Play

What is play?

Play can be quite hard to define because of its huge scope and importance. Perry Else, a leading play expert, has defined 10 characteristics of play:

• Play is a process, not a specific action

• Play is self-chosen, with a willingness to participate

• Active engagement, attentive response to feedback

• Sufficiently safe, physically and psychologically

• A whole body/mind experience

• Play has a timeless, lost-in-the-moment quality

• Play is curiosity – it attracts us to newness or new experiences

• Play is pleasurable

• Play is different for each person

• Satisfaction is self-defined, with no extrinsic goals.

These 10 characteristics accurately sum up the many varying definitions that exist for play. Maybe the fact that play is different for each person is the reason why it can be so hard to define. Whatever the definition, play is vital to human development. Our ancestors didn’t have schools with classrooms and teachers, they learnt purely through observation and play. As Maria Montessori famously claimed, “play is children’s work”. Through play, we can try out roles and ideas, explore our feelings, make sense of our experiences and become human. Play is so important that it even appears as Article 31 in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: “Every child has the right to relax, play and take part in a wide range of cultural and artistic activities” (United Nations 1990). The natural world, unsurprisingly, is the most natural place for play, which is why play is such a crucial component at Wildwood Nature School.

The benefits of play 

Play is absolutely vital to the process of learning. Not only is play the best way to enter into a state of flow but because play includes all parts of a child’s being, learning that happens during play is retained far more effectively than in formal education (95% compared to 3-5%). But play is important not only for learning, but also for brain development and health. Research has shown (see references) that play enhances the development of neurons in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for planning, empathy, problem-solving, emotional regulation, focussing and coordination, otherwise known as our executive functioning skills. Cortisol (‘the stress hormone’) levels drastically reduce when children are engaged in play activities. The combined effects of play on reducing stress and increasing the production of chemicals associated with happiness and positive emotions (e.g. opioids, oxytocin, serotonin) lead to an improvement in immune system functioning as well. In addition, play supports the key social skills of empathy, problem-solving, cooperation and resilience.

Gordon Neufeld, a leading developmental psychologist, has stated that “all development and growth happen through play, not work”. He argues that children need emotional playgrounds to explore emotions in an unreal situation where there’s no high stakes e.g. stories, music, drama, dance. Furthermore, Michael Rosen, renowned author and former children’s laureate, says, “play is at the heart of creativity, music, dance, song, poetry and art”. He explains that without play we wouldn’t have the work of Surrealist artists such as Salvador Dalí or the word play of William Shakespeare. So, play is clearly an essential ingredient to human development. And this is why play deprivation can lead to anxiety, depression, helplessness, narcissism, aggression, social isolation, misery, psychopathologies and suicide. Sadly, children in mainstream schools today are not given anywhere near enough time to play.

Play types

So what does play look like? Bob Hughes defined 16 types of play in his 1996 book A Playworker’s Taxonomy of Play Types (Play Scotland 2022). Below are the 16 play types, with a brief explanation of each:

1.     Communication play - play using words, or nuances for example, mime, jokes, play acting, mickey taking, singing, debate, poetry. Communication play uses the whole body – from facial expressions, hand gestures, body demonstrating and vocalising.

2.     Creative play - play which allows a new response, the transformation of information, awareness of new connections, with an element of surprise.

3.     Deep play - play which allows the child to encounter risky or even potentially life-threatening experiences, to develop survival skills and conquer fear.

4.     Dramatic play - play which dramatizes events in which the child is not a direct participator.

5.     Exploratory play - play to access factual information consisting of manipulative behaviours such as handling, throwing, banging or mouthing objects.

6.     Fantasy play - play which rearranges the world in the child’s way, a way which is unlikely to occur, for example being a superhero or sitting on a cloud.

7.     Imaginative play - play where the conventional rules, which govern the physical world, do not apply, for example pretending to be an animal, or having a make-believe friend to being an object i.e. a tree.

8.     Locomotor play - movement in any or every direction for its own sake, for example playing chase, jumping, skipping and climbing trees.

9.     Mastery play - control of the physical and affective ingredients of the environments, for example making a dam in a stream, building a bonfire and digging holes in the earth or sand.

10.  Object play - play which uses infinite and interesting sequences of hand-eye manipulations and movements i.e. examining an item and looking into how and why something works.

