A Unique Child: Outdoors - Practice in pictures - Play mates

Jaleel is 20 months old and his first language is French. He loves playing in the nursery garden and enjoys using the open-ended resources, such as pots and pans, for his own games. He seems to be using the grass in his pan as pretend food. He takes the pan and goes to sit next to Willow, aged 17 months. Their growing friendship is encouraged by Karmel, the practitioner. Jaleel offers Willow some of his grass food. A little later they sit facing each other and Willow wants the wooden spoon and pan that Jaleel is playing with. The practitioner solves the potential conflict by getting another spoon and pan so that they can continue to play happily. Sometime later, Jaleel hears Willow crying and once again he offers her some of his grass 'food'. Even though he doesn't actually give it to her, Willow is calmed by his offer.

Good Practice

1. Jaleel using the grass in his pan as 'food' is a great example of symbolic play.

He knows it is grass, probably because he has had a lot of experience of it, exploring grass in many different ways both at home and at nursery. Having this confident knowledge about grass now enables him to pretend that it is something else.

Piaget suggested that symbolic play like this tends to emerge around 18 months, when children begin to use an object and pretend it is something else. Symbolic play might also involve pretending about something that isn't there - for example, pretending to 'pour' water from a kettle, or to eat imaginary food from a spoon.

Although Jaleel doesn't put the grass to his mouth, there is something in the way he handles the grass and puts it in and out of the pot that strongly suggests he is pretending it is food. In another sequence a little later, he notices the dinner trolley pass by on its way into the nursery. He watches and then covers the 'food' in his pan with another pot. The observant practitioner responds by asking Jaleel if he is 'keeping his food warm', reinforcing his experience and growing understanding of what happens at dinnertime in the nursery. Jaleel is not yet able to verbalise any of this, but his symbolic play gives us very strong clues about how much he is taking in of the world around him.

2. The resources that stimulated Jaleel to play in this increasingly complex way were just simple, inexpensive 'real-life' pots and pans that he would know from home. Even more importantly, they are an 'open-ended' resource.

This means they can be used in lots of different ways and not just for one kind of play activity. Earlier, Jaleel had seen older children banging the pots and pans with spoons to create rhythms and sounds, and he experimented with this too. But in this sequence, he is very interested in them as containers for putting 'food' in and out of and for carrying it around.

Open-ended resources like this make the best equipment for young children to play with and are an essential part of both the indoor and outdoor environment.

3. Jaleel is very interested in the other children around him at nursery and Willow is becoming a special friend.

They play alongside each other with the pots and pans, but Jaleel, in particular, is very aware of her presence and is keen to interact with her. Elinor Goldschmied studied the interactions of young babies playing alongside each other with treasure baskets and observed how interested they are in each other. 'Babies, though intent upon handling their own chosen objects, are very clearly not only aware of each other, but for much of the time are engaged in active interchanges' (People Under Three - Young Children in Daycare, 1995).

She observed how they also engaged in 'intense looking'. They smiled and made noises at each other, as well as touching each other and their toys. She believed the development of these kinds of positive interaction developed from a child's early experiences with their families and carers. She drew comparisons with babies and young children in orphanages and institutions, who, although they spent all their time in one room with other children, rarely interacted with each other. Babies who receive lots of warm, caring and affectionate attention from their caregivers seem to be positively stimulated to seek further social relationships.

4. Jaleel is already showing strong signs of his developing social intelligence as he seeks to interact with Willow. He offers his grass to involve her in the game and to comfort her when she is upset.

We now have neurological evidence that seems to support theories about the development of social intelligence. Responding well to the emotional cues of others is an important feature, and neuroscientists now believe they can identify the parts of the brain that play an important role in this.

Margot Sunderland explains this well in The Science of Parenting as she describes how the creation of pathways in two parts of the frontal brain help us to read accurately the social cues of others and to be able to negotiate and collaborate with one another.

These pathways, in the orbitofrontal and ventromedial lobes of the higher brain, are set down in our early life when we receive positive physical and emotional feedback from our caregivers. The pathways that develop later to link these areas with lower parts of the brain are also very important, as they help us with impulse control - to be able to stop and think, before we do something.

5. We don't expect babies to have impulse control, and yet we spend a lot of time and effort encouraging young children to share, long before they are developmentally able to.

Being able to share demands being able to shift from our lower brain that instinctively acts ('That's mine - I'm hanging on to it'), to our higher brain that can weigh up the situation and take another person's needs into consideration ('I can appreciate you want it too - OK, we can share').

We can only make that shift when the pathways between those two parts of our brain have been laid down, and this is rarely before age four. The practitioner here has the most sensible response to their conflict over the pot and spoon - she gets another set so both children have what they need.

Being able to provide lots of the same thing is a good reason for choosing inexpensive resources! It means plenty of choice is available and reduces the frustrations that come with waiting and turn-taking, which at this age would have interfered greatly with the quality and spontaneity of the free-flow play enjoyed by Willow and Jaleel.

Further information

The stills are taken from Siren Films' 'Toddlers Outdoors - Play, Learning and Development'.

For more information, visit Siren Films at www.sirenfilms.co.uk or call 0191 232 7900

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

• Film notes: Toddlers Outdoors - Play Learning and Development by Jan White

• Playing and Learning Outdoors: Making Provision for High Quality Experiences in the Outdoor Environment by Jan White (Nursery World/Routledge Essential Guides for Early Years Practitioners)

• People Under Three - Young Children in Daycare by Elinor Goldschmied and Sonia Jackson (Routledge)

• The Science of Parenting by Margot Sunderland (Dorling Kindersley)

LINKS TO THE EYFS

• UC 1.1 Child Development

• PR 2.1 Respecting Each Other

• EE 3.3 The Learning Environment

• L&D 4.1 Play and Exploration