Play and Literacy

Children show signs of literacy when they play. When children finally accomplish a task they have been working on, they are proud and want everyone to know about it.

Play has diverse abilities. Play touches every aspect of a child's life the:

• physical - both fine and large gross motor skills are developed

• social and emotional - they learn about self, responsibility and pro-social behaviors

• cognitive abilities - learning and problem solving skills, logical thinking puzzles and more, representation and symbolic thinking

• development of language- listening, speaking, reading and writing skills

Stages of play:

• Solitary - children play by themselves
• Onlooker - children watch others at play
• Parallel - children play next to each other
• Associative - children play and communicate with each other
• Cooperative - children play with each other, giving directions to each other

Play can:

• be done just for the fun of it
• have a pretend quality about
• be social without thought of what happens during play

Knowledge is acquired as children explore thier environment through play.

Play is functional and constructive because it is the work of the child.

When children play they explore and take in information. Then they use their previous knowledge and build upon that information, organizing and re-organizing these experiences to form new ones.

Play requries thought, therefore children are creating knowledge and developing valuable skills in many areas.

The abcteach site offers a list of skills that are deveolped when children play in different centers: