Friedrich Froebels Ideas On the Role of Play In the Early Years Education Essay Example for Free

Friedrich Froebels Ideas On the Role of Play In the Early historic period Education EssayPlay is probably the very first thing that comes to our minds when we start thinking approximately our tikehood. Certainly its hard to talk about ahead of time years without referring to put-on, as it is a part of childrens native behaviour, embedded in their spontaneous day-to-day life. The fact that the play is enjoyable is generally agreed, but the revalue of play in school, however, has been in the centre of much line of reasoning in the past (and it seems like that debate is still going on today). The roots of contemporary understanding of the role of play in early childhood education extend clearly to Friedrich Froebel, a German educator, who organized and systematized the methods of early childhood in accordance with the idea of the spontaneous, self-sustaining nature of children (E. Evans, 1971, p. 43). Froebel believed that every child had within him all he was to be at birth , and that the proper educational environment was to encourage the child to mystify and scram in the nigh favourable manner. Young children are to be regarded and tended essentially like plants.Like these, if they were given the right conditions, they would grow and unfold and flower, by their own law, each according to its individual capacity and destiny. (E. Lawrence, 1969, p. 195) In his study of child-nature wholeness of the most marked characteristics, which attracted Froebels attention, was the childs inborn desire for activity, which reveals itself in play. According to Froebel, play is the freest active manifestation of the childs cozy self which springs from the need of that inner living consciousness to realize itself outwardly. (H. Bowen, 1907, p.116) Froebel made a significant ploughshare to early childhood education by seeing play as a process in which children bring to realization their inner nature. He recognized that children began to learn as soon as they be gan to interact with the world, and he reasoned that since the interaction was mostly in the form of play, the way to educate a child was through play, as a means of awakening and developing the active and presentative side of his nature therefore none, not even the simplest gifts from a child, should ever be suffered to be neglected. (F.Froebel, 1901, p. 77) Froebels continuous studies of the function of play in a childs life came to fruition in the concept of the Kindergarten ? a place where children instruct and educate themselves and where they develop and integrate all their abilities through play. Froebel believed that play provided the means for a childs intellectual, social, emotional and physical development. Games were not scarcely idle time wasting, but the most important steps in the childs development, and they were to be watched by teachers as clues to how the child is developing.It is through play that the child learns the use of his limbs, of all his bodily organs , and with this use gains health and strength. with play he comes to know the external world, the physical qualities of the objects which surround him, their motions, action, and reaction upon each other, and the relation of these phenomena to himself, ? a knowledge that forms the basis of that which will be his permanent stock for life. (H. Bowen, 1907, p.101) However, Froebel didnt think that the play of young children should be unprompted at all times. For him the skill of adults was in knowing how and when to intervene, how to support and extend childrens play to sponsor them to grasp and to try out their learning in concrete ways. (T. Bruce, 1997, p. 23) To stimulate learning through well-directed play Froebel designed a series of instructional materials, which he called gifts and occupations.