The Playful Parent by Julia Deering (2014)
"The Power Of Play"
In The Playful Parent, Deering states "my raison d'être is to provide young children with an enabling environment - somewhere Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) guidelines describe as a place where they feel safe, comfortable and 'at home'; where they can investigate, explore and learn in a way that is best for them. And that is always through play."
Although the main theme and audience for this book are parents who wish to use play as a parenting technique, I found much of it's content very useful and coherent when looking at it from a teachers point of view for my research.
Peering herself has worked "as a teacher and creative play specialist with over twenty year of experience working with children and their families in a variety of educational settings, I am evangelical about the power of play to promote learning."
The main concepts explored in this book are examples of Deerings "7 Ways To Play".
1. Chores: not bores
2. 10-second set-ups
3. Invitations to play
4. Invitations to create
5. Make and Take
6. Stay and Play
7. Sanity Savers
As this book has been devised to aid parenting some of these 'ways' are not relevant when looking at play from a teachers point of view. However some of them hold great validity and could easily be applied to a class room scenario.
For example, 4. Invitation to create "The idea of this is not what they make; it's that they make - it's all about the process - giving them the materials and opportunity to explore different media and to get creative without necessarily finishing a piece of art or craft"
I feel this could be a great idea for the start of a lesson plan. Using the idea of inviting the child to be creative and playful but without the time frame or goal of aiming for a finished product. It would be very interesting to see how different children react to this approach.
Although much of this book isn't exactly relevant to my chosen topic I have found it a greatly interesting read.
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