DRAMATIC PLAY

Dramatic Play is considered the most highly developed form of symbolic play involves the child representing an absent object with another object. For example, a child may substitute a wooden chip for a boat, a stick for a horse, or a block for a car. At first the symbols (wooden chip, stick, block) are subjective and individual. The child makes the transformations for himself as he plays by himself.Besides object transformations, a child may take daily routines, such as going to bed, and transform these events into a play episode. These make believe transformations enter the play experience while at the same time the child is well aware of reality. In dramatic play, the child may also pretend to be someone else. She will imitate the actions and speech of that person. The imitative behavior may be of real life people and situations, such as when she plays house or doctor. The knowledge base for such imitations is usually from first hand experience, but she may also use vicarious experiences through film, discussions, or role modeling by an adult as her basis for imitation.

Dramatic play may involve fantasy roles such as when a child pretends he or she is Superwomen, Wonder Women, or Batman. Or the play may be literature-based, where a child re-creates the characters and actions of a story such as The Three Little Pigs.

When a child plays dramatically with another person, the play than becomes sociodramatic play are supported by a wealth of research. Pretend play (pretense) usually revolves around the child’s daily routines and involves day to day problems. The child is "adapting to reality." He is solidifying how the world functions an how he functions in the world. The cognitions are enumerable; they leave us in awe of the profound developments in the young child.

A child is able to take a multitude of experiences and lace them together into new ones, which represents a monument to her creativity. She is able to focus on the main characteristics of a role and enact the role within a give theme, which is a credit to her concentration and organization. She is able to control herself within the chosen context, restricting and elaborating her role in the play. Dramatic and sociodramatic play promote her mobility of thought as she sequences events using past, present, and future. For example, in pretense, she gets into the car, sees the doctor, and goes home.

Within the play is the opportunity for a child to solves problems, make decisions, and use open-ended thinking. In addition, he must match his actions with his words. his thought becomes more abstract as he generalizes his actions to different contexts. As his imagination and creativity lead him on, he also exploring new concepts.

As a child’s dramatic play becomes more sociodramatic, she must transcend from being an egocentric person to being a person who sees the world from another person’s perspective. This is an important developmental milestone for a child. The social interaction allows the opportunity for a child to see her peers’ points of view. She also learns rules for positive social relationships. She learns how to cooperate, settle disagreements, take turns, negotiate, persuade, and defend, with the play giving her plenty of "practice" time in these skills. The social side of this play affords the child the opportunity to exchange ideas and expand her knowledge. She adds the dimension of group problem-solving skill to her individual problem-solving skills. She learns how to cooperatively plan and implement the play experience.

CONSTRUCTIVE PLAY

Functional Play becomes constructive play as the child moves from simply sticking a finger in paint to drawing a figure, or instead of stacking and re-stacking blocks, the child builds a "house." In constructive play, the child si creating, constructing a product, or solving a problem. Constructive play combines the sensory and motor functional play with symbolic play. It is the most common form of play for young children.In constructive play, a child begins using intellectual processes in play. She symbolically represents objects, ideas, or processes. She must recognize and retrieve previously stored information (memory). She must create in her mind and then construct in reality. The child build complex structures. She makes representations of objects and ideas as she draws or paints pictures of people, things, and even abstract ideas such as war, peace, or truth. She create designs and constructs images and objects with clay. She constructs and creates with blocks. She is the engineer with blocks, the artist with paint, the sculptor with clay, and the designer with "junk". And the values of this type of play are impressive.

In constructive play, a child engages in higher levels of thought as he solves problems, hypothesizes, and uses his memory. For example, in a building a sand structure, he must experiment with the right consistency of sand and water to keep the walls from collapsing. In mud play, he develops concepts of mass, volume, and the nature of change. He uses memory and develops problem solving abilities.

For social studies, block building is an early form of mapping. A child constructs buildings to represent building in environment and "maps" out their placement in the environment. The child in constructive play also experiments with simple machinery such as a ramp, a pulley, or an elevator.

Constructive play with art materials gives the child opportunities to makes choices and judgments. she solves problems as the creates and experiments, and she develops a pattern for problem solving.

