Free Play – Part 1: What is it and why is it important?

On today's episode, we are talking about Free Play! What is it and why it is important! 

To download the infographic for today’s episode, please visit: http://kskits.org/kids-these-days-podcast-0

 Kids These Days is a co-production of the KCCTO-KITS Infant Toddler Specialist Network (ITSN) and KCCTO Workforce Development (WFD) programs.
The KCCTO-KITS Infant-Toddler Specialist Network is a program of the Kansas Child Care Training Opportunities, Inc. (KCCTO) and the university of Kansas Life Span Institute at Parsons. The Workforce Development Project is a program of KCCTO.  Each program is supported through a grant from the Kansas Department For Children And Families’ Child Care And Early Education Services. However, information or opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the agency and no official endorsement should be inferred.

To learn more about the Infant Toddler Specialist Network, please visit: http://kskits.org/technical-assistance-0.  

To learn more about KCCTO and Workforce Development, please visit: https://kccto.org/ 

Contact us via email at – kidsthesedayspod@gmail.com 

Follow and tag us on Instagram & Facebook @kidsthesedayspod & Twitter @ktdpod

Music credit: Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3843-hackbeat
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 

Kids These Days is a co-production of the KCCTO-KITS Infant Toddler Specialist Network (ITSN) and KCCTO Workforce Development (WFD) programs.
The KCCTO-KITS Infant-Toddler Specialist Network is a program of the Kansas Child Care Training Opportunities, Inc. (KCCTO) and the university of Kansas Life Span Institute at Parsons. The Workforce Development Project is a program of KCCTO.  Each program is supported through a grant from the Kansas Department For Children And Families’ Child Care And Early Education Services. However, information or opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the agency and no official endorsement should be inferred.

To learn more about the Infant Toddler Specialist Network, please visit: http://kskits.org/technical-assistance-0.

To learn more about KCCTO and Workforce Development, please visit: https://kccto.org/

Contact us via email at – kidsthesedayspod@gmail.com

Follow and tag us on Instagram & Facebook @kidsthesedayspod & Twitter @ktdpod

Music credit: Hackbeat by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3843-hackbeat License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

What kind of picture do you get in your head when you hear free play? Kids running around like uh crazy cats? Are you engaging in free play in your program or home? And if not, what's keeping you from doing it? Hey, it's Sarah, and this is Kids These Days, a podcast brought to you by funding through the Kansas Department for Children and Families. Today we're talking about free play, and I promise it's not as crazy as it sounds. So what is it about anyway? Well, free play is based upon the adult's knowledge of the ages and developmental stages of the children currently enrolled in their program, or, you know, that belong to them and live with them. Those adults observe children to gather data and reflectify and meaning about children's strengths, interests, and needs, and then they integrate new concepts, subjects, content areas through the use of multiple strategies to aid children in developing an understanding of those new concepts and make connections between those concepts and subject areas. So those multiple strategies, play opportunities, look like large and small groups, teacher-directed learning, child-directed learning, project-based, and themes. Now we're going to talk more about what themes are not here in a minute, but when I say themes in terms of what free play is, I'm referring to broad concepts like shapes and colors that can be implemented across all developmental and play areas, things that they can touch, see, feel, manipulate, concrete objective concepts. So free play is also purposeful and engaging. It should support children's natural tendencies to be curious, explore, and make sense of those explorations. All children should be satisfied with a wealth of choices and activities that are offered. And no child should be left without an interesting to them choice. And remember, they're likely going to need your help to figure out what is interesting to them. And making sure that you're providing satisfying alternatives to popular activities. So free play also allows children to select what, where, how long, and with whom they want to play. And of course, this is within the environment and materials that you have intentionally set up and provided for them. And when we talk about how long, we're talking about at least an hour of uninterrupted free play time within your day. So not 15 minutes here, 20 minutes there, 30 minutes here, but an hour of uninterrupted free play time. Allowing children to make these decisions teaches them problem solving, to begin identifying their own interests and dislikes, conflict resolution, and it gives them the time they need to figure things out. So often I think when I say free play and people think crazy cats. No, free play requires adult interaction. But that's based on, again, the children's needs and interests, and that we are being intentional in our interactions because children still need our support to enter in and sustain their play. But we also have to resist the urge to interrupt or prescribe what they should be doing during their play. Which leads us to our next very important piece of the free play definition: what free play is not. So free play is not rigidly or strictly thematic. We talked about themes just a bit ago, broad concepts like shapes and colors that can be implemented across all areas of development and play that are they can touch and see and feel. So when I'm talking about rigidly or strictly thematic, I'm talking about themes that have surface appeal or that are based solely on the teacher's experience or published guides or activity books. So instead of basing it on characteristics of children's development and learning, the content and skills that they need to acquire and what they find deeply engaging. So things like fall, space, dinosaurs, right? These themes often don't have concrete meaning to children. They don't have a concept of what space is because they can't manipulate it. And so it's not always really relevant or exciting to them. And they're not always able to make connections between pieces of a theme because they don't have the previous knowledge of those pieces or the cognitive ability to understand the subjective concept of space. And it doesn't take into account cultural differences and individual experiences. Free play is also not assigned, forced, or timed. This looks like the adult telling specific children to play in specific areas for a specific amount of time, and then also maybe rotating after, say, 15 minutes in that area, instead of allowing children to decide how long they play in an area or at a specific activity, giving them the time they need to figure things out. That said, when I talk about timed, this does not apply to the practice of using a timer for popular areas or for turn taking with popular items. For example, everyone wants a turn at the sand table. So you create a waiting list, decide as a group that each child will get X amount of time at the sand table. You set the timer when the timer goes off. The next group of kids on the waiting list get a turn, timer is set, so on and so on. Or maybe Sarah has been on the cool new writing toy grandma sent for a while now, and Seth wants a turn. Sarah, Seth says he would like a turn on the writing toy. Would you like three or four more minutes before it is his turn to ride? So I have a little friend, Miss Kenley. Her mom is a home childcare provider who has been using this idea of a timer since Kenley was probably in her mom's tummy. But I would say as early as 18 months, Kenley was starting to come to her mom to ask her to set a timer for things. So I promise you, if you are consistently utilizing a timer to help children take turns, they will start asking you to set the timer for them. Now that you know what it is and what it isn't, let's talk about why it is important right after this quick break.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

