Children's play as a phenomenon
Game is one of the phenomena that accompanies a person throughout his life. As a multidimensional and complex phenomenon, play has always attracted the attention of researchers and remains an important topic to this day.
In the middle of the last century, the famous cultural historian J. Huizinga conducted a semantic analysis of the word “game” and showed that it does not have the same meaning in different languages and different cultures, but is associated with an intuitive awareness in a particular culture of the meaning and place of play in people’s lives . Such an analysis allows us to assess the complexity, ambiguity and diversity of the phenomenon being studied.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the psychological community was faced with the practical task of determining which types of children's activities can be called play and which cannot. This task is urgent because the Convention on the Rights of the Child enshrines in article 31 the child's right to play. But what is a game? In order to protect and support a child's right to play, it is necessary to have a clear understanding of what it is. Therefore, psychologists are faced with the task of finding (creating) a tool for describing and interpreting the game.
Analyzing the phenomenon of the game, modern science relies on historically established game-theoretic approaches of earlier eras, each of which is formed by its own ideas about the nature of the game. The works of M. Born, N. Vorobyov, G. Zhuravlev and others are devoted to the analysis of the game.
In this work, we relied on two theories that made the greatest contribution to the scientific understanding and interpretation of the game phenomenon - L.S. Vygotsky and D.B. Elkonin, as well as the theory of A.N. Leontyev.
L.S. Vygotsky speaks most extensively on the topic of play in his lectures. “In play, the child discovers: every thing has its own meaning, every word has its own meaning, which can replace the thing.” L.S. Vygotsky said that play arises not from a thing, but from a thought. The main criterion of the game is the presence of an imaginary situation. Vygotsky argued that the main feature of gaming activity is the player’s ability to occupy two positions at the same time. For L.S. For Vygotsky, play refers primarily to the sphere of consciousness, to the sphere of constructing meanings and contexts of meaning.
In Soviet and then in Russian psychology, the view of D.B. dominated. Elkonin for the game. The theory of children's play he developed became fundamental and formed the basis of many studies. In collaboration with the “Kharkov group” (A.N. Leontyev, L.I. Bozhovich, P.Ya. Galperin, A.V. Zaporozhets, etc.), he presented the results of his research. The main problem is understanding the nature of the game. From his point of view, a child can do in a game what he cannot do in reality.
The main questions that interested D.B. Elkonin: a critical analysis of existing theories of play, the historical origin and understanding of play as a leading type of activity and the disclosure of its social content, the problem of symbolism and the relationship of object, word and action in the game. The research was carried out in a team, with constant contact with A. Leontyev, P. Galperin, A. Zaporozhets.
In the scientific literature devoted to the upbringing and development of a preschool child, role-playing play is considered as a leading activity. A.N. Leontyev shows that it is in the process of this activity that the child develops new relationships with the social environment, a new type of knowledge and ways of obtaining it, which changes the cognitive sphere and psychological culture of the individual, i.e. promotes the development of neoplasms characteristic of a given age.
The works of D. Elkonin and A. Leontiev provide a detailed analysis of the genesis of role-playing play, its structure, highlight the main patterns of development of play in the preschool period, and show the importance of play for the formation of basic mental transformations of preschool age.
Game as a type of human activity
Olesya Borovikova
Game as a type of human activity
1. The concept of gaming activity
Let's consider what activity is in general and gaming activity in particular . In L. M. Fridman and I. Yu. Kulagina we find: “ activity is understood as the activity of a subject aimed at changing the world, at producing or generating a certain objectified product of material or spiritual culture” [27, p. 30], [19, p. 131].
A.V. Petrovsky says that activity is internal (mental)
and external
(physical)
human activity , regulated by a conscious goal. The purpose of an activity is its focus on a specific result, certain knowledge, skills and abilities acquired in the process of activity . All authors identify three main types of activities : gaming, educational and labor. “Game activity is the simplest form of activity – a unique reflection of life, a means of understanding the world around us.”
In an active play form, the child learns more deeply the phenomena of life and people’s relationships [20, p. 93]. The concept of " game "
includes a huge range of ideas, and different authors have their own approaches to the interpretation of this definition.
So, for example, according to D. G. Mead, play is a process in which a child, imitating adults, perceives their values and attitudes and learns to play certain roles [18, p. 40].
N. D. Ushinsky about
, and L. S. Vygotsky described the game as the first school of raising a child, as the arithmetic of social relations.
There are original formulations of the term “
game ” [26, p. 39].
H. Hoagland believes that "understanding the atom is child's play compared to understanding child's play." One cannot but agree with the opinion of J. Collarits that: “an exact definition of a game is impossible, any search for such definitions should be qualified as “scientific games”
the authors themselves [31, p. 62].
Research into game theory began in the second half of the 19th century, and the most significant, in our opinion, are the works of K. Gross, G. Spencer, F. Boytendak, E. L. Pokrovsky, F. Schiller, F. Froebel, K. Bühler and many others [12, p. 17].
K. Gross in his works creates a theory of the emergence of games as an exercise, training skills necessary for a person to support life.
G. Spencer's theory is based on the fact that the appearance of the game is associated with “excess strength”
that
a person does not waste in the process of his life . This contradiction is refuted by the opinion of the German psychologist M. Lazors, who came to the conclusion that in order to restore his strength expended in the process of work , a person plays [28 , p.