A child’s language is also affected by constructive play. In block play, he uses words to indicate direction and prepositional phrases such as in, under, over, and through. He learn the language to represent the concepts of more than, smaller, larger, higher than, and half as high. In constructive play, he share ideas verbally and describes his building or interprets his art projects.

Physically, a child develops eye-hand coordination. She develops a body sense in the relationship to the objects of constructive play.

Socially, a child learns to take turns, listen to ideas of others, share materials, cooperate, and take responsibility for cleaning up.

Personally, the child develops confidence in his ability to create. He develops his own sense of taste and the ability to judge in light of his perspective. His creative works supply him with a sense of accomplishment and emotional satisfaction.

The following activities are open-ended constructive play ideas. Suggestions for extending the play to other play areas are noted. For example, block building and "playing house" can be combined. Activities also include ways to expand concept development.

FUNCTIONAL PLAY

Functional Play is sometimes called the "first play of children." Early in life, a child repeats simple actions and finds pleasure in "playing" with his environment. The child enjoys the results of his action such as moving something back and forth, hitting an object against another, splashing in water, etc. These first experiences with play revolve around the child’s senses; thus it is also called "sensorimotor play." As the child’s senses "function," interplaying with the environment, the child finds "functional pleasure." Functional play is not symbolic, but it is repetitive actions for pleasure.Functional play includes fine and gross motor play. The child practices variations of motor activity as she plays. She jumps up and down and rocks back an forth. Functional play is also called "practice play" because of this repetition of activities. Functional play is also "manipulative play" where the child engages in motor exercise with or without object.

"Exploratory play" is another name used to describe functional play. Play is use by the child to explore his environment. As he explores, he practices playful interactions with his environment. Through his senses and motor actions in functional play, a child learns about his world. The child explores his physical capabilities in relationship to the environment. The child is the cause of events. He has power over himself and what he can do in his world-even power over his world and what happens to it. The child squishes and plops mud. He thickens it and thins it out. He develops concepts of the nature of things, of change, and cause and effect. He acquires his sense of body in the world, develops hand-eye coordination, recognizes the permanence of object, and explores concepts of time and space.

Functional play is evident throughout childhood. Children run for the sake of running, climb up and down, twirl, jump, chase, pour, splash, and scribble. A variety of materials such as water, sand, paints, crayons, and blocks should be readily available for children to choose for their functional play.

The need for functional play decreases as the child grows. Three-to-five-years-olds engage functional play about 33 percent of their time. Functional play is gradually replace with constructive play where the child builds a bridge rather than just stacking blocks, or she draws a flower rather than moving a crayon across the paper. Functional play also combines with other types of play. For examples, "chasing" combines with dramatic play as a child pretends she is a giant chasing the little people. Young children will often use functional play to explore objects before they use them constructively or dramatically. For elementary age children, functional play represents a way to master motor skills for games or sports.

Functional play has an important role for children throughout their childhood. They gain pleasure from influencing their environment and have feelings of power as they master new skills. Their function in the world is being defined, and conceptually they are defining their world.

TYPES OF PLAY

The divisions in play categories : functional, constructive, dramatic, and game with rules. The following lists show the play types and their definitions.

Cognitive play

• Functional play : repetitive muscle movements with or without objects. Examples include : (a) running and jumping, (b) gathering and dumping, (c) manipulating objects or materials, and (d) informational games (parading).
• Constructive play : (block, Legos, Tinkertoys) or materials (sand, Play-doh, paint) to make something.
• Dramatic play : role-playing and/or make-believe transformation. Examples include : (a) role-playing : pretending to be a parent, baby, shark, superhero, or monster; and (b) make-believe transformations : pretending to drive a car (arm movements) or give an injection with a pencil (object use). Use of miniature version of real objects (toy cars, toy iron) is not scored as dramatic play unless there is evidence of role taking and/or make-believe transformation.
• Game with rules : recognition and acceptance of and conformity with pre-established rules. Examples include tag, "Mother My I", marbles, checkers, and kickball.
  

Social Play

• Solitary play : playing alone with materials different from those children within speaking distance; no conversation with others.
• Parallel play : playing with toys or engaging in activities similar to those of other children who are in close proximity; however, there is no attempt to play with the other children.
  
• Group playing ; playing with other children; roles may or may not be assigned.