REVIEW ARTICLE
PUTTON, Gisele Mariotti [1], CRUZ, Pollyanna Santos da [2]
PUTTON, Gisele Mariotti. CRUZ, Pollyanna Santos da. The Importance of Playfulness in the Teaching Learning Process in Early Childhood Education. Revista Científica Multidisciplinar Núcleo do Conhecimento. Year 06, Ed. 05, Vol. 11, pp. 114-125. May 2021. ISSN: 2448-0959, Access Link: https://www.nucleodoconhecimento.com.br/education/teaching-learning
ABSTRACT
The act of playing is part of childhood and brings the possibility of a repertoire of developments, whether in the cognitive, social, biological, motor and affective spheres. In addition to finding pleasure and satisfaction, playing the child sociabiliza and learns, in addition to presenting his reality through imagination, thus demonstrating his anxieties and longings that through words would become difficult. The aim of this article is to recognize the importance of the use of playful activities in the teaching-learning process in early childhood education. The specific objectives of this research are: To understand that the child expresses in play his difficulties and needs; stimulate the use of play in teaching practice; present bibliographic studies on the importance of playing in childhood and how early childhood education is presented in the National Common Curriculum Base -BNCC. This is a bibliographical research and had a qualitative methodology to demonstrate the ideas of some authors about the importance of using play in the teaching process of learning in the early childhood education phase.
Keywords: Learning, Childhood, Playful.
1. INTRODUCTION
When we think about the day-to-day of a classroom, we encounter ed a number of students with many learning difficulties and who have demotivation for their studies.
To modify this vision, a dynamic and instigating pedagogical action is necessary, in order to provoke students to learn in a pleasurable and meaningful way.
The educator plays a considerable role in this process, and it is who will direct the learning, being a mediator and offering activities that stimulate the student in the classroom instigating the interest in learning so that the child feels comfortable to demonstrate what he already knows and what he wants to learn.
Toys, games and games are recognized by many educators and other professionals involved in education as an important factor in the teaching-learning process early childhood education, since playful activities promote the opportunity to trigger the child’s development. Playing, the child invents, discovers, learns, experiences and refines skills. Recreational activities provide the development of thought, attention, concentration and language, in addition to stimulating self-confidence, curiosity and autonomy.
The ludicity is considered, by scholars, indispensable to the physical, emotional and intellectual health of the child, not only in the period of early childhood education, but also in the course of all his/her training, including in the formation of his/her personality.
Starting from the theoretical point of view that the child arouses his curiosity through games, games and toys and through them establishes relationships with the social and physical environment, in order to expand his knowledge, developing motor, linguistic and cognitive skills, the school must take into account the playful as an ally and use it extensively to act in the development of each student.
The aim of this article is to recognize the importance of the use of playful activities in the teaching-learning process in early childhood education, since understanding that children express their difficulties and needs in play, leads educators to work harmoniously with children of early childhood education, facilitating learning and getting to know children better in order to help them in this phase of development.
Stimulating the use of play in teaching practice is very important, because it facilitates the teacher’s work with a more relaxed practice. This bibliographic research presents early childhood education according to the National Common Curriculum Base-BNCC and the view of several authors about the importance of play in the learning teaching process, since the child learns much more playing, without realizing that it is being taught, and educators who develop playful activities teach without realizing that they are also learning. Learning to teach, to know, to understand, to help, to identify problems, to influence attitudes and especially to put themselves in the place of children to better understand and serve them.
2. EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION IN THE COMMON NATIONAL CURRICULUM-BNCC BASIS
The National Common Curriculum Base (BNCC) is a document that regulates and directs in a defined way the development and progress of necessary and essential learning to all students during all stages and modalities of Basic Education, and also determines that, “so that they have secured their rights of learning and development, in accordance with the precept of the National Education Plan” (BNCC , 2017, p. 5).
