Skills and Play
The power of modeling.
We enjoyed our visit to the Brevard Zoo yesterday. We saw lots of cute animals, but then our children wanted to PLAY!
🐐🐖🐑🦩🦩🦩🦩🦩🦁🐟🐠🐡🦦🐊🦅
The rest of this blog post has nothing to do with the zoo. We love it there, and if you are a local, yes the membership is worth it!
Within the zoo's "Paws On" section there is a magical little place called "Upland Acres." This playground is designed with creative play in mind. Its climbing structure is a cool concrete cave system.
Off to the side there is a mud kitchen. Complete with pits, pans, plates, cups, wooden spoons and spatulas, the children are encouraged to play with wood chips, mud, and so forth. It has a roof overhead that makes it feel like a home.
The theme of this play space is to compare an animal's burrow with a human home.
🐢🏠
Not every child who wanted to play in the human house was excited to play in the mud. In fact, some appeared afraid or bothered by the mess. While plenty of parents engaged with their children in play within the cave system, no parents touched the mud kitchen.
After a few minutes of observing this trend of children who didn't want to get dirty and parents not encouraging other types of play, I found a couple of child sized brooms and started using one to sweep the space.
🧹🧹
I placed the other broom within the children's reach. I moved some bigger wood chips with my hands and then I used the broom to sweep little bits here and there, knocking chips off of the wooden platform floor down to the ground below. One child noticed what I was doing and right away tried the other broom. They saw how I swept and just started going with it. Another child came by and asked to use my broom, I said sure, and handed it off. When this happened, a mom exclaimed, "You're teaching them how to sweep!" Yes, I was. I showed them a way that they could play in this house in a way that made them comfortable. And they learned to sweep along the way. A few of the parents thanked me with kind smiles.
These children were playing, having a wonderful time, and effectively cleaning in the process. Every time a child freed up a broom, another child came by to engage. The few times that a broom became available, I swept again. In our hour at this playground, 8 children engaged with the broom in the play kitchen. Of them, all but two showed proficiency with sweeping by the end of their play. The other two chose to use the broom for other tasks, like digging and drumming.
🍲🥄🥣
All of this happened as my own child was playing happily with the mud, dirt, and wood chips in the pans on the stovetop. She used a spoon to make meals which she presented to the other children. Some of the children whose focus had been cleaning decided to dive into messy play once they knew they could clean up their own mess!
I am grateful that that parent pointed out that I was teaching the children how to use the broom. I hadn't thought anything of my actions, but the shock and excitement in that mother's voice showed me that this way of engaging with the children was a special revelation to her, and therefore something worth mentioning to all of you.
You can encourage competence in difficult tasks through play. Yes, even and especially tasks that require significant coordination, like sweeping 🧹
With this post, I have included a photo of an elephant parent and baby together. I did not bring my phone or camera to the zoo, so I found this stock image. They are standing on rocks by water here, and spraying some water in the air. 💦 This image reminds us that even elephants 🐘 show their young how to do useful things (like moving water with their trunks for a bath) through play.
Now, go play!
Do you want to read more content like this?
There is a wonderful blog by the Occuplaytional Therapist.
Here is one of my favorite posts, with pirate play!
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