Value of Play

To provide a child-centered curriculum, it is necessary to understand the importance of play.

‘Early childhood educators take on many roles in play with children and use a range of strategies to support learning. They engage in sustained, shared conversations with children to extend their thinking. They provide a balance between child led, child initiated, and educator supported learning. They create learning environments that encourage children to explore, solve problems, create and construct. Educators interact with babies and children to build attachment. They use routines and play experiences to do this. They also recognize spontaneous teachable moments as they occur, and use them to build on children’s learning (Early Year Learning Framework, EYLF, 2009, p15)

Our teachers aim to support and extend children’s play. This can be achieved by sensitive observation and appropriate intervention, being aware that it is sometimes important not to interrupt when children are deeply involved in their learning though play. Allowing children to be spontaneous and to direct their own play experiences and then sometimes joining them, but on their terms (not taking over and directing), requires experience, along with trust in the children themselves and in the teachers own knowledge base. That knowledge base is a mixture of personal and professional life experience, knowledge from training/study, mentors, reading books, use of online resources and sharing ideas with colleagues etc. It is also informed from learning from the children and families.