43]. Many Soviet scientists in the 20-30s also worked on the development of game theory as the most important means of comprehensive development and education of a person . But scientific research was mainly focused on studying the game as a method of self-education.
If we turn to the deciphering of the concept of “ game ”
, then the Russian encyclopedic dictionary of 1877 classifies
round dances , sports competitions, gladiator fights, horse races and even animal demonstrations in the circus as games.
In the Great Encyclopedia, edited by S. Yuzhakov, the concept of game is defined as an activity that has no practical purpose and serves for entertainment or amusement, as well as the practical application of certain arts [4, p. 90].
The most detailed definition of the concept “ game ”
gives by V.I. Dal in his Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language.
" A game . what they play with and what they play with : fun, established according to directions, and things that serve for this purpose” [9].
Modern approaches to the concept of " game "
are considered in the works of E. Bern, I. Huizinga, A. Leontiev, D. Elkonin, I. Kohn, S. Shmakov, P. Ershov [14, p. 50].
The creators of the theory of psychoanalysis identify three main motives that lead a person to play . The first is the attraction to repetition, thereby indirectly aligning with the theory of exercises by K. Gross. The second is the desire for liberation, the removal of obstacles that fetter freedom, pointing to the psychological and individual nature of the need for play. And the third is determined by the desire to merge with the community and the surrounding world [6, p. 12].
In the published edition of “ Human ”
P. M. Ershov, published in 1990, the author proposes to consider the game as one of the transformations of the needs inherent in all higher animals and
humans - the need for equipment (auxiliary needs for accumulating and improving the means of satisfying one’s needs [10, p. 37].
A. N. Leontiev believes that play is personal freedom in the imagination, “the illusory realization of unrealizable interests”
.
But no matter how various authors interpret the term “
game ” it has always been one of the leading forms of development of
human and a way of real knowledge of the world. A game is a type of activity that arises at a certain stage of ontogenesis and is aimed at recreating and assimilating social experience, in which self-government of behavior develops and improves [15, p.
49]. An attempt to derive its definition in a wide variety of concepts of “ game ”
, made by scientists of the 19th-20th centuries, is considered inappropriate by us, since it can simply replenish the terminological series.
However, we will dwell on a number of provisions that outline the boundaries of this phenomenon (according to T. S. Bibartseva)
:
- play is a certain action: physical, emotional, intellectual, social or any other;
- the game is initiated by an internal need for something: rest, learning, and so on, but without the energetic charge of the motivational sphere, the game cannot take place ;
- the game is not only a “school”
communication, but also a school of interaction between specific players;
— a game is an optional and kind of irresponsible activity, since it is always carried out not in a real, but in a conditional, deliberately fictitious situation [3, p. 15].
With the term " game "
“play
activity ” is closely related .
In human practice, gaming activity occupies a leading place, especially in childhood, and it has such functions as: entertaining, sociocultural, diagnostic, correctional, communicative, socializing, educational, cognitive, self-realization, and play therapy. The last of the above is of no small importance, as it helps to overcome various difficulties that arise in other types of human activity .
Considering that gaming activity is always voluntary and includes elements of competition and opportunities for self-realization, the structure of the game as an activity includes goal setting and implementation, planning, and analysis of results. Game activity is an important means of mastering various life situations. During the game, not only are human , but the consciousness is also activated and the subconscious is liberated. It is gaming activity that contributes to the rapid assimilation and consolidation of information used in the game. It is no coincidence that role-playing and business games used in the educational process have recently become popular.
Thus, the main characteristics of gaming activity include : accessibility, activity, progressiveness, competitiveness, emotional elation, adaptability, improvisation, voluntariness, creativity, pleasure.
2. Types of gaming activities
Since play activity is a natural need of a child, which is based on intuitive imitation of adults. Play is necessary to prepare the younger generation for work; it can become one of the active methods of teaching and education.
Games can be divided according to the age characteristics of children [10, p. 34]:
1) games for preschool children.
The leading activity of a preschool child is play . Emerging at the border of early childhood and preschool age, role-playing game develops intensively and reaches its highest level in the second half. In the game, the role plays a role as a mediating link between the child and the rule. Accepting the role makes it much easier for the child to follow the rules.
The games of children of the third and fourth year of life are varied in content. A large place is occupied by mobile games (catch-up, hide-and-seek, manipulative with objects (moving objects, ride-on toys)
.
Children love to play with sand and water; by the fourth year of life, children not only make thoughtless movements with building materials, but also try to construct something. In the third year of life, children show their desire for group games .
In middle preschool age, creatively plot-based play , both the plots or themes of these games and their content (action that reveals the plot)
are becoming more and more diverse, reproducing phenomena of everyday, industrial, social life, as well as material from fairy tales and stories.
By the age of 6-7, thanks to the accumulation of life experience, the development of new and relatively more stable interests, imagination and thinking, children’s games become more meaningful and more complex in form.
Often the plots of children are events of school life, that is, the game “school”
, being a close perspective of older preschoolers.
2) games for primary school children
At the age of 6-7 years, the child begins a period of change in the leading type of activity - the transition from play to directed learning (in D. B. Elkonin - “crisis of 7 years”
).