Ludicity is very important for the development of children especially when it comes to interactivity of children with adults or with other children, as we can observe this observation described in the BNCC:
The interaction during play characterizes the daily life of childhood, bringing with it many learnings and potentials for the integral development of children. By observing the interactions and play between children and theirchildren with adults, it is possible to identify, for example, the expression of affections, the mediation of frustrations, the resolution of conflicts and the regulation of emotions (BNCC, 2017, p.33).
In Early Childhood Education, children need conditions for them to learn in situations in which they can actively participate in environments that encourage them to experience challenges and feel motivated to solve them, in which they can build ideas and meanings about the social and natural world and especially about themselves and the other developing self-confidence to develop meaningful learning. In this context, we found proposed in the BNCC (2017, p. 34) six rights of learning and development in Early Childhood Education that are:
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- Living with other children and adults, in small and large groups, using different languages, expanding the knowledge of oneself and the other, respect for culture and differences between people.
- Playing daily in different ways, in different spaces and times, with different partners (children and adults), expanding and diversifying their access to cultural productions, their knowledge, their imagination, their creativity, their emotional, bodily, sensory, expressive, cognitive, social and relational experiences.
- Actively participate, with adults and other children, both in the planning of school management and the activities proposed by the educator and in the performance of the activities of everyday life, such as the choice of games, materials and environments, developing different languages and elaborating knowledge, deciding and positioning themselves.
- Explore movements, gestures, sounds, shapes, textures, colors, words, emotions, transformations, relationships, stories, objects, elements of nature, at school and outside it, expanding your knowledge about culture, in its various modalities: arts, writing, science and technology.
- Express, as a dialogical, creative and sensitive subject, your needs, emotions, feelings, doubts, hypotheses, discoveries, opinions, questions, through different languages.
- To know and build their personal, social and cultural identity, constituting a positive image of themselves and their groups of belonging, in the various experiences of care, interactions, games and languages experienced in the school institution and in its family and community context.
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It is essential that the rights of learning and development are respected so that children have a complete physical and cognitive growth. The playful must always be present in these stages so that the child can learn by playing, that is, without realizing that it is being taught, with no forced teaching. BnCC considers that in Early Childhood Education, learning and children’s development, it has interactions and play as structuring axes.
Considering the need to welcome the life experiences of children and the learning baggage they already carry with them, interrelating the cultural and social knowledge they acquire in school life, five fields of experience were structured in the curricular organization of Early Childhood Education at BNCC (2017, p. 36), which are:
The self, the others and the knots – It is in the interaction with peers and adults that children are constituting their own way of acting, feeling and thinking and discovering that there are other ways of life, different people, with other points of view. As they live their first social experiences, they construct perceptions and questions about themselves and others, differentiating themselves and simultaneously identifying themselves as individual and social beings.
Body, gestures and movements – With the body (through senses, gestures, impulsive or intentional movements, coordinated or spontaneous), children, from an early age, explore the world, space and objects of their surroundings, establish relationships expressing themselves, play and produce knowledge about themselves, about the other, about the social and cultural universe, becoming progressively aware of this corporeity.
Traits, sounds, colors and shapes – Living with different artistic, cultural and scientific manifestations, local and universal, in the daily life of the school institution, enables children, through diverse experiences, to experience various forms of expression and languages, such as visual arts (painting, modeling, collage, photography, etc.), music, theater, dance and audiovisual, among others.
Listening, speaking, thinking and imagination – From birth, children participate in everyday communicative situations with people with whom they interact. Progressively, children expand and enrich their vocabulary and other resources of expression and understanding, appropriating the mother tongue-which gradually becomes their privileged vehicle of interaction.
Spaces, times, quantities, relationships and transformations – Children live in spaces and times of different dimensions, in a world consisting of natural and sociocultural phenomena. Since very young, they seek to be located in various spaces (street, neighborhood, city, etc.). and times (day and night; today, yesterday and tomorrow etc.). They also show curiosity about the physical world (their own body, atmospheric phenomena, animals, plants, the transformations of nature, the different types of materials and the possibilities of their manipulation, etc.). and the sociocultural world (the relationships of kinship and social relations between the people he knows; how they live and in which these people work; what are their traditions and customs; the diversity among them, etc.).
