It takes all types

Not too long ago I observed some children playing in a muddy hole pretending to be archaeologists. Each child seemed to have a particular role; some were busy digging at the soft earth with their spoons until they would find something of interest, while others washed the artefacts and delivered them to the 'museum' - which in this case was a parachute tied to a tree branch.

Once in the museum, another group of children began to label the found items, which included old bones, toys and broken pottery, and place them on a display table. Another group of children charged entrance fees and issued tickets to visitors, while others acted as museum curators. All in all, every child seemed to be playing their part in this playful episode, an episode that went on for an entire afternoon and was spontaneous; it was neither initiated by an adult, nor intended as part of the planning for that day.

This reflection identifies a kind of play theme that was started by a pair of children just digging in the hole, but beneath the theme, which seemed to be something directly out of the TV programme 'Time Team', there are a number of different forms, or types of play taking place. Realising that these forms exist and enabling them to be clearly accessible to all children in your setting is one of the main functional roles of the playworker - to provide opportunities for children to engage in a variety of play types.

As part of Out of School's 'play theory' series I will be presenting some of the play types and showing how they contribute to aspects of children's development, and how they manifest themselves as playful behaviour so that you can observe them in your own settings, and perhaps include them in your planning and evaluating strategies.

Play forms

Different forms of play have been recognised by playworkers and researchers for many years (see recommended reading). They often take place simultaneously and cannot always be identified as distinct and different from one another. For example, from my reflection above I can identify a selection of play forms that seem to work well together. These include: * Mastery play, whereby the children are engaging with, and making changes to the environment in some way, for example building the 'museum' against the tree.

* Object play, whereby children and adults visiting the 'museum' were investigating and manipulating the objects discovered during the excavation.

* Symbolic play, whereby the entire episode was symbolic of 'archaeology', or where the parachute was symbolic of a museum building.

* Role play, whereby each child has some sort of specialised or assigned role, whether archaeologist, curator, artefact restorer or ticket-sales person.

* Social play, whereby all children were collectively working together to enable the play theme to occur and continue; sharing ideas, communicating with each other, and extending the play opportunities.

* Communication play, whereby lots of verbal and non-verbal acts took place between children, or children and adults, including archaeology 'speak'

which was incorporated into the whole play theme.

* Creative play, whereby children, especially the instigators of this playful theme, were creatively designing the play narrative and also involving others as creators within the play, including creative use of resources and props, and creative thinking.

* Exploratory play, whereby children were gaining factual information through the exploratory nature of excavating and investigating historical routes, including exploring the possibilities of items found, for example bones from birds would become dinosaur remains, toys were Victorian memorabilia, and broken pottery had either a Roman, Viking, or ice-age heritage.

Recognising and understanding these forms of play enables playworkers to provide for children's holistic play development, to cater for a wide selection of play needs, and assist with planning, assessing and evaluating the service we provide. This way, we are able to offer children access to a full and rich diet of play in a well resourced, freely accessible and freely chosen play environment, something which underpins playwork philosophy, but which is also recognised in quality assurance programmes such as London Play's Quality in Play scheme.

EXPLORATORY PLAY

Right from birth it would seem that children are 'hard-wired' in some biological sense to interact with their immediate environment. They want to negotiate, discover and explore sensory stimulation as part of some inherent drive to learn. This can be clearly seen in children engaged in exploratory play whereby usually - but not always - it is a process of experimentation and means for accessing factual information about the world.

Exploratory play acts as an umbrella for many play types, including mastery play, locomotor play, social play, recapitulative play, and as examined below, object play. It can be observed through the actions of children manipulating objects, such as with block play and construction materials, or through investigation of environmental spaces, resources, and other players. It has at its core a sense of curiosity and stimulus seeking, ensuring that all children, no matter what their cultural, societal or ecological heritage engage with the world around them so as to develop personal growth and knowledge of the world in which they reside.

Exploratory play can be considered as a survival tool for the human species; a tool that enabled our earliest ancestors to explore the uses of sticks and stones as weapons for hunting, or as implements for cooking.

This 'simple' exploratory behaviour has evolved to be recorded in historical events such as the industrial revolution, or the advent of scientific enquiry, or more noticeable today, information and communications technology. Exploratory play helps foster the scientists, engineers, artists, explorers and philosophers of tomorrow: therefore it should feature as a key form of play in children's daily lives.

Play environment Because this type of play engages children's curiosity and natural urge to explore, the environment that accommodates it needs to offer a multitude of potential 'explorations'. Children should have regular access to natural environments as well as fabricated ones. Theme parks and adventure playgrounds may be suitably designed for stimulating children's interest and curiosity, but the more they are utilised the less curious they become, which is why so many theme parks are continuously introducing new rides and themes, so as to maintain interest in the products and services they provide.

