My Connections to Play

When I reflect on my early childhood experiences there are several quotes which I feel represent my childhood.

“What one loves in childhood stays in the heart forever” ~Mary Jo Putney

“There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child, there are seven million ~Walt Streightiff

As a young child, opportunities for play and social interaction was very important on a daily basis. I attended a home daycare and Ms. Darnese motivated the children at the daycare to explore the world. My favorite part of daycare was when we received the opportunity to dress up in different costumes and role play. Each time we would dress up in a different costume, we would pretend and act in a different character. If the costume was a occupation like a doctor, we would imitate when happened when we went to the doctor. At home, I pretended that Barbie and Ken dolls were working adults living in a house similar to my own family. One of my favorite family activities was to play at beach with my family. I would create the largest castle and find shells to be the people. My family would use the other seashells to pretend as if they were people also. My parents preferred for me to engage in outdoor activities and sesame street was the only television show I was allowed to watch. I interacted and developed socially with friends outside in the neighborhood.

Children now also imitate what they see during dress up as well as pretend play. They store what they have seen in memory and do it later, an ability Piaget called deferred imitation (Berger, 2018). I have observed children interacting with other children on the playground as well as pretending to be a cashier or merchandiser at the grocery store. I believe the technology of today has a huge impact on the play children experience. Although there are games such as Minecraft which allow children to be creative and build buildings, cars, cities, and people. However, spending long hours on a tablet independently will affect children’s ability to interact socially as well as developmentally. I hope that children of today are able to balance between outdoor play as well as technology.

Play was significant to my personal growth and development because it encouraged me to be creative and use my imagination to explore the world. Play taught me how to become more independent and now as an adult I travel to different places instead of reading about them in books. I learned the importance of working with a team and how together everyone achieves more.

Berger, K. S. (2018). The developing person through childhood. (8th edition). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.