In the 31st Article of the Convention of the Rights of the Child it is established their right to have a spontaneous and free play. Moreover, Molina (2008) declares the transforming power that this kind of play has on the children, for it is through this type of activity that they represent their own reality. Since in Early Childhood Education our goal is the whole growth of the children, free-play must be seen and taken into account as a right and a need that helps that process. Therefore, it is essential to recognise the value of this moment while not forgetting the school context.
The teachers of Early Childhood Education consider free-play as an educational moment that favours the evolutive growth of the children. Hence, there is more implication from these professionals when observing and evaluating this moment as an educative activity. Nonetheless, in the school reality, the lack of help from the administrative team, the possible judgment of the families and the limit that the school hours impose are the main barriers that the professionals have to get over to be able to offer spaces and moments of meaningful and rewarding free-play to the children (Mañós, Balagué, Virgili, & Montalá, 2019).
From our own experience as teachers in the practicum, this moment, the free-play, was not taken as a valuable one. Instead, it was carried out in the spare time when the kids had finished their assignments. Form another point of view, the free-play acquires a strict concept as it is guided with a lot of rules imposed by the teachers. This changes its dynamic and it turns it into a guided activity where there is no place for the children’s experimentation and creativity. Therefore, their needs are not fulfilled.
Free-play, according to Cuba & Palpa (2015) and with our agreement as students of Education, are as follow: it is a natural and individual process given that the kids are the protagonists of their own actions; through the symbolic play children can create their own conceptual schemes; this must be an enjoyable and pleasant moment for the children; it must have a flexibility that allows the kids to do and undo everything as the want; finally, free-play is not a way through which the children obtain a goal, but it has meaning in itself. All these characteristics can and should be applicable to an Early Education classroom. Therefore, we believe that we must leave behind the concept that the free-play
is something the kids can do when there is nothing left to do, but a moment that has a meaning in itself.
And now, we will present to you a design of a free-play documentation that we can do in our classrooms of Early Childhood Education. This will be a guide about how to document this natural process in the school context.
First of all, our study subject will be our own Early Childhood Education classroom, specifically a classroom of three years olds. Our main goal is to do follow up of this group throughout the nine months of school period. The documentation will be done using a register notebook in which we will write down the visible behaviours that we may believe are more meaningful while free-playing.
The end of this process will be presented to the families of the children through an expositive panel, which will be exposed at the entrance of the classroom, and will be updated every month. In addition to this, we will use a PowerPoint presentation which will be shown to the families in every trimestral meeting. This format will allow us to add photos and videos that will guide the narration of the story that will be told. Each of these formats will answer to certain needs and different moments.
Given that free-play is more productive and enjoyable when presented with certain natural and spontaneous scenarios we will offer some that will be adequate to the kids and efficient when documenting. These proposals will be followed by these rules. First of all, free-play must have a time assigned within our classroom schedule. It is essential that this process of playing does not take place in the same classroom every single time, therefore the children can have the opportunity of experimenting in other places such as the playground, halls, other groups’ classrooms, library. This process will help the kids acquire a sense of continuity that will reinforce their sense of belonging to the school and to the group that they are in. It is also very important that the resources given to the kids (toys and other materials) are available and accessible to the children for them to make use of them.
As teachers, we try to interpret and explain the meanings behind the actions of the kids while the process of play occurs. From a more objective point of view, we will tell systematically, the actions that take place while playing. So, the information that we be shown in the panels, will be more objective. This means that, once every meaningful fact
(if possible) is written down in our notebook, they will be selected attending to the following questions: what did theydo? how did they do it? with what? with whom? When did it happen?
Nevertheless, with the trimestral meeting PowerPoint presentation we will be showing a more subjective perspective of the interpretations of the kids’ actions when they play. This presentation will answer to the next questions: why did they do it? why didn’t they do that? why does each child act in a different way to the same stimulus? what do they want to achieve? This way, we try to inform the families about the innate behaviour of childhood through free-playing and our pedagogical interpretation of it.
We will present the information, as we mentioned earlier, through an expositive panel and a PowerPoint presentation. The first one will be presented in an A3 paper. We will attach photos of the children playing with a brief descriptive text of what they are doing. These will be in a chronological order. Whereas the PowerPoint presentation will be more of a visual support to help the families follow the story that the teachers will be telling with it (photos and videos). This way of presenting the information will also help the families understand the meanings and representations that their children’s actions have when the interact in a natural environment such a free-play.
To sum up, we would like to point out the importance of documenting and making visible the daily practice of playing in school. Furthermore, we urge to rethink, reinterpret and reflect about what happens in school so we can make some changes and aim to a better and more productive, as well as enjoyable (for the children) future. Also, we aim to make the families aware of their kids’ actions in school since they do not act the same way in different contexts.
References
Cuba, M, N. L., & Palpa, M, E. (2015). La hora del juego libre en los sectores y el desarrollo de la creatividad en los niños de 5 años de las IEP de la localidad de Santa Clara.
Mañós, R. V., Balagué, À. G., Virgili, N. A., & Montalá, M. D. (2019). Percepción de los maestros sobre el derecho al juego libre en educación infantil y educación primaria.
Estudio desarrollado en Barcelona (España). Bordón. Revista de Pedagogía, 71(4), 151- 165.
Molina, J. A. (2008). El Placer y el Displacer en el Juego Espontáneo Infantil/Pleasure and Displeasure in Children’s Spontaneous Play. Arteterapia, 3, 167-188.
Unicef. (2006). Convención sobre los Derechos del Niño.
Authorship
Alejandra Albo, Claudia Biancotti y Verónica Cuesta, 2020.