11.  Recapitulative play - play that allows the child to explore ancestry, history, rituals, stories, rhymes, fire and darkness. Enables children to access play of earlier human evolutionary stages.

12.  Role play - play exploring ways of being, although not normally of an intense personal, social, domestic or interpersonal nature.  This could be a child pretending to be driving a car, ironing, piloting a plane.

13.  Rough and tumble play - close encounter play which is less to do with fighting and more to do with touching, tickling, gauging relative strength. Discovering physical flexibility and the exhilaration of display.  This will not involve any deliberate hurting but children should be laughing and having fun.

14.  Social play - play during which the rules and criteria for social engagement and interaction can be revealed, explored and amended.  This could be playing a game together, building an item together or creating something together.

15.  Socio-dramatic play - the enactment of real and potential experiences of an intense personal, social, domestic or interpersonal nature.  This could be playing at mums and dads, or playing house.

16.  Symbolic play - play which allows control, gradual exploration and increased understanding without the risk of being out of one’s depth. 

Play and risk-taking

Taking risks is a natural part of play. Observing very young children, it’s easy to see just how innate this risk-taking behaviour is to play. Even learning to walk is incredibly risky but babies all try. They know it’s the only way to learn. Risk-taking is one of the core Forest School principles because of the recognition of how important it is to learning and development. Even the UK Health & Safety Executive (2012) recognises the importance of risk-taking: “Play is great for children’s well-being and development. When planning and providing play opportunities the goal is not to eliminate risk, but to weigh up the risks and benefits. No child will learn about risk if they are wrapped up in cotton wool.”

This emphasis on taking risks is balanced by the requirement to ensure that all sessions and activities have been carefully risk-assessed by our teachers. A thorough risk-benefit analysis takes into account any hazards in the environment, the particular activity and level of competence or skill required, and the level of risk to the particular learner group, as well as the benefits that will be gained. When this risk-benefit analysis is in place, it can ease the practitioner’s mind that they have considered all options. They can then hold a space in which learners feel safe to take risks and to assess the risk for themselves. “The capacity to feel emotionally safe and to bounce back from negative experiences builds a greater internal risk bandwidth that promotes curiosity, thinking out of the box, experimenting and creativity” (Cree & Robb).

Tom Senninger’s social learning model shows that learning takes place in the learning zone, between our comfort and panic zone. Taking risks happens outside of our comfort zone, otherwise there’d be no real risk involved. But it’s important to support learners to recognise where their panic zone is, because this is where fear takes over and our brains can go into fight/flight/freeze mode where no learning takes place and in fact can lead to the experience being traumatic. That’s why play is so important – a learner who is playing often won’t go beyond their learning zone into their panic zone because then it would no longer be play, i.e. it would no longer be pleasurable. It’s the role of the adult or leader to get to know each learner well, as the limits of the comfort, learning and panic zones are different for each person.

Ellen Sandseter’s has defined risky play types. These include:

•    great heights e.g. climbing trees to gain a bird’s eye view

•    rapid speeds e.g. swinging on the hammock or rope swing, sliding down a muddy
  slope, running fast in chasing games

•  dangerous tools e.g. using peelers and whittling knives

•    dangerous elements e.g. fire

•    rough and tumble e.g. play fighting or chasing games, children often preferring to
  be the one in the most vulnerable position i.e. being chased as it offers most risk
  and require more skill to overcome

•    disappearing/getting lost e.g. hide and seek

• taking emotional risks e.g. asking for help, showing you’re scared. All help to build
  relationship and underpin the ability to engage in risky play (this last play type was
  added by Cree & Robb 2021)
  
  

Play cycles

The ludic cycle:

The ludic cycle above (Ludic means play in Greek and Latin), demonstrates the common way that play occurs. The metalude refers to each person’s play drive – all of their experiences, knowledge about and relationship to play. When the internal play drive becomes externalised, this is known as a play cue and could be a look, gesture, words, action or presentation of an object. In the example above, a child picks up a stick as their play cue. When another child or adult, with their own metalude, responds to the initial play cue, this is called a play return. In this example, the other child picks up a stick. From there, multiple cues and returns will ensue e.g. they might start a game of hitting the sticks against each other, or throwing the sticks against a tree. When absorbed in their play, they are in a state of flow. The play frame refers to the space and time in which the play occurs.