Natural environments on the other hand are particularly good for maintaining children's curiosity, partly because they adapt and recreate themselves with every season and, as a result, offer children a continually changing play environment, but also because they are 'gift bearing' in the sense that they provide a myriad of ' loose parts', therefore enabling players to explore the uses of sticks and stones like their early ancestors, or to produce craft items and artwork. What is more, natural environments provide for flexible modifications, as with children damning up streams or making dens - the type of flexible play that just wouldn't happen in a theme park, and which to some degree is fairly limited in the average adventure playground.

PLAYWORKERS

For the most part playworkers will be providing resources which engage children in exploratory play, such as puzzles, semi- and unstructured drama, construction materials, and 'odds and ends' like watches, broken video recorders, telephones and gadgets. They will also make continual modifications to the play environment so as to refresh and stimulate various modes of play, which may involve landscaping and major construction, or perhaps more cost effective, simply mean moving tables and chairs and altering locations for storage facilities.

More importantly, however, playworkers will grant permission for exploratory play to manifest itself. For example, enabling males to dress up in typically female clothing, or females to partake in rough and tumble play through careful and sensitive involvement. This should include the support of social interactions such as friendship or relationship forming, all of which are a form of socio-exploratory play.

OBJECT PLAY

Children are fascinated by all sorts of objects and seem to require no persuasion from adults to engage with them. The newborn infant quickly discovers how much can be learnt about an object by putting it in their mouth. They also soon develop the knowledge that just because an object cannot be seen doesn't mean it no longer exists, or that some objects seem to have specified uses, while others are used for a number of different tasks.

Playing with objects helps the child not only learn about the object itself, but assists in the forming of questions about the object, the object's immediate environment, the uses it has, and outcome of the child's own actions upon the object. It is a process of discovery. For example, imagine a child digging about in the dirt where they find a broken piece of pottery. The child will study the object with intense interest and will initially focus on its shape, texture, colour and other physical characteristics. The child may then extend their interest by imagining from what object this broken fragment belonged: a plate, cup or bowl, while continually posing questions and, based on existing knowledge of such matters, putting answers to those questions.

The child may also consider the object's immediate environment; how did it get here? How long has it been buried? Who did it belong to? The sort of questions which may trigger a playful episode of treasure hunting, or thematic play such as being pirates or palaeontologists; play which gives the new-found object a multitude of uses.

Finally the child may consider their own actions upon the object, such as smashing it into smaller bits with another object, a rock for example, or cleaning and polishing it so as to preserve, or wear as a trophy.

Object play as already mentioned is one aspect of exploratory play, in the sense that children explore objects through manipulation and co-ordination of hand-eye sequences. For the most part, and this is especially noticeable in very young children, object play is repetitive in nature and is highly focused, but as children become older they tend to require objects that maintain a sense of novelty and mystery, pretty much the effect given by the Rubic cube when it was first introduced. Once an object has offered all that its design intended, children will find non-specified uses for it as well - an example may be the child who pulls a toy to bits so as to explore its mechanisms and 'inner secrets', often to the horror of parents and playworkers.

Construction toys such as Lego, Meccano, wooden blocks and so on often have a specified location in most structured play settings. Many books have been written on the subject, which suggests that objects are a highly sought-after medium for children's play. But children do not necessarily require these expensive objects. They could find as much, if not more satisfaction from exploring the uses and qualities of everyday objects, for example, spoons, pegs, old watches, ice-cubes, plants and food, which are not only cost-effective - since most play schemes are on a tight budget - but can also provide for highly adaptive and inspirational play themes.

PLAY ENVIRONMENT

Play settings need to cater for an enormous variety of objects; some may be for intended purposes, such as the Rubic cube, play putty, blocks and so on, while others may be donated from home, or even from the natural environment. Objects also need to come in all shapes and sizes and of different textures, from marbles to carpet tubes, or concrete blocks to settee cushions; therefore storage is a facility that needs to be well organised and freely accessible.

PLAYWORKERS

In many respects playworkers do not have much of a role to play when children are engaged in object play. Because of the highly focused nature of such play, intervention would prove to be an unwanted distraction.

However, playworkers are in a position to enable children to explore the properties and uses of objects in circumstances that the object was not originally intended for.

For example, if a child was observed using the 'wrong' end of the paintbrush for painting, it would not be the playworker's role to show them how to use it correctly. This not only suggests to children that all objects have limited usage, but can in the long term be devastating for the child's creative and intellectual development, taking away all opportunities for the child's capacity to think out of the box.

Thinking beyond the intended takes time, stimulation and freedom to explore, but you can get a feeling for those who have been able to explore an object's uses more freely by posing the following question: how many uses can you think of for a brick? I bet children who have explored objects freely will think of a multitude of uses, and some of them will be quite bizarre, but nevertheless, feasible.

Recommended reading: * Hughes, B (2002) A Playworker's Taxonomy of Play Types. London: PLAYLINK

* National Playing Fields Association (2000) Best Play: what play provision should do for children.

* Wellhousen, K and Kieff, J (2001) A constructivist approach to block play in early childhood. Albany: Delmar.

Philip Waters is a playwork co-ordinator, trainer and researcher in Cornwall