Looking for reliable online resources to share with parents or to learn more about why kids do what they do? Well, search no more. The Casito Kids Infant Toddler Specialist Network has created a collection of one-page information sheets, virtual kits, and online technical assistance packets just for you. These resources cover topics from biting, resilience, active supervision, intentional planning for infants and toddlers, and so much more. Find the link in your show notes or visit kskids.org backslash technical dash assistance-0 to access these resources today.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

Through purposeful engaging free play, children are provided an important vehicle for long-term learning in the areas of social emotional, cognitive, motor, and language development. So what does that look like? Social emotional development. Through play, kids learn to cope with their emotions as they act out fear, frustration, anger, and aggression in a situation that they control. It's also a chance for them to recognize and respond to others' feelings and practice empathy. Helps them build confidence and self-perception and develop and grow social skills, like collaborating and compromising with others to resolve conflicts, take turns and share, take age and developmentally appropriate risks during play, and begin to understand and follow the rules and roles in their society. Cognitive development happens through free play when children are able to experiment and make discoveries, explore objects and physical spaces, learn to process sight and sounds, develop decision-making, problem solving, and planning skills, build attention spans, observe, compare, connect, sort, sequence, and that symbolic thinking and memory development. Motor development during free play can be broken down into two areas: fine motor, right? That scribbling, drawing, writing, cutting, ripping, picking, putting together, taking apart, picking up with fingers, and cross motor, that developing coordination, balance, flexibility, crawling, cruising, walking, running, skipping, throwing, kicking, catching, climbing, jumping, swinging. And finally, language development during play is where children have a controlled environment to recognize facial expressions and body language, to learn the roles that they play in communication, how to start and carry on conversations, how to express thoughts, feelings, emotions to others, narrate their play, and build their vocabulary through you starting to narrate their play and giving them words for what they're doing and what they're seeing. You being their model during that free play time. C, I told you free play wasn't scary. Oh, what's that? You want to know what it looks like. Ah, no worries. Tune in next week and we'll talk all about it. Kids These Days is a co-production of the Casito Kids Infant Toddler Specialist Network and Workforce Development Programs. These programs are supported through a grant from the Kansas Department for Children and Families, Child Care and Early Education Services. However, information or opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the agency, and no official endorsement should be inferred. If you have questions, comments, suggestions, or want to share your practice related to this or a previous episode, please email kidsthesedayspod at gmail.com. And follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Kids These Days Pod. Be sure to check out the infographic and other resources for this episode in the show notes. Don't forget to hit subscribe. This episode was written, recorded, and edited by Sarah Holmes. Infographics by Rudy Benavides. Music track Hackbeat by Kevin McLeod. See you next time on Kids These Days.