Our fourth and last entry for chapter 1 was written by Mai. I think you'll enjoy reading her perspectives on play, love, and work.
In the first chapter Elkind indicates that he believes that play, love, and work are the three most important essentials for people to have in life. I agree with Elkind because after reading this chapter it helped me understand what a child needs to be able to develop cognitively. I knew that there was more than just learning and teaching children that would assist them in understanding their surroundings. My first impression of play was doing fun activities for self enjoyment during leisure time to get away from any stressful situation. I did not even think play would be such an influential tool until Elkind pointed out that play is a part of the developmental process where you learn how to make sense of the world. This takes me back to my childhood and how I remember play.
According to Piaget’s ideas about cognitive development, infants use senses to understand new objects and what they are, which involves play as well as work. As we grow from infancy through adulthood, we are always discovering new skills to guide us as we go; this has a lot to do with play, love, and work. I look at this as a scientific experiment; in order to know the answer we need to play, or experiment, to find out what works and what does not work. Everyone also needs love to feel needed, whether it is from a partner or a child. When we are loved by others it gives us support and motivation to accomplish something beneficial.
If play, love, and work were missing, it would probably be hard to understand the world. I think that everyone, especially during childhood, should be able to have play, love, and work included in their lives as early as possible because that combination is a positive influence. This made me think of my childhood and what I will do differently with my children. I grew up in a big family with six brothers and three sisters, and because there were so many of us, my parents spent little time playing with us. I think most of my play time came from school and the children in the same apartment complex. We would play being sick and going to the doctor to get well. We imitated what we saw at the doctor’s office because it helped us understand what to do when someone is ill. My parents, being from a different culture, did not know all these child development approaches that could benefit children, so they just raised us like their parents raised them back then. Now, I know how I can better prepare my children through play. I strongly believe that play creates imagination and builds confidence and understanding of the environment. In relation to play in school, work has to be fun for students to learn, and through experiences, they learn how to develop a love for the career they will have in the future as adults.
If one of these three was missing it would not be as fulfilling. Work would be difficult and painful to do alone, as Elkind stated. Love and play combined would just be too effortless without work because the point is to be able to solve problems in life. Play, love, and work are important together because you learn how to adapt to new changes to fit in what is necessary to be successful.
Reading your entry, I agree with you that without play, love, and work, the world would be hard to understand. It would be hard to understand because there wouldn't be any reason for us to do the kind of things we do everyday. Without play, I wouldn't get to explore, experiment, and learn new things on my own. Without love, I wouldn't have any support or encouragement from anyone to make me want to do anything with myself. Finally, without work, what is there to do? Play, love, and work give us reasons to understand the world. - Chai Lee
ReplyDeleteHey Mai, I know exactly how you feel because I too, grew up in a big family. I have three older sisters and three younger brothers. And I can tell you now, it’s not all that great being the middle child because that is when you get the least attention. However, I can relate to you also when you say that you would play House or as we call it in Hmong “Niam Tais Yawm Txiv” with your other siblings and neighbors because I can recall a time when I would play with my sister and cousin from night time morning. We would pretend to go farming with our fake farm tools. Like you said, we obtain imaginations through these imitations and that is how we can understand our surroundings. I agree that we live life through imagination and that is how we all grew up and learn to deal with the real world.
ReplyDeleteLa Vang
Mai,
ReplyDeleteI loved reading your entry! I am glad that you were able to see the benefits play has to offer young children. I too, hope that you are able to utilize the things you are learning from Elkind with your future children.
Although I did not come from as big a family as yours, I did have many neighborhood children to play with. I would also play "pretend grown-ups" with my cousin where we aspired to be anything we wanted-as far as established business people- and tended to be very successful. These “pretend” careers are a great way for children to explore the different wonders of the world(work), develop a great passion for something they might want to do in the future(love) and have a good time(play).
I definitely agreed with your statement about understanding the world if these three aspects of life- play, love, work- were missing. Although they are each their own entity, they work together and form life.
-Lai Robinson