Piaget's Role Of Play In Child Development

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Many theories have illustrated the role of play in children for their development. According to Jean Piaget children are actively involved in their environment. The child initiates an activity and assembles the necessary information through exploration of his environment. This is where Piaget’s introduced schema. Schema is basically how knowledge is structured or categorized in a child’s mind. According to Piaget (2006), schema is formed through the process of assimilation (child views the environment according to his way) and accommodation (enhancing on the knowledge the child already knows). Piaget suggested that children developed through 3 stages: mastery stage/ practice play, play stage/symbolic play and game stage/ games with rules (MCI, Child development module, chapter IV, 2013).
Play is important for a child’s holistic development which comprises of physical (gross and fine motor development), intellectual (analyzing, understanding, concentrating), language (communicating with others like speech), emotional (emotions, identity) and social (relationship with others) (MCI, Child development module, chapter I, 2013). A holistic approach revolves around the child and sees each child as an individual. All children pass through each area of development and learn different things at different stages of growth like crawling, walking, etc. All are linked together and if any one aspect is not achieved then the child will have delays or problem reaching his milestones (Sheridan, 2002). The play should be always initiated by the child otherwise the child will not enjoy their play or get creative.
According to the theory of Vygotsky (1999) cognitive development was directly related to play. Vygotsky (1999, p10), “distinguished two l...

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...r or parent should be aware of the level of cognitive development so as to know what type or level of scaffolding can be given to the child. In short, “the adult’s role is to provide a structure within which the children can interact – to challenge, to set up problems to be solved, to encourage children to test out ideas and, perhaps more importantly, to open up personal learning strategies to children” (Moyles, 2005, p123).
An adult should always observe a child in whatever he/she is doing. Observing will provide us with important information about the child’s development and what more can be done while a child is playing (Sheridan, 2002). To understand a child in depth it is better if the adult plays or uses the materials which are used by the child. This will let us in on what exactly a child might feel or discover with that particular toy (Jones, et al., 2006).

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