BNCC is one of the directions for schools to work seriously in early childhood education, having a curriculum focused on the development of the child in an integral way, always seeking to work in a pleasurable and pleasant way, awakening in the child the desire to learn something new and to improve their experiences.
3. THE PLAYFUL: ORIGIN AND ASSUMPTIONS
It is of the utmost importance to mention that the playful originated from the Latin word “ludus” meaning “game”. The term playful if it were stuck only to its origin would be mentioned only when playing, to spontaneous movement, to play, however, it is observed that the playful goes beyond the play, of the movements, it is found in the songs of wheel, mimes, in art, in physical education, that is, it is part of the daily life of adults and children, especially in schools of early childhood education. As for the emergence of the playful, Pereira (2004, p. 8): “The act of playing is a legacy of our ancestors. It’s part of every child’s life and survival. It is at the foundation of a people’s culture. Toys and games are a heritage that belong to humanity.”
Since ancient times, playing and playing are indispensable attitudes to health, both mental, physical and intellectual. Through them, the child begins to develop language, socialization, thought, self-esteem and initiative, preparing to be a human being with the capacity to face obstacles and participate in the construction and organization of the space in which he lives.
It is important to emphasize that a playful action is not only a combination of proposed activities, but a way of being, being, thinking and facing the school, as well as relating to students. It is necessary to know how to interact with the child’s world, with their dreams, games and games and then know how to play with it. The more the child is involved in a playful space, this will be the more joyful, spontaneous, creative, autonomous and affective.
4. THE IMPORTANCE OF PLAY FOR THE TEACHING-LEARNING PROCESS IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
Contrary to what many think playing is not simple recreation or pastime, but the most complete way that the child has to dialogue with herself and with the world. It is playing that the child is able to be creative and use all his personality, and it is only by being creative that the individual discovers his “I”. In early childhood the imagination is very strong, and peculiar of the age group. The child, in early childhood, is in the period of mental representations. Recreational activities can favor the symbol and assist the child in its development” (CEBALOS et al., 2011).
The process of teaching learning with play offers a healthy and harmonious development. When they play, children become more independent, their visual and auditory sensitivity becomes more keen, learn to value popular culture, occurrences of aggressiveness decrease, enhance imagination and with it creativity flows, balance their emotional intelligence and increase mental growth capacity and social adaptation.
Children are able to reveal the cause of their difficulty or fear much more by gestures and creations than by words. The playful basically consists of involving the child, dedicating himself to the real, the material, touching, displacing, assembling and dismantling. Its objective is the very satisfaction of the functioning of the game, which is considered of great relevance, because it helps in cognition and facilitates learning and interaction between colleagues. According to Dohme:
Playful activities can place the student in various situations, where he researches and experiences, making him know his skills and limitations, that exercise dialogue, leadership is requested to exercise ethical values and many other challenges that will allow experiences capable of building knowledge and attitudes. (DOHME, 2003, p. 113 apud SANTOS, 2012).
Telling, hearing stories, dramatizing, playing with rule, drawing, among other activities are pleasurable means of learning. Through them, children externalise their creations and emotions, expose their fears and joys, develop important characteristics for life in society.
5. TOYS, GAMES AND GAMES
The playful activities should be present daily in the classrooms of early childhood education, because through the toys of games and games is that teachers come to know more deeply their students, to better be able to serve them. Acampora (2013) quotes us that “games and games allow the child to release tension, frustration, insecurity and even aggression, fear and confusion, all without her noting that she has all these feelings saved”.
The games also provide concrete situations that help children to solve their own difficulties – whether they are memory, attention, observation, reasoning etc. – playing. The game stimulates spontaneous feelings and contributes to children’s disinhibition, giving them confidence to solve their own problems. It makes each child discover their own tendencies and inclinations towards their vocation.
