Description of graphical content is included between Description Start and Description End. Transcript Start [ Slide start: ] Content audio described Audio Description: A slide reads. What is play? [ Slide start: ] Content audio described Presented by Patty Obrzut, M.S., O.T.R., Assistant Director Penrickton Center for Blind Children. At the bottom are logos for Penrickton Center for Blind Children, Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, and Perkins School for the Blind. Patty Obrzut, Assistant Director of Penrickton Center for Blind Children, is seated at a table in a studio. Patty Obrzut: Okay, now I have another question for you. What do children do all day? Anybody who's under the age of four and five, if you look around, what are they doing? It's simple answer and it's not anything that anybody doesn't know. Kids play all day, right? So why do they play, instead of work? Because they're kids, most people will say. But what I want you to remember is that play is really a child's work. That's how they learn all of their skills throughout life. So, what I want to talk about next is, the different definitions for play, so that you can understand and recognize what play is. So, what is the definition of play? There's many different definitions out there, but I'm going to use one from Florrie, from 1981; and it's about six characteristics that play has. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Content: Play is a complex set of behaviors characterized by fun and spontaneity Description End: So, the first characteristic about play is, it has to be fun. It's not work! Why do you play basketball or why do you play tennis in your spare time? Not because someone's making you, but usually because you enjoy it. [ Slide end: ] So, remember when children are participating in activities, at a young age, they do it because they want to, not because someone's making them. So, all activities should be fun, if they're play. [ Slide start: ] Content read by speaker The second characteristic is that play can be sensory, it can be neuromuscular, or it can be cognitive, or it can be any combination of those three things. [ Slide end: ] So, if you think about small children, if they're out on the playground, they're usually jumping around, swinging, running around; and then they may stop what they're doing and play in the sandbox, and do more fine motor activities. Or maybe they sit down and they color in a coloring book. But they don't run around, color and play in the sandbox all at the same time, at the same moment. They have to do one thing, then another thing. But as you get older, you start to be able to do two or three things at the same time. So play can be sensory, it can be neuromuscular, or it can be cognitive, or it can be any combination of those three things. [ Slide start: ] Description Start: Content: Play involves repetition of experience, exploration, experimentation, and imitation of one's surroundings. Description End: The next thing is that play involves repetition. We already talked about that a little bit with doing the-- throwing the ball-- the ball activity. But remember, kids have to repeat their experiences, they have to explore, they have to experiment, and they imitate what they see in their surroundings. [ Slide end: ] So, first of all for play, we've talked about three things. It has to be fun. It has to be characterized by sensory, motor, or cognitive activity. And it involves repetition. [ Slide start: ] Contents read by speaker The next thing that play involves, is that it proceeds within its own space and boundaries. [ Slide end: ] If I took this room and got ride of the table, the chair, the lamps, the lights, and got rid of everything I had in an empty room; and brought a two-year old into this room. What do you think they would do? They'd probably run around, maybe do somersaults on the ground, role around on the ground. They don't need to be told where to play. They just play in any environment at any time. So play can happen anywhere. It should never happen in just a certain of the room or the house. Play's supposed to be fun. It can happen outside, inside, at a restaurant, whether you like to, or not, as a parent. So play proceeds within its own space and boundaries. [ Slide start: ] Content read by speaker Play also functions as an agent for integrating the internal and external worlds. So, if I ask you this question. [ Slide end: ] At what age does a child start to play? Most people will think, 'Well, maybe a child starts to play at birth.' Actually, kids start to play a lot earlier than that. They start to play in utero. So, if you think a baby being-- before they're born. They're kicking against the uterine wall. They're figuring out, you know, what's that boundary like? Or what happens when I kick my legs about- against that uterine wall? And now, after they're born, when you're holding them in your arms, they start to push against you. Or if you lay them in a crib, where does the kid always end up when you put him in the crib? They always make their way to the side of the crib. And why do they do that? They need to compare it to what they knew before. The uterine wall was a small, enclosed area, and, now, they