Therefore, when organizing the daily routine and educational activities of younger schoolchildren, it is necessary to create conditions that facilitate a flexible transition from one leading type of activity to another . Solving this problem, you can resort to the widespread use of games in the educational process (cognitive and didactic games)
and during recreation [31, p. 60].
At primary school age, role-playing games continue to occupy a large place. They are characterized by the fact that, while playing , a schoolchild takes on a certain role and performs actions in an imaginary situation, recreating the actions of a specific person . Thus, role play acts as a means of self-education for the child.
The educational significance of story games for younger schoolchildren is fixed in the fact that they serve as a means of understanding reality, creating a team, fostering curiosity and forming strong-willed feelings of the individual.
At this age, outdoor games are common. Children enjoy playing with a ball , running, climbing, that is, those games that require quick reactions, strength, and dexterity. Such games usually contain elements of competition, which is very attractive to children.
Children of this age show an interest in board games , as well as didactic and educational ones. They contain the following elements of activity : game task, game motives, educational solutions to problems.
Didactic games can be used to improve the performance of first grade students [25, p. 16].
During primary school age, significant changes occur in children's games : gaming interests become more stable, toys lose their attractiveness for children, and sports and constructive games begin to come to the fore. Less time is gradually devoted to the game, as reading, going to the cinema, and television begin to occupy a large place in the leisure time of younger schoolchildren.
pedagogically well-organized game mobilizes children’s mental capabilities, develops organizational skills, instills self-discipline skills, and brings joy from joint actions.
3) games for teenage children
This age is often called “difficult”
, transitional. The uniqueness of the social situation of a teenager’s development is that he is included in a new system of relationships and communication with adults and peers, occupying a new place among them, performing new functions. At this age, the dominant need becomes the need to communicate with peers and the need for self-affirmation.
For the purpose of a gradual transition from childhood to adulthood, a special transitional form of adolescent life .
The gaming activity of adolescents differs from the gaming activity of children of primary school age. Apparently, because in it he does not act exactly as he can and knows how, but in new conditions he reveals his capabilities, previously unclaimed. The game offers new conditions for a teenager, rather than playing at adults.
Sports games occupy a large place in adolescence. They are attractive to students of this age for their sharpness and combat focus, the opportunity to demonstrate their physical qualities, as well as willpower.
In the gaming activities of adolescents, ingenuity, orientation, and courage come to the fore. The teenager shows increased demands for strict adherence to the rules of the game and for the quality of gaming activities ; he wants not just to play , but to master “skills”
games, that is, to develop the skills necessary for it in the game, to develop certain personal qualities.
Some teenagers prefer construction games, such as design.
However, these meaningful games do not exhaust all the educational possibilities of gaming activities that can be used in working with teenagers.
4) training games for older teenagers
Game training is conventionally called a system of game exercises for teaching communication. Its purpose is psychotherapeutic. These games are played using a special method. The main thing here is what kind of instructions the leader gives in each game exercise.
Due to the fact that older teenagers are very interested in their personality, “psychological games”
. The goal of the training should be formulated directly for schoolchildren, for example, to learn to understand other people, evaluate, understand, overcome and reveal oneself.
Types of games
There are different types of games: outdoor, didactic, dramatization, constructive games [13, p. 71].
In early childhood, elements of role-playing play arise and begin to form. In role-playing games, children satisfy their desire to live together with adults and, in a special, playful form, reproduce the relationships and work activities of adults .
Leontyev A.N., D.B. Elkonin, A.V. Zaporozhets called role-playing the leading activity of a preschool child. Role play arises and exists in connection with other types of children's practice: primarily with observations of the surrounding life, listening to stories and conversations with adults [21, p. 18].
Role-playing play involves children reproducing the actions of adults and the relationships between them. That is, in the game the child models adults and their relationships.
In addition to this type of game, the preschooler masters games with rules that contribute to the child’s intellectual development, improvement of basic movements and motor qualities.
In preschool age, three classes of games are distinguished [5, p. 19]:
– games that arise on the child’s initiative – amateur games ;
– games that arise on the initiative of an adult who introduces them for educational and educational purposes;
- games that come from the historically established traditions of the ethnic group - folk games that can arise both on the initiative of an adult and older children.
Each of the listed classes of games, in turn, is represented by types and subtypes. So, the first class includes:
Creative role-playing games. The concept of "creative play "
covers role-playing games, dramatization games, construction games.
Role-playing game is the main type of game for a preschool child. It has the main features of the game: emotional richness and enthusiasm of children, independence, activity, creativity.
Dramatization games. They have the main features of creative games: the presence of a plan, a combination of role-playing and real actions and relationships and other elements of an imaginary situation. Games are built on the basis of a literary work: the plot of the game, roles, actions of the characters and their speech are determined by the text of the work. play has a great influence on a child’s speech.
Construction games are a type of creative game. In them, children reflect their knowledge and impressions about the world around them. In construction games, some objects are replaced by others: buildings are erected from specially created building materials and construction materials, or from natural materials (sand, snow)
.
In preschool pedagogy, it is customary to divide games with ready-made content and rules into didactic, active and musical.
