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Young children create learning experiences through four major
types of play:
Mastery Play: Makes it possible for children to construct concepts
and skills.
Game: Your infant is banging on her high-chair with everything
she can get her hands on. Through this repetitive activity, she
learns that different objects make different sounds.
During infancy and early childhood such play seems boring to adults,
but it's fascinating to the child who is responding to all
facets of the new experience she has created. A few months later,
the child will no longer bang the object she grasps but rather
will examine it closely, discovering previously unexplored features
of the item.
Innovative Play: Occurs when the child has repetitively mastered
concepts and skills, and introduces variations.
Game: Your child climbs up to the top of a slide and goes down.
Initially, the child will repeat the process over and over again.
Once mastered, the child innovates and extends the limits of what
he has learned. The child may try climbing up the slide rather
than going up the stairs, or try sliding down the slide on his
stomach. A younger child will introduce variations just as an older
child will learn to ride a bike and then start to experiment with
riding one-handed or on only one wheel.
Kinship Play: Initiates the child into the world of peer relations.
Game: Children of about the same age and size are naturally drawn
to one another. Children who don't know each other communicate
through self-initiated games.
These games are fun since the children are at the same skill level
and because it is a relationship of mutual authority (rather than
unilateral authority, as with adults). Kinship play is an initiation
into social learning and cooperation activities. In kinship play,
children discover a sense of mutuality that they will elaborate
on in all future peer relationships.
Therapeutic Play: Gives children strategies for dealing with stressful
life events.
Game: When a young child's mother goes out of sight, the
child fears she may not return. Playing “Peek-A-Boo” helps
children deal with this concern. For instance, the child may pull
a bib over his face, then pull it off with cries of delight.
By repeating the disappearance and return under conditions he
can control, the child is helping himself overcome separation anxiety.
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