Symbolic Play

The importance of symbolic play on young children’s cognitive and social development.

Children represent their understanding of the world in a variety of ways, in this essay I will be focussing on symbolic representation in relation to play. Symbolic play is a type of play defined by Beeley and Bryce-Clegg (2014) as a fantasy play, where the child undertakes the role of someone or something outside of reality. In other words, it is where children act out scenes where they us one object to stand for another (for example to use a banana as a phone) or indeed themselves to be someone else (for example a doctor, shop keeper etc). Robson 2006:76 stated “in pretend play, children step in and out of role, represent situation and transform objects,

Therefore children learn by interacting with their surroundings. He believed children are ‘little scientists’ and as children experiment they are helping refine concepts and to gain an overall understanding. He believed we do this through Schemas which are mental structures into which we organize our knowledge and understanding of the world. He considered Schema to be the ‘basic building blocks of thinking’ (Piaget 1953). Furthermore, children’s internalised thoughts are then represented and they often reflect their current interests and concerns. Schemes changed through the process of assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is when new knowledge is slotted in with existing knowledge and Accommodation is when new schemas are created to accommodate new knowledge.We organise the different schemas and link them to other schemas to create an interconnecting system in an attempt to achieve “equilibrium" (balance). (Piaget, Inhelder 1956:4.) Piaget’s theory was based around stage development which essential means that children go through 4 broad stages of cognitive growth from birth through to adolescence. Piaget’s stages of development are: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations and formal operations. When children are not able to think in abstract terms they will represented their ideas in physical action (Sensori-motor stage), however at the Pre-operational Stage 2-7 years, they have developed some form of Symbolic Representation and as they develop and reach the formal operational stage, they develop the ability to think more abstractly and represent in a variety of forms. (Piaget, Inhelder 1956:4). Although, Piaget' theory of cognitive development proposed frame for children learning there is some criticisms. Piaget believed that all children, progress through four stages and once particular stage is reached, the regression to