Didactic games are a type of games with rules, specially created by a pedagogical school for the purpose of teaching and raising children. Didactic games are aimed at solving specific problems in teaching children, but at the same time, the educational and developmental influence of gaming activities .
Outdoor games. They are based on a variety of movements - walking, running, jumping, climbing, etc. Outdoor games satisfy the growing child’s need for movement and contribute to the accumulation of varied motor experience.
Traditional or folk games. Historically, they form the basis of many educational and leisure games. The subject matter of folk games is also traditional, they themselves, and are more often presented in museums rather than in children's groups. Research conducted in recent years has shown that folk games contribute to the formation in children of universal generic and mental abilities of a person (sensorimotor coordination, arbitrariness of behavior, symbolic function of thinking, etc., as well as the most important features of the psychology of the ethnic group that created the game [1, p. 20 ].
Having studied the classifications and characteristics of the main types of games, we can conclude that gaming activity is an integral part in the development of personality.
3. Functions and significance of gaming activities in human life
A game is a special type of human activity . It arises in response to the social need to prepare the younger generation for life.
For games to become a true organizer of people’s lives, their active activities , their interests and needs, it is necessary that the practice of education should include a richness and variety of games. Children's life can be interesting and meaningful if children have the opportunity to play different games and constantly replenish their gaming baggage.
Each individual type of game has numerous variations. Children are very creative. They complicate and simplify well-known games, come up with new rules and details. They are not passive towards games . For them this is always creative inventive activity .
Children's games for the entire period of the Soviet formation were not collected, not generalized, which means they were not classified. The famous psychologist A. N. Leontyev was right when he asserted: “... in order to approach the analysis of a child’s specific play activity , one must take the path not of a formal list of the games that he plays , but to penetrate into their actual psychology, into the meaning of the game for the child. Only then will the development of the game appear for us in its true inner content.”
Children's games are characterized by the following features [11, p. 25]:
1. the game is a form of active reflection by the child of the people around him;
2. a distinctive feature of the game is the very method that the child uses in this activity ;
3. the game , like any other human activity , has a social character, so it changes with changes in the historical conditions of people's lives;
4. play is a form of creative reflection of reality by the child;
5. play is the manipulation of knowledge, a means of clarification and enrichment, a way of exercise, and therefore the development of the child’s cognitive and moral abilities and strengths;
6. in its expanded form, the game is a collective activity ;
7. By developing children in many ways, the game also changes and develops.
Play as a function of culture, along with work and learning, is one of the main types of human activity . G. K. Selevko defines a game as “a type of activity in situations aimed at recreating and assimilating social experience, in which self-government of behavior is formed and improved” [22, p. 58].
Most researchers agree that in people's lives the game performs such important functions as:
1. entertaining (the main function of the game is to entertain, give pleasure, inspire, arouse interest);
2.communicative: mastering the dialectics of communication;
3. on self-realization in the game as a “testing ground for human practice ”
;
4.therapeutic: overcoming various difficulties that arise in other types of life ;
5. diagnostic: identifying deviations from normative behavior, self-knowledge during the game;
6.correctional: making positive changes to the structure of personal indicators;
7.international communication: the assimilation of socio-cultural values common to all people;
8.socialization: inclusion in the system of social relations, assimilation of the norms of human society .
Thus, play accompanies the development of man , starting almost from his first steps, when he differs from higher animals only in his unrealized inclinations, to the heights of his purely human activity . But, accompanying a person throughout his entire journey , the game does not always occupy the same place in his needs. The role of play increases from early childhood to youth and adulthood. Here the need for armament is usually dominant. Further, the game gradually gives way to other transformations of the same need for armament, sometimes competing with them more or less successfully for some time. But when these other transformations successfully fulfill their role, the game again gains strength - a person has leisure ! It is now that the kinship between play and artistic creativity emerges. The artist, fully armed with skill, creates while playing ; High acting art is not only conventionally called acting, but in its improvisational essence it is really similar to acting. Stanislavsky even likened it to a children's game.
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Role-playing in the mental development of preschool children
Preschool age is a special period of child development. At this age, the inner life of the soul and internal regulation of behavior develop. This inner life is manifested in the ability to act within the framework of general ideas, in the child’s imagination, in volitional behavior, in meaningful communication with adults and peers.
All these necessary qualities and skills are formed and developed not in conversations with adults or in classes with specialists, but in role-playing games. This is a game in which children take on the roles of adults and, in imaginary conditions specially created by them, reproduce (model) the activities of adults and the relationships between them.
Preschool age is considered the classic age of play. During this period, the most developed form of a special type of children's play arises and develops, which in psychology and pedagogy is called role-playing play. In such a game, all the mental qualities and personality traits of the child are most intensively formed.
Play is the main activity of a preschool child. As the child develops, the nature of the game changes and it also goes through phases. And from the age of three to seven years, children's games go through a fairly significant development path: games with objects, individual object games of a constructive type, collective role-playing games, individual and group creativity, competitive games, communication games. In pedagogy and psychology, the problem of the influence of play activities on the development of children was studied by D.B. Elkonin, D.V. Mendzheritskaya, R.I. Zhukovskaya, S.L. Rubinstein, L.S. Vygotsky, A.P. Usova, as well as modern authors - N.Ya. Galperin, V.V. Mikhailenko, N.A. Korotkova, V.A. Nedospasova, S.A. Kozlova and others.
