Corter – monitoring play

If you ask children what they like about early childhood programs, they rate play as the thing they like the most, but if you ask them what don’t you like about your program, they also mention play gone bad. For example, when other children don’t let you join in play, that sort of thing. So not all play works perfectly and professionals, early childhood educators need to monitor the play of children. They need to support it in ways where it is productive in the development of children’s self-management, self-regulation, and even for pre academic skills and literacy, math, and science, and we know from research that it can, if properly structured, lead to self-regulation, but we’re not quite sure about all the elements of play which do that, but we do know that play needs to be structured so that children stay in dramatic roles if that’s what they’re doing, so they extend them so educators can monitor and step in and help do that, but we’re not just talking about free play, we’re talking about intentional monitored play where educators are thinking about the skills that children may be developing. 

And play is particularly important in terms of monitoring the play of individual children because all children are different. Not all of them will go to the center where dramatic play is happening, so how do you move children around programs so that they’re getting the experiences, the play based experiences, that will help them develop as individuals.