Friedrich Froebel’s Ideas On the Role of Play In the Early Years Education Essay

Play is probably the very first thing that comes to our minds when we start thinking ab verboten our tykehood. Certainly its hard to rebuke about early years without referring to athletics, as it is a part of childrens natural behaviour, embedded in their spontaneous day-to-day heart. The fact that the sword gip is enjoyable is gener anyy agreed, but the value of fiddle in school, however, has been in the centre of much delve in the past (and it seems like that debate is still going on today).The roots of contemporary understanding of the contribution of play in early childhood education extend clearly to Friedrich Froebel, a German educator, who organized and systematized the methods of early childhood in concord 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 incite the child to grow and develop in the most favourable manner. girlish children are to be regarded and tended essentially like plants.Like these, if they were given the function 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 one 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 home(a) self which springs from the pauperization of that inner living consciousness to realize itself outwardly. (H. Bowen, 1907, p.116) Froebel made a square contribution 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 began to act with the world, and he reasoned that since the interaction was mostly in the f orm of play, the substance to modernize a child was through play, as a direction of awakening and developing the active and presentative side of his nature wherefore none, non 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 just beat(p) 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. finished play he comes to know th e external world, the physical qualities of the objects which surround him, their motions, action, and reception 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 give birth and extend childrens play to help 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.