In older preschool age, you can find almost all types of games that children have before entering school.
The gaming arsenal of a preschooler includes various types of games, both creative ones, where the child himself chooses the theme of the game, its means and content, and games with rules that have a certain structure and are subject to rules, writes Ugaste. Of course, children love to play all these games. However, role-playing game is the most interesting type of children's game. It relies on a child's idea of adulthood, which develops with age.
A game is a form of activity in conditional situations, aimed at relaxation and assimilation of social experience, in socially conditioned ways of carrying out objective actions, in objects of science and culture, emphasizes B.S. Volkov.
Uruntaeva G. A. notes that play is the most free activity of a preschool child. The random nature of the game is expressed not only in the fact that the child freely chooses the action of the game, but also in the fact that he acts with objects in the game. They differ from the usual use of objects in that they are essentially independent of the specific meaning of these objects and are determined by the meanings that the child himself associates with them in the game.
The essence of play as a leading activity is that in play children comprehend various aspects of life, features of the activities and relationships of adults, acquire and clarify their knowledge about the surrounding reality. Role play acts as an activity in which the child is oriented in the most general, in the most basic meanings of human activity. On this basis, the child’s desire for socially significant and socially valued activities is formed, which is the main indicator of school maturity. This is his guiding function, notes Elkonin. In play, a child acquires new knowledge and skills, reflects feelings and desires, learns to communicate, masters experience and rules of behavior.
Features of gaming activities
When describing the features of gaming activity, we were primarily guided by the book by J. Huizinga:
1. Every game is, first of all, a free activity. Playing by order is no longer a game. In extreme cases, it can be some kind of imposed imitation, a reproduction of the game. Thanks to its free nature, the game goes beyond the natural process. It joins it and sits on top of it like a decoration.
A child or animal plays because they enjoy the game, and this is their freedom. For an adult and capable person, play is a kind of excess. At any time the game may be postponed or not take place at all. The game is not dictated by physical necessity, much less moral obligation. The game is not a task. It takes place “in your free time.” And only when the game merges with the performing arts (theater, musical performance, etc.) or sports, the concepts of duty, tasks, and responsibilities are tied to the game.
2. The game is not “ordinary” life and life as such. It is rather a way out of the framework of this life into a temporary sphere of activity. Even a small child knows that he plays only “as if” for real, that everything is “for fun.” Not being “ordinary” life, the game lies outside the process of direct satisfaction of needs and passions and interrupts this process. It wedges itself into it as a temporary action that takes place within itself and is performed for the sake of the satisfaction brought by the very performance of the action.
3. The third distinctive feature of the game is that the game is separated from “ordinary” life by its location and duration. It “plays out” within a certain framework of space and time. Its flow and meaning are contained within itself.
The game begins and ends at a certain moment. It's played. While it is happening, movement reigns in it, forward and backward, rise and fall, alternation, beginning and end.
In addition, any game takes place within its playing space, which is designated in advance, materially or only ideally, intentionally or as if implied. A circus arena, a playing table, a stage, a movie screen, a chessboard - all of them, in form and function, are playing spaces, that is, alienated land, isolated, fenced-off, consecrated territories in which special, own rules apply. These are, as it were, temporary worlds within the ordinary, created to perform an action closed in itself.
The playing space has its own order. The order established by the game is immutable. The slightest deviation from it upsets the game, deprives it of its own character and devalues it. In a chaotic world, in a chaotic life, play creates temporary limited perfection.
4. The game is characterized by emotional and volitional tension. Tension is caused by uncertainty, instability, some chance or opportunity. For something to “succeed”, effort is required. Tension is already present in the grasping movements of an infant, in a kitten chasing a spool of thread, in a little girl playing with a ball. It predominates in individual games of dexterity and intelligence - puzzle, mosaic, solitaire, target shooting - and its importance increases as the game becomes more competitive. In gambling and sports it reaches its extreme. The tension of the game tests the player: his physical strength, endurance and perseverance, resourcefulness, prowess and courage, endurance, and at the same time the spiritual strength of the player, since he is obsessed with the desire to win.
5. Each game has its own rules. They dictate what will have power within the temporary world delimited by the game. The rules of the game are mandatory and cannot be questioned. Once you break the rules, the entire edifice of the game collapses. The game ceases to exist. The sports referee's whistle breaks the spell and temporarily restores the rights of the “ordinary world.”
A player who does not obey the rules or bypasses them is a game violator. You have to play honestly and decently. The game violator is completely different from the one who cheats and is disingenuous in the game. The cheat, the sharper, is only pretending to play. The society of those who play forgives him for his sin more easily than the violator of the game, for this latter breaks their entire gaming world. By not recognizing the rules of the game, he thereby exposes the relativity and fragility of this game world, in which he is temporarily isolated with other partners. It takes away the illusion from the game. Therefore, he must be expelled, because he threatens the very existence of the gaming community. The figure of the game violator, the “strikebreaker of the game,” is most clearly manifested in the boys’ games: they are not interested in why the “strikebreaker” is against the game - either because he is afraid to take risks, or because he cannot do it for health reasons. Children do not recognize any “don’ts” and call it “being chickened out.”