We also remember that the toy favors the child to fantasize, travel, reproduce their daily life, thus facilitating the learning process mainly in the stage of early childhood education, as stated by Piaget apud Leal (2011), “the toy cannot be seen only as fun or play to wear energy, because it favors physical, cognitive, affective and moral development”.
Playing alone in a corner or just with a friend is good, but it is also very good to play with many colleagues in the courtyard or in the classroom. Children’s preference over toys, spaces and friends is a very important means of accessing their mentality. Your choices demonstrate your fears, abilities, potentialities and desires.It is essential that the child plays with other children, so that he can learn, but also can teach. Like this:
Play is so important for human development that even when fights occur it contributes to growth and learning. Negotiate perspectives, convince the opponent, gain adesões for a cause, give in, give up, fight for a point of view – all this teaches to live (OLIVEIRA; BORJA; FORTUNA, 2010 apud FORTUNA, 2011, p. 9).
In early childhood education one can use toys, games, and games to develop motricity, cognition, imaginative, ingenuity, interpretation, thinking skills, decision-making autonomy, organization, rules, personal conflicts and with others, doubts among others. Affection, companionship, discipline, the storage of toys after use, can be acquired through joint play between children. Thus, the whole teaching-learning process of children in the early childhood education phase can be developed through recreational activities.
6. THE ROLE OF THE TEACHER IN THE MEDIATION OF THE PLAYFUL IN THE CLASSROOM
The teacher has an important role in mediating the child’s relationship with the ludicity, the relationship of the child with learning, as well as in the formation of the child’s identity. By referring to the role of the teacher, we are immediately directed to the term competence, which among these competencies to be created and developed by a teacher of early childhood education, is the ability to promote a good relationship between student and educator, because from this relationship will arise the possibilities for the success of the teaching-learning process. Therefore, the teacher’s real role is to play the role of mediator, which is also directly related to the construction of knowledge, both as a guide of pedagogical planning, as well as in the choice and treatment of curricular contents.
Thus, the teacher is considered as a social being endowed with cultural knowledge. If it is intended to form critical, creative, and prepared to make decisions, one of the requirements is the improvement of the child’s day-to-day with the introduction of toys, games and diversified games. The classes with the games and games provide the teacher with the observation of the attitudes of each student, alone or interacting with others in the class or their surroundings. In these playful situations, teacher and student, they must be free to play and/or play respecting their own rhythms, to organize their activities and be able to receive and accept the rules are imposed. Fortuna (2011) collaborates by telling us that:
Just as the child-child interaction in play is fundamental, it is also important the interaction of the child with the educator. The presence of the educator in the game is aggregating and stimulating. Playing together, the child educator shows how to play, not only because it demonstrates the rules, but also because it suggests ways of solving problems and alternative attitudes towards moments of tension.
The teacher of Early Childhood Education is a constant mediator in the teaching-learning process of the child. Partner will help the child to constitute his identity, ethics and political notion. For, according to the National Curriculum Framework for Early Childhood Education:
And the adult, in the figure of the teacher, therefore, who, in the children’s institution, helps to structure the field of play in the children’s lives. Consequently it is he who organizes its structural base, through the offer of certain objects, fantasies, toys or games, the delimitation and arrangement of spaces and time to play. Through games, teachers can observe and constitute a vision of the development processes of children together and of each one in particular, recording their abilities to use languages, as well as their social capacities and the affective and emotional resources they have. (1998, p. 28).
The child needs to be emotionally stable to feel involved with the learning process. Affectivity enables the student to approach the teacher and the others involved and the ludicity is a partner that collaborates to enrich the teaching-learning process. When the teacher gives preference to methodologies that basically use activities and playful situations, one can perceive greater interest on the part of the student. yes, playing, you learn, too.
Recreational activities have reached firm and significant territory in early childhood education. Playing is a fundamental experience for any age group, especially in relation to children in Early Childhood Education. Thus, play is no longer activities used by the teacher for the sole purpose of recreating children, it becomes an activity in itself, which is included in the school’s lesson plan.
