Children Thinking in their Play – Piaget
Children are expert thinkers !
In play, they test out their ideas and theories; they recreate what they know of the world, from their own experiences. They work out ‘what is’ and ‘what might be’. They experiment with materials and with other children to find out how things work and how things happen; they want to know how to make things happen for themselves.
They test out what it is like to think inside many alternative worlds of reality and fantasy. They step into the shoes of others and think as they might think.
They behave as others might behave. They take themselves on journeys into other worlds: a hospital, a hairdresser’s, a veterinary surgery, Batman’s cave, Hogwarts, a Traveller’s trailer, or a mermaid lagoon.
They check out rules of behaviour and social norms. They go on to invent and practice their own rules of behaviour and social norms.
Children play with the things of the world and the people of the world, in different places of the world. They explore the important themes of love and caring, good and bad, powerful and weak, loss and loneliness.
They try to make sense of world events and current affairs. In their play children think about, ‘Who am I?’ ‘Who might I become?’ ‘What will that be like?’ ‘How can I keep safe in my world?’ They magnificently wonder, ‘What if….? In their play children make sense of the world.