6. The exclusivity and isolation of the game is manifested in the most characteristic way in the mystery with which the game likes to surround itself. Even small children increase the attractiveness of their games by making them a “secret” - “this is a game for us, and not for others.” What these others do outside of our game is of no interest to us for the time being. Within the sphere of play, the laws and customs of the everyday world have no force. We exist and do things “differently.”
The mystery of the game is most clearly expressed in dressing up. Here the “unusuality” of the game reaches its completeness. By changing clothes or putting on a mask, a person “plays” another creature. He is this “other being”! Childhood fear, wild delight, sacred ritual and mystical transformation inseparably accompany everything that is a mask and disguise.
7. One of the features of gaming activity is the presence of the phenomenon of “flirting,” when a child or an adult cannot escape the “captivity” of the game. A phenomenon characteristic, obviously, only of gaming activity. With the possible exception of the highest passion for creative scientific or artistic activity. Thus, at the beginning of the game, you can interrupt the child’s play activity; the child easily leaves the play situation. But if the game continues long enough, it can sometimes be very difficult to “bring” the child out of the state of play: the child gets so “played” that he begins to lose his sense of reality. It is impossible to distract him from the game, put him to sleep, etc.; he is nervous, capricious, he is overexcited.
In the same way, adult passionate preference players can sit at a card table for three or four days. Or the situation described in the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky’s “The Gambler,” when a person cannot get rid of the destructive passion of the game. The same situation is happening today with slot machines - many people sit for hours at them and lose all their money, depriving their families of all means of subsistence. Gambling is a degree of passion in which the choice of means, rationality, and, ultimately, consciousness in general are neglected.
8. The game gives rise to gaming associations of people: neighborhood teams, clubs, informal associations of fans, etc. and so on. The feeling that unites game partners is that they are in some kind of exceptional position, that they are doing something important together, that together they are isolated from others, that they are going beyond the general norms of life - this feeling retains its strength far beyond the game time.
As we see, from these eight identified features of gaming activity, the game stands apart, indirectly from all other types of human activity. Moreover, if we turn to the types of organizational culture, then gaming activities are built mainly within the framework of the most ancient traditional culture. With the exception, perhaps, of complexly organized games with a large number of participants, when the organization of the game already bears the features of a project, or rather, combines elements of traditional and design-technological culture.
Trends in the development of play activities of preschoolers in the modern world
Today, the requirements for a child in society have changed, there is a tendency to increase his independence and at the same time to recognize the special rights of the child, says Friedman. In addition, under the influence of rapidly developing life, significant changes have occurred in relationships between people and in the living conditions of children, which could not but affect the play of preschoolers.
Unfortunately, in our time, role-playing games are becoming more and more monotonous and are reduced mainly to family issues. If children's play does not reach the required level, it gradually disappears from their lives, according to N. Mikhailenko and N. Korotkov. In addition, playing games on topics related to the work activities of adults is significantly reduced in six-year-old children.
Recently, teachers and psychologists have noticed a decrease in role-playing games among preschool children. Children play less than 20-30 years ago, and their role-playing games are more primitive and monotonous. This is apparently due to the fact that children are increasingly moving away from adults, do not see or understand the activities of adults, and are poorly acquainted with their work and personal relationships. As a result, despite the abundance of toys, they have nothing to play with. At the same time, it is noted that modern preschoolers prefer to reproduce in their games actions borrowed from television series and take on the roles of television characters. This suggests that our preschoolers, who spend too much time in front of television, are more familiar with the lives and behavior of strange movie characters than with the real adults who surround them. But this does not change the essence of the game: with all the variety of plots, they hide basically the same content - the activities of people, their actions and relationships.
In recent decades, the sociocultural conditions of a child’s life have changed significantly. Recently, there has been a gap between the generations of children and parents (A.L. Venger, V.I. Slobodchikov, B.D. Elkonin). Increased employment of parents reduces their participation in raising children, which leads to alienation of children and adults. There is a clear deficit of emotionally significant relationships with parents and positive contacts with peers (G.G. Kravtsov, E.E. Kravtsova).
On the other hand, new professions are appearing, the essence of which is closed to the child (programmer, manager, designer, stylist, etc.). The nature of adult behavior in such cases cannot be modeled in a game. The world of adults has become even more closed to the understanding of children, and the scope of possible participation of children in the work of adults has narrowed even further. (G.G. and E.E. Kravtsov). In this context, the idea of an ideal image of adulthood is lost; living together with an adult does not provide content for the child’s play activities (B.D. Elkonin).
In modern conditions, the real possibility of including a preschooler in joint activities and communication with older children is also decreasing. Children of different ages are separated, courtyard and neighborly communication becomes rare (N.Ya. Mikhailenko, N.A. Korotkova). All this complicates the natural transfer of play activity from one generation of children to another. On the other hand, new information technologies are being actively introduced into modern childhood. According to UNESCO, 93% of children spend more than three hours a day watching television. A modern child aged 3 to 5 watches TV on average 28 hours a week. Television, videos and computer games have become a common form of leisure and the main source of impressions for children.
What can serve as a source of content for a preschooler’s role-playing game? There are different points of view on this issue.
