Module 7-Playing

How Do I Love Thee-Play

The Activity:

          Playing is one of the most important skills for learning.  Unstructured and unguided play allows for children to interact and explore objects for purposes other than they may be intended for.  In Root-Bernstein’s book, the authors equate play as “…a tool in and of itself.” (p. 249)

          An activity that I would use to introduce rhyming words would include a variety of tools and activities.  The task would be to identify in a variety of nursery rhymes, words that rhyme and words that do not rhyme.  To incorporate technology, I would set students up during a center time with iPads with a specific rhyming application and headphones.   The student’s job would be to wear headphones and listen to the songs.  When they hear a pair of rhyming words they should clap.  When no rhymes are heard they shake their heads “no.”  When the rhyme is over, the students then draw pictures for the rhyming pair (i.e. wall and fall).  For an added activity, the kids could draw other pairs of rhymes they heard, or listen to multiple nursery rhymes and complete the activity.  There are several other extension activities that could be done with this.  The students could use sentence strips and rebuild the nursery rhyme by putting them in the correct order, act out the nursery rhyme, or use a splitter to have multiple children listening to the same nursery rhyme and then do a turn and share to identify rhymes both students heard. 

The Reflection:

Nursery rhymes have been around for hundreds of years. They are a part of most children's early childhood memories.  Much of the time these rhymes are simply read to children.  There is little opportunity to interact or explore through play when read during story time.  Though in many classrooms including Preschools, Kindergarten, and even First grade classrooms these rhymes can be used to foster play by providing a variety of games and activities.  Through unstructured playing with letter cards (taken from words in the nursery rhyme), little toy characters for re-enactment purposes or used to create their own stories or rhymes, felt boards, and technology applications on iPads or other tablets, children can use play to explore the concept, but most importantly to have fun with the materials. 

          
          I love what Root-Bernstein states on page 248 regarding play,  “…play has no direct or directing purpose outside of itself.  Play is simply for the fun of it, for the enjoyment of doing and making without responsibility.  There is no success or failure in play…however, to say that play has no inherent goal does not mean that it’s results cannot afterward be put to good purposes beyond motivating enjoyment.”  To play at home or school, children are capable of interacting with toys and materials regardless of their direct purpose.  Children can manipulate toys to fit their style and choices for creativity.