want to find where their boundaries are, so they move to the side of the crib. So, kids always have to integrate what happened internally and externally. If a child plays inside the house, they also need to understand what that experience is like when they go outside the house. And I always comment because-- I work with special needs children, and I'm always curious that a lot of our kids are scared to be outside. If you take off their shoes and socks and put them on the grass, they tend to pull their feet away, or their hands away. Or if you take them outside to play in the snow, they'll actually retract their hands from the snow, because it's so unfamiliar to them. So, remember that whatever the kids do at home, they need to do at school. What they do at school, they should do at home. What they do inside a building, they should do outside a building, because play functions as an agent for integrating the internal and external worlds. [ Slide start: ] Contents read by speaker And then, lastly, play follows a sequential developmental progression. [ Slide end: ] You're going to hear me say this over and over and over again. But you need to learn to do things in a certain sequence. A child learns to roll over before they learn to sit up. A child learns to sit up before they learn to walk. And you really have difficulty learning to walk, if you can't hold your head up. So, play follows a sequential progression and it's so important that everyone understand what is typical development. So, I'm going to encourage you, no matter what, after you listen to this lecture, to go out and try to understand what typical development is. And if don't know, go out and watch a typically growing child. And watch what they do and how they learn new skills. But remember, they're learning those skills through play. Now, it's really interesting, because at Penrickton Center, where I work. We're always having a good time, the kids are playing, and they're learning through activity. And I'll have someone come up to me and say, 'Well, yeah, it's great that you guys are playing, but how come-- when are you going to make those kids work? When are you going to teach them something?' So, remember that the kids are learning while they- while they play. There's a great quote by Mary Reilly. She wrote a book on play and learning, and it was written in 1974, but I love her quote, and I just want to let you know what it says. [ Slide start: ] Contents read by speaker 'Play is often overlooked as the key that helps unlock the doors to learning." [ Slide end: ] Many people view play as fun activity, and they don't think the kids should be playing all day. They want the children to work. And what I'm saying to you is that if kids are playing, they are working. It's the primary activity that they do throughout their lives. So, if you have a child with special needs, and they don't know how to play independently, you have a problem, because that child is not actively learning. So how can we get them to play independently? There's another quote from Mary Reilly that I really enjoy, that I want to share with you. [ Slide start: ] Contents read by speaker 'Spontaneous attention is fundamental to all learning. We cannot force [special needs] children to attend, for attention is a selective activity of the mind.' [ Slide end: ] So, what does that mean? At home, if you don't care about what I'm saying, you have the right to get up and leave the room. And you have the right to turn this video off, if you want to, because your attention to this activity is your choice. And you have the right to make that choice. So, when special needs children are participating in an activity, they have the right to say, no. They have the right to get up and walk away. They have the right to pull their hand away from you. They have the right to not participate in the activity, because attention is a select activity of the mind. So, you as home could be listening to this video, and go, 'Yeah, she's a little boring, I think I'll take a little five-minute nap.' You have the right to do that. What's interesting, is you that-- you gather a bunch of children in a classroom setting, or in an activity, and all of a sudden you have a child who starts to fall asleep. And people either say, 'Oh, you know, they're probably tired.' Or, 'I need to wake that child up, because they need pay attention to me.' And maybe it's because the child just finds the activity kind of boring and they fall asleep, because there's nothing else to do. And they don't really want to pay attention to the activity. So, remember, spontaneous attention is fundamental to all learning. Your job is to make children want to pay attention to you. And that means, if you have get up and run around and act goofy, that's what you need to do. If you need to play with ping pong balls and throw them all over the room, so that that child will want to pay attention to your activity, that's what you need to do. Because, attention is a selective activity of mind, and everyone has the right to pay attention, or not. [ Slide start: ] Content audio described Audio Description: A slide reads: Active Learning Space. www.activelearningspace.org, September 2016. Fade to black.