Comparison of traditional and modern games for preschool children
Recently, the repertoire of games for preschool children has undergone significant changes. Traditional games have practically disappeared from everyday life, and children’s attitude towards toys has also changed. The changes affected the play set of a modern preschooler and the general principles of organizing the play environment around him.
Finished works on a similar topic
Course work Features of the play activities of modern preschoolers 430 ₽ Abstract Features of the play activities of modern preschoolers 280 ₽ Examination Features of the play activities of modern preschoolers 250 ₽
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The changes are due to the fact that the physical space for organizing games in the city, and sometimes in rural areas, has been significantly reduced. This leads not only to territorial separation of children, but also to a gap between generations.
The children's subculture is also subject to deformation, which is marked by an impoverishment of the repertoire of children's folklore, the loss of oral texts and a significant change in the play repertoire.
Traditional games are aimed at uniting the children’s team; they provide for variability in the child’s behavior “from individual to collective.” This allows children to learn the rules of behavior in society. In addition, in traditional games, children initially choose a leader (leader), that is, they learn status behavior. This combination of simultaneous equality (team) and subordination (leader) develops in children a sense of respect for other people’s opinions, freedom, responsibility, independence and understanding of their own actions.
However, it should be noted that traditional games are being replaced by modern games, often these are a variety of computer games. Unlike traditional ones, they carry a significant load on the child’s eyes, his musculoskeletal system (prolonged immobile posture), emotional overload, lack of fresh air and “live” communication.
Note 2
Thus, adults’ lack of understanding of the significance of the pedagogical influence of traditional games on a child’s development and their neglect leads to the fact that children are more and more immersed in the world of modern computer games. The result of their impact does not guarantee the desired positive educational result.
MAGAZINE Preschooler.RF
Features of the game of modern preschoolersAccording to the theoretical positions of domestic developmental psychology, the leading activity of a preschooler is role-playing play. It is in this activity that the main new formations of this age take shape and develop most effectively: creative imagination, imaginative thinking, self-awareness, etc. Play is of particular importance for the development of a variety of forms of voluntary behavior in children - from elementary to the most complex. Thus, in the game, voluntary attention and memory, subordination of motives and purposefulness of actions begin to develop. The conscious goal - to concentrate, remember something, restrain impulsive movement - is highlighted earlier and easier by the child in the game.
One of the main provisions of the concept of play by the outstanding theorist and researcher of children’s play activity D.B. Elkonin is a statement about its social nature. He repeatedly and convincingly emphasized the special sensitivity of the game to the sphere of human relations. Play arises from the conditions of a child’s life in society and reflects these conditions. These provisions have become classic for Russian psychology and are the traditional basis for understanding the nature of the play activity of a preschooler [15].
However, studies of the game by D.B. Elkonin were carried out in the 60-70s, when public relations and society as a whole were different in many ways. Since then, significant changes have occurred in our society, in relationships between people and in the living conditions of children. These changes could not but affect the children's play. The nature of these changes is extremely important to understand, at least for the following reasons.
Firstly, the features of the play of modern preschoolers reflect the uniqueness of their mental development, their interests, values, ideas, etc.
Secondly, the game, due to its special sensitivity to the sphere of human relations, reflects the child’s position in society and the specifics of this society itself.
Thirdly, analysis of the current state of a child’s play activity is extremely important for preschool education, for the construction of new methods of play pedagogy [13, p. 43].
However, despite the importance of this task, there are currently no serious psychological studies devoted to the specifics of modern children’s play. At the same time, parents and kindergarten teachers note that over the past 5-6 years there have been certain changes in the games of preschoolers.
The most obvious change, which is recorded by the majority of experienced preschool teachers, is that children in kindergartens began to play less, especially role-playing games decreased (both in number and duration). Lack of time to play is usually cited as the main reason. In most kindergartens, the daily routine is overloaded with various activities and there is at least an hour left for free play. However, even during this hour, according to the observations of teachers, children cannot play meaningfully and calmly - they fidget, fight, push - therefore, educators try to fill the children’s free time with calm board games and offer them various mosaics, construction sets, etc.
At the same time, it is necessary to emphasize the variability of the game and its dependence on the specific conditions of education. There are separate kindergartens where much attention is paid to children’s play activities, and role-playing play takes extensive forms. Children living in normal family conditions also, as a rule, love and know how to play role-playing games. However, such gardens and such conditions are currently the exception rather than the rule. We are interested in a broader and more general picture of what and how modern preschoolers play.
The reasons for the disappearance of play from preschool childhood are quite obvious. First of all, there is a lack of understanding of the developmental significance of this children's activity. Play is increasingly viewed by adults as entertainment, as useless leisure, which is opposed to targeted learning and mastery of useful skills. This is largely facilitated by the orientation of adults (parents, teachers, specialists) towards teaching preschoolers. The pressure of educational achievements and the priority of learning activities are crowding out play. For most parents, early learning seems to be a more important and useful childhood activity than playing. At the same time, education is understood primarily as the acquisition of knowledge and the acquisition of educational skills (mainly reading, counting, writing). The priority of knowledge and educational activities displaces play from the life and educational process of preschool children [12, p. thirty].
