Training Talk - Exploring Play

Children at St. Mary’s C.B.S. primary school in Clonmel, Ireland have always played, of course. But since their teacher, Elaine Morrison, completed online training course Exploring Play: The Importance of Play in Everyday Life, offered by the University of Sheffield, she has been allowing them to ‘direct their own play a little bit more’.

The pre-school facility is termed an early intervention class, which caters for 12 three- to six-year-olds with an Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnosis. Ms Morrison did the training in 2020 on the FutureLearn portal, over seven weeks with three hours of weekly study.

The course covers topics including the history and diversity of play, play in indoor and outdoor environments, disability and modern technology. It delivers these through videos and research articles, with students doing a quiz at the end. It encourages participants to engage in online commentary with other students.

Ms Morrison says the course taught her that practitioners should not impose their own views of how to play. ‘We have become more open and relaxed,’ she says. ‘The stimulation that comes from play helps to form brain circuits. We can’t control that – it has to be something that’s organic from the children themselves.’

The course also prompted her to develop the setting’s outdoor space into a more natural, sensory play area. ‘Nature is really important for children with disability,’ she says. ‘The space is purely a lump of grass with lots of mud and a little hill. They just adore it.’

Having believed that too much play on electronic devices was bad for children, she now sees technology’s value. ‘If you restrict children too much, you’re actually preventing them from accessing a whole side of learning that they would never experience,’ she says.

Ms Morrison adds, ‘Play is not just something that kids do. It’s as important as breathing.’

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