Playing & Exploring – Playing with what they know

Once babies have learned something about the properties of objects they move on to see what they can do with them – how they can play with them. Find out how this develops into sophisticated pretend play, developing rules and problems for them to solve and supporting their self-regulation.

Good for looking at

  • Characteristics of effective teaching and learning
  • Playing with what they know
  • Pretend play
  • Object play
  • Co-operative play
  • Symbolising
  • Problem solving
  • Turn taking
  • Agreeing to the rules of play
00:05
What have you got?
00:07
Once babies have learned something
00:09
about the properties of objects,
00:11
they move on to see what they can do with them.
00:13
How the can play with them.
00:16
As the brain develops
00:17
they begin to make one thing stand for another.
00:20
They learn to symbolize.
00:23
Oh, Asmani's having a taste.
00:27
Yum, yum, yum.
00:29
That tastes good.
00:31
This goes along with starting to use words.
00:34
The sound stands for something
00:38
that was symbolizing.
00:41
Stone.
00:50
Got to take the stone out.
00:52
Play quickly begins to incorporate pretending.
00:55
And this comes to take up masses of children's playing time.
01:23
It's a fantastic ability,
01:25
as well as being very enjoyable for children,
01:27
it has many benefits.
01:34
It encourages children to communicate and to use language,
01:37
to co-operate and take turns.
02:16
Children learn to think about all those points of view,
02:19
as they think of possible scenarios,
02:21
and negotiate taking rules as they act out
02:24
constantly changing storylines.
02:55
Children need to use their self-regulatory skills
02:58
to be able to stick to any rules of the play.
03:01
Like how many times have they become be naughty.
03:04
They cooperate in solving problems.
03:07
It can be totally engrossing.
04:06
This plays based at first
04:08
on real experiences of things they know.
04:11
Later it begins to incorporate imaginary possibilities,
04:14
giving very sophisticated play experiences.
04:30
As well as pretending, children carry on
04:32
including objects in their play,
04:34
creating more and more sophisticated problems
04:37
for themselves to solve.

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