GEKA Centre Road
Small World Play
GEKA Centre Road Educators
Small world play is acting out scenarios (scenes from real life, including role-play, stories and imagination) in a miniature play scene, created with small figures and objects. Anything from your own home or garden will do, there is no limitation to your creativity which is why it’s a truly inexhaustible subject!
Small worlds are often set up with a theme (farms, construction area, pirates at sea, dinosaur world, … you name it) that are relevant and meaningful to the child at the time. They usually include a sensory element (rocks, gems, wood, glitter, water, sand, dry pasta, leaves, …) which adds more layers to the play.
Small Work Play and Childhood Development
Children learn through play, here are few ways that Small World Play extends children’s learning:
- EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT - provides children with opportunities to re-enact, process and act out their experiences, explore roles and emotions, reflect on feelings and events in life in a safe way.
- DEVELOPING PERSONAL AND SOCIAL SKILLS - Small world play invites children to be creative, and boosts confidence in experimenting with different (both new and familiar) materials and build something they think is awesome. They can also practice social skills when playing with someone else, providing opportunities to connect with each other, take turns, listen to someone else’s ideas, and compromise.
- REASONING, PROBLEM SOLVING AND NUMERACY – there are many problems to solve in small worlds - Not all the dinosaurs fit in my cave! I don’t have enough sticks for everyone. Children learn how to work through these by reasoning and experimenting. It also provides numeracy opportunities for grouping or sorting items and counting them – e.g. How may small dinosaurs do you have? How many do go in your cave? Now, how many are left?
- BUILDING LANGUAGE – It also allows children to practice their language in a meaningful context. While playing, children are vocalising and learning about nouns, verbs, adjectives and prepositions – e.g. parking the red truck next to the yellow tractor.
- UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD - Through small world play children get to learn about cause and effect while experimenting and manipulating different items – e.g. a car go down a slope will make it go faster. Children also get the chance to explore certain ideas in the world, like how a hospital would operate differently from a police station or a school and why.
http://littleworldsbigadventures.com/a-beginners-guide-to-small-world-play
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