ABSTRACT

From time immemorial children have played, sometimes alone sometimes sociably side-by-side without interactions as in toddler parallel play, and sometimes in pretend play with extensive and awesome scenarios. Theorists have speculated on what children learn from play. Psychodynamic theorists explain that children express sorrow, anger, and fear through play. Indeed, after the 9/11 bombings, children in child care centers played out scenarios of hurling toy planes at block towers. Piaget (1962) regarded play as a way for children to master cognitive concepts and figure out physical and logical-mathematical relationships as they experiment with blocks, train tracks, and water play and a variety of toys. He also noted how important play was for children to learn to resolve conflicts and disagreements with peers while playing games, such as marbles. A psychologist ties the importance of play with language skills, stating that “play [is] the acting out of stories on one end and narrative [is] the discursive exposition on the other end” (Stagnitii, 2010, p. 151). She encourages teachers to read stories and create play scenes using “voice, body, and facial expressions so that the emotions of the character’s and the feelings of the play scene are part of the teacher interaction” (Ibid., p.157) to heighten children’s emotional involvement in play.