It is through the toy that the child understands how to act in a cognitive sphere. Since it transfers to you your imagination and develops your imagination of the universe of make-believe. It is the educator’s duty to constitute a place that groups elements of motivation for children, develop activities that promote concepts that give basis for reading, for numbers, logical concepts intertwined with classification, ordering, among other things. Motivate students to work collectively in problem solving, thus understanding to demonstrate their own perception of each other.
The classroom is a place to play and the teacher manages to reconcile the pedagogical objectives with the student’s wishes.
7. TOY LIBRARY IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
The playroom is a place where the child comes into contact with a variety of toys together with other children, thus being able to develop the capacity for coexistence, cooperation, socialization and collaboration, always with the mediation of the teacher himself with the help of an employee or child animator. For Nez Moreira (2013, p. 135):
The playroom can also be understood as a reserved space prepared for children to spend moments of leisure and learning and, for educators, an environment to develop new pedagogical practices, using ludicity as a pedagogical tool.
The Organization of the toy library is very important for the proper development of the activities carried out there. Toys must be arranged as if inviting to play. Accessible, visible and thought-provoking, they can be distributed throughout the room in different corners and areas, thus proposing different starting points for the games. A playroom that guarantees a fair place to play has no excess toys. It is not the large amount of them, nor their sophistication or high commercial value that make the game richer and more stimulating. What makes the toy library rich is the freedom of speech that is offered to children so that it can play freely. However, order is necessary because it is structuring.
The limits must be placed clearly and should be based on explanations and not only in the authority of those who place them, because too strictly hinders the game, inhibiting it. It is also worth mentioning that although limit and organization are important, it is not necessary to protect toys from the hands of children, because these are not and are not there to decorate the toy library but to be useful. In this case, Fortuna (2011) adds that “Good toy is toy toy. A toy is only toy by the action of playing, that is, because someone plays with it.”
The classroom itself can be transformed into a play environment, because the trickness happens not only in the space of the playroom, but at any time that the teacher, mediator of early childhood education, feel the need to make available toys and games to observe and meet the children. In view of this we can analyze another contribution from Fortuna (2011):
A kindergarten classroom is not a box that comes ready, full of expensive objects. To have a place to play and, therefore, a place to grow, learn, teach and in which one can live with joy and meaning, it must be a place where people can be themselves. It is being built gradually, by those who share this place and who put on it their marks. Like a nest, a shell or a den, the classroom is a place of protection and continence, as well as challenges and growth, in which people learn to be and, living there, learn to live.
In this thought we understand that the toy library is the space where the child studies playing, learning to create and discover the world around them. It’s a fantasy space and the same time a real dream.
8. FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
This work presented an idea of how Early Childhood Education is structured in the Common National Curriculum Base and reasons about the importance of play in the process of teaching childhood learning, revealing that ludicity is very important for the integral development of the child, especially educators, because it is through games, toys and games that the child discovers himself and the other.
Ludicity provides a diversity of pleasurable activities that develop the child in its aspects: cognitive, affective, social and motor. Through playful activities the child experiences, discovers, creates, acquires skills, develops self-confidence, creativity, thinking, expands language development, autonomy and attention. Through dynamics, the playful enables, in addition to satisfactory situations, the emergence of conducts and assimilation of social rules, provides the development of your intellect, making clear your feeling, your anxieties, anxieties, helping with the recognition of your difficulties, thus providing solutions and a greatness in the child’s inner life.
In order to obtain all the information obtained in this study, it is possible to conclude that it is very important to point out that games and games in the classroom can be considered as overlapping social activities of specific and fundamental interaction that ensures the interaction and construction of the knowledge of the reality experienced by children and the constitution of the subject-child as an agent of history.
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[1] Attending Master’s degree in Educational Sciences (UNADES – PY), Specialist in Psychopedagogy (TAHIRIH-AM) and in School Administration, Supervision and Guidance from UNIASSELVI-SC, Graduated in Higher Normal (UEA) and Pedagogy (INET).
[2] Guidance counselor. Specialization in Environmental Management and Education.
Submitted: November, 2020.
Approved: May, 2021.
