Sunday, March 8, 2009

Week Six: Toys


Like many girls, my favorite toys growing up were dolls. I asked for new ones every Christmas, and we had huge boxes full of dolls and their "stuff" in the basement. I still remember many of them as if they were dear friends: Joyce, my Cabbage Patch Kid; Sean, my Dreamland Baby; Megan, my "Teeny Tiny Preemie." I also had a whole array of Barbie dolls, including a really cool one my mom bought me when she was pregnant with my brother which had a tiny baby you could hide in her retractable belly. "House" was absolutely my favorite game as a kid, and my friend Shelly and I played it daily. Dolls gave us the freedom to play endless iterations of the same game. While playing "House" Shelly and I took care of kids and pets, sent them to school, and survived tornadoes.

According to this week's reading from Tooning In, as well as other articles I have read, play is an important learning process for children. Often play is in imitation of adult activities, which allows them to have imaginative rehearsals for their later life. There is an evolutionary factor at play here: children like me who played parenting games as kids are historically more likely to raise healthy children who are also good parents, continuing their line of decendants. Playing kickball on the playground helps kids learn the important skill of negotiating rules, a skill they will use daily later in life. Play "enables children to make sense of their world, develops social and cultural understandings, provides opportunities to meet and solve problems, fosters flexible and divergent thinking, allows children to express their thoughts and feelings, develops language and literacy, and develops concepts in all academic areas" (White 145).

While the more "modern" toys definitely have the potential to increase cognitive development (video games, as discussed earlier, help develop spatial reasoning among other things), I would argue that it is the more low-tech, open-ended toys that have the greatest potential for learning. Parents often joke that their children are more interested in the box the toy came in than the toy itself, and I believe there is definite wisdom in that statement. While modern toys often come with "one way to play," there are hundreds of possibilities for engagement with a cardboard box. As an experienced babysitter who has spent more than her fair share exploring toys with kids, I can tell you that my kids will have toys with the greatest number of ways to engage: dolls, blocks, play food, musical instruments, toy cars and ramps, bats and balls. As the article discusses, children need "an environment in which children have the freedom to construct their own dramas built out of their own interpretations of reality" (147).

Vygotsky and other learning theorists have argued that there is definitely a social component to learning. I truly do not believe that the noisy toys with lots of buttons that claim to teach your children the alphabet will actually live up to their claims. Children need to explore literacy with their parents, teachers and peers. Literacy and numeracy will not just come to kids without the scaffolding and social support of an actual person. In addition, computer games should be considered learning supports to a school curriculum, not school itself. In my own classroom, I believe it is important to incorporate toys (are there any language arts toys? Magnetic Poetry, maybe. I'm open to suggestions), games and play, but not at the expense of actual teacher interaction and teaching.

4 comments:

Katy-Lou said...

Your experiences growing up sounds almost exactly like mine! I remember one day sitting down to my fake cereal and coffee and "reading" the newspaper and loving the feeling of being just like a grown up. My three younger sisters and I would also play house all the time, and if we weren't playing house, we were playing Barbies that were playing house! Great post this week and I can't wait to chat with you tomorrow about toys :)

Joe - Wednesday's Child said...

Great post! For more amazing information on play, go to the following Web site and download the unedited interview mp3 for transfer to your Ipod or a disk. Great travel listening, or listening with a friend...

http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/play/

libgyrl said...

Excellent point about low-tech offering more open ended play and learning opportunities. I think of all the fun I had just playing with pots and wooden spoons!

Sadako said...

Cool post--I felt the same way about dolls too. I had so many Barbies. And a couple American Girl dolls as well...wow, that takes me back.