Play
Play is ubiquitous in society and dates back to antiquity. From an early age, it engages humans cognitively, physically, affectively, and socially and is now viewed as being central to human development. From birth, infants have an innate interest in expl
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Play
Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood. Fred Rogers ~ Mister Rogers Neighborhood
The Primacy of Play Play is ubiquitous in society and dates back to antiquity. From an early age, it engages humans cognitively, physically, affectively, and socially and is now viewed as being central to human development. From birth, infants have an innate interest in exploring what is around them. We rock them, sing to them, and show them pretty objects to engage them. As soon as they are able, we give them toys to cuddle, to touch, and to explore, which they do quite readily on their own. As children grow older and begin to move more capably, they run, jump, and skip in self-directed ways. Children’s play is intent and focused and operationalizes learning for them. Children integrate artifacts and events into their lives through their explorations in both individual and social play as they build their perception of the world. In addition to children initiating play, adults take advantage of children’s inclination to learn through play, and guide children’s play to help their development from infancy to adolescence.
Klein and Winnicott In the early 1920s, the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein worked with children with affective disorders and began to develop theories about the primacy of play and symbolization in children’s cognitive functions.1 Working with children as young
1 Melanie Klein began her work with children as a psychoanalyst in 1919 in Budapest. She first moved to Berlin and then was invited to work in London (1926) where she became noted for her innovative approach to therapeutic work with young children. http://www.melanie-klein-trust.org.uk/.
© The Author(s) 2016 K. Madej, Physical Play and Children’s Digital Games, SpringerBriefs in Computer Science, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-42875-8_2
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Play
as two, Klein studied how they interpreted their world and theorized that in playing with toys, and any artifact could be a toy including letters and words, children confer meaning on them. Klein believed that children create a symbolic meaning for the artifact by investing it with their own images and feelings; they do this only through what we call play. The meaning of the artifact that is internalized by the child is not what adults consider it to be, but rather what the child has negotiated through their relationship with the artifact within the context of their daily play (Kidd, Young). While Klein saw play as key to children’s symbolization of the world, D.W. Winnicott, the noted child psychoanalyst who had studied with her, saw, in addition, play as fundamental to all human development and as universal. Winnicott believed it was “only in playing [that] the child or adult is free to be creative” and that it is creative living that makes life meaningful (Winnicott 53). Without the creative impulse, meaning can disappear and life can seem worthless. He said the exciting part about play was “the interp
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