Another reason for the decline in the share of play is the lack of children's communities of different ages. Previously, the game arose spontaneously, regardless of any pedagogical influences from adults, since it was passed on from the older generation of children to the younger ones (in courtyards, in large families and other groups of different ages). At present, when one-child families predominate and contacts between younger children and older children are practically absent, the natural mechanisms of broadcasting the game are disrupted, and adults cannot take on the function of introducing the game.
The marketization of childhood has become a characteristic phenomenon of our time. The abundance of goods and entertainment for children creates a consumption mindset. Thus, toys are increasingly ceasing to be a means of play and turning into goods that adults buy for children. Toys become simply the child’s property, objects of possession that fill physical space, and not incentives for children’s external and internal activity.
The consumption mindset is actively shaped and strengthened by the expansion of modern media and video products for children. The dominant activity of preschoolers has become watching cartoons, the artistic merits and developmental potential of which are, for the most part, very doubtful. This activity is intensively replacing play as a more active and creative form of activity [13, p. 44].
However, one of the main reasons for the “departure of play” from preschool education is the replacement of play with game forms of learning. The game does not seem to disappear, but becomes a means of learning, that is, more “useful” and aimed at learning new things. Indeed, in modern preschool pedagogy the importance of play is not denied, but, on the contrary, is constantly emphasized. However, the meaning of the game is predominantly considered as purely didactic. The game is used to acquire new skills, ideas, to develop useful skills, etc. This, in particular, is evidenced by numerous methods of pedagogical work, in which, one way or another, the terms “ game form” , “game means” , “game technologies " , "game activities", etc. Game is being replaced by game techniques and teaching methods, game technologies and is increasingly becoming not an independent activity (and the leading one), but a means of learning.
In games, children develop attention, activate memory, develop thinking, accumulate experience, improve movements, and create interpersonal interaction. In the game, for the first time, the need for self-esteem arises, which is an assessment of one’s abilities in comparison with the abilities of other participants.
Role-playing games introduce you to the world of adults, clarify knowledge about everyday activities, and allow you to quickly and deeply assimilate social experience. The value of the game is so great that it can only be compared with learning.
Playing is for a child what planning an activity is for an adult. Before any significant event in life, we need to prepare, calculate in our minds, rehearse what we will say and do. If we don’t prepare for important things, we can end up in an unpleasant situation. Here is a child, when in a role-playing game he repeats the actions of adults (heals, teaches, educates, fights, builds), rehearses, prepares for an important event for himself - adulthood. If he did not have time to practice on toys as a child, then in adulthood he feels insecure and may not be up to par. Maybe that’s why adults who lost their childhood early play out the game, make up for lost time at 30 and 40 years old, and until they train, they don’t feel truly mature.
Children's role-playing games (doctor, school, daughters-mothers, war games and other story games) can do what the most professional teacher cannot do. With its help, the child learns with ease and joy, develops all mental processes (memory, attention, speech, thinking, imagination) quietly and effectively. This is the only way for preschoolers to learn; they are not yet able to sit down at their desks and concentrate by force of will. In one game you have to sit like a mouse and not move so as not to be detected. This is how volitional concentration develops. In another game you have to remember magic words to find the treasure. This is how memory develops. In the third game, you need to be on your guard and not miss your lotto card, because the one who closes his big card first will win. This is how attention develops. And so on.
Further development of the theory of children's play could be productive in the following directions:
- studying the characteristics of the play of both one child in his individual play and in collective play with other children and discussing the dependence (or independence) of the level of development of the child’s play on his inclusion in the game with other children;
- studying the characteristics of children’s play in multi-age and integration (where there are simultaneously children with normative and deviant development) groups, when play partners have differences associated with intellectual development, behavioral characteristics, physical limitations, etc.;
- studying the dynamics of individual and group play of children of different psychological ages (including the question of why a play situation arises at a certain moment between certain children and why, due to what external or internal events it ends);
- studying the characteristics of the play of a child or a group of children depending on the playing material used in the game (playing material in this context is understood extremely broadly);
- studying the characteristics of the play of a child or group of children indoors and outdoors (outdoors).
List of used literature
- What do our children play? Games and toys in the mirror of psychology / E. Smirnova and others. – M.: Lomonosov, 2012. – 224 p.
- Pavlova, L.N. Early childhood: development of speech and thinking / L.N. Pavlova. – M.: Mosaic – Synthesis, 2013. – 236 p.
- Rutman, E.M. Study of the development of attention in ontogenesis / E.M. Rutman // Questions of psychology. - 2011. - No. 4. — P. 161-167.
- Smirnova, E.O. Approaches to understanding the game in modern Western psychology / E.O. Smirnova, M.V. Sokolova, E.G. Sheina [Electronic resource] // Modern foreign psychology. – 2012 – No. 1 – URL: http//psyjournals. ru/jmfp (accessed November 24, 2017).
- Smirnova E.O. Structure and options for a preschooler’s plot game / E.O. Smirnova, I.A. Ryabkova // Psychological science and education. – 2010 – No. 3. – pp. 29-32.
- Smirnova E.O. Play and arbitrariness in modern preschoolers / E.O. Smirnova, O.V. Gudareva // Questions of psychology. — 2014 — No. 1. – pp. 41-46.
- Teplitskaya, I.B. Game and relationships among young children / I.B. Teplitskaya // Game and its role in the development of a preschool child. - 2011. - pp. 111-116.
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