solving from a young age"
(Keen 2011).
Children learn best
through hands-on experiences, and block play is a valuable part of cognitive
development in preschoolers. Using blocks, children can piece together shapes
to create a bigger picture, whether it is a representation of something they
have seen or from their imagination. Exploring with blocks also nurtures an
understanding for math, science, language and dramatic play. Construction toys
also ideally help children develop motor and spatial skills, hand-eye
coordination, creative and divergent thinking, social and language skills.
Children in any setting
love to play, imagine, role play - let them. Make sure to indulge their
creative fantasies and topsy-turvy ideas when invited into their make-believe
world. Above all, keep up the spirit of play in daily routines. Play is a state
of being and need not really have a demarcated time to allot to it. It is a way
of life! Why must we inadvertently deprive them of their right to just be?
‘As astronauts &
Space travelers, children puzzle over the future;
As dinosaurs & princess they unearth the past; As
weather reporters & restaurant workers they make sense of reality; as
monsters & gremlins they make sense of the unreal’ - Unknown
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