All About Play

There are several different types of play and over the course of the day/ week we try to ensure that there is an age and stage appropriate balance between each type. Free or Child Led play is play that has no guidance from an adult; children decide the context, the resources and the outcome of the play for example creating a ball game with rules and scoring invented by the children.  Adult led play is play where the context, resources and outcome are decided by the adult, for example playing a maths game. This week I have observed lots of fantastic adult initiated play.  This is play where the adult has decided on one of either the context or the resources or the outcome but not all three. These examples are all from our Discover the Topic tasks where I give the learners a topic and they decide what to create.  These opportunities can provide excellent opportunities for deepening knowledge and understanding and always provide lots of opportunity to develop extremely important meta skills such as creativity, collaboration and problem solving.