The play frame will naturally decay over time when the play is no longer satisfying because the initial need that drove the play has been met, so the children might get bored and wander off, or they might decide to join another game. The play frame can be adulterated, when an adult comes by with good intentions and tries to shift the play towards their own agenda e.g. educational objectives. The play frame can be annihilated when an adult cannot see the benefits of play and decides the play is too risky, or possibly ends the play because of time or other constraints.

Some children can be quite skilled at observing others at play, picking up on their play cues and inserting themselves smoothly into the play frame. However, others can struggle with this. Some might not be able to enter into the frame at all. When adults try to insert other children into the play frame, this can end up breaking the frame. Some children demonstrate dysplay, or dysfunctional play. Their cues or returns might be too big, fast or loud for the play that’s already taking place. Sometimes a child might give out a play cue, but then move on so quickly they don’t allow a chance for the cue to be returned. This shows they haven’t been given the time and space to play and understand the pattern of cue and response. Adults can support children who demonstrate dysplay by getting to know them well, and so pick up on their play cues. They can also redirect a dysplay cue, show how the environment can return a cue or help them to see and understand others’ cues correctly.

At Wildwood Nature School, the role of the adult is to hold and contain the edges of the play frame, protecting that space and time and allowing play to continue, as well as being aware of the effect of their own presence on play and choosing interventions that are able to manage risk while also enabling children to extend their play.

The ‘Nature Play Cycle’ is a circular continuum which represents the types of play (in terms of who is initiating and leading) that might occur in a Forest School session at our school. The normal pattern of a cycle might start with adult led/directed (e.g. a game, a story, teaching a craft or skill) and flow to adult initiated (e.g. a springboard or suggestion) to child led (e.g. during free flow, learners can choose what to do) to child initiated/supported by adult (e.g. child decides to set up a tarp den but needs adult support) and the end of the session might return to adult led (e.g. a reflection). The varying interactions create different ‘feels’ e.g. safe but open to more self-doubt during adult-led activities towards a community state of flow with a feel of equity and empowerment during child-initiated, adult-supported activities. They explain that the overall aim is for the child or learner to be in control of their own learning and the adult is ‘on tap’ to support where necessary, rather than ‘on top’ of the play process.

Play is a huge topic and one that the team at Wildwood Nature School are constantly learning about because we know just how important it is for children’s well-being and learning, as well as being so much fun.

References

Cree, J. & Robb, M (2021). The Essential Guide to Forest School and Nature Pedagogy. Oxon: Routledge.

Health & Safety Executive (2012). Children’s Play and Leisure – Promoting a Balanced Approach. https://www.hse.gov.uk/entertainment/childrens-play-july-2012.pdf [accessed 19.04.22].

Horseman, L. & Cree, J. (2022). The Ludic process, Nature Play Cycle and how we interact with play at Forest School (Forest School Association webinar, 13.04.2022).

Neufeld, G. 2021 ‘Child-rearing that does not traumatise’ talk https://wisdomoftrauma.com/hub/ [accessed 12.10.21].

Play Scotland (2022a). Play Scotland Play Types Poster. https://www.playscotland.org/resources/play-types-poster/ [accessed 18.04.22].

Play Scotland (2022b). Guidance on Playwork.

https://www.playscotland.org/play/playful-learning/information-on-playwork/ [accessed 19.04.22].

Potasz, C., Varela, M. J. V. De, Carvalho, L. C. De, Prado, L. F. Do, & Prado, G. F. Do. (2013). Effect of play activities on hospitalized children’s stress: a randomized clinical trial. Scandinavian Journal of Occupational Therapy Scandinavian Journal of Occupational Therapy, 20(1), 71–79.

Rosen, M. (2019). Michael Rosen’s Book of Play. London: Profile Books Ltd.

Schaefer, C. E., & Drewes, A. A. (2014). The therapeutic powers of play: 20 core agents of change. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

United Nations (1990). A summary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
https://www.unicef.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/UNCRC_summary-1_1.pdf [accessed 19.04.22].

Vaughan, Christopher., & Brown, Stuart. (2014). Play: how it shapes the brain, opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul. Avery.

Yogman, M., Garner, A., Hutchinson, J., Hirsh-Pasek, K., & Golinkoff, R. M. (2018). The Power of Play: A Pediatric Role in Enhancing Development in Young Children. Pediatrics Pediatrics, 142(3), e20182058.