ABSTRACT
Play affords a safe release for physical and mental energy, relieves emotional tension, and to the trained observer, provides valuable diagnostic evidence which reveals the child’s needs, thus making them at least theoretically, and to some extent, in practice, possible to fulfil. Play facilitates and encourages sensory and perceptual experience and, within the limits of individual endowment, leads to the apprehension of the manipulative and constructive possibilities of both animate and inanimate objects. The use of the free activity method of teaching for the educationally sub-normal child must be considered not only from the angle of suitability but also from that of practicability, and it may easily be seen that the social and emotional defects often arising from, and contributing to, intellectual handicap are likely to offer difficulties which must be seriously considered in organizing a programme. Most of the discarded rubbish of the elaborate complication of contemporary adult life provides valuable play material for children.
