Play Area Critique Essay

The ara of the pre-school manner that I have chosen to critic each(prenominal)y evaluate is the costume up airfield. Our pre-school consists of 20 children aged 3-4 years aged(prenominal) spread over two sessions, and comprises both boys and filles. In our pre-school we have two polish children, unitary boy and integrity girl, who speak both side and Polish, one Chinese girl and one Zimbabwean boy. The rest of the children be Irish. Our pre-school dwell is one large room in a normal childcare facility, located at the rear of the building adjacent to the later-school(prenominal) room, and opens out(p) onto the outdoor function ambit.The using of a encyclopaedism environs which supports childrens learning, socialization, chases and needs, is one of the foundation stones to quality early years course and service. According to Aistear, taking time to develop a keen indoor(a) and outdoor learning environs will assist in the development of your curriculum and provide a welcoming and supportive learning breeze for the children.There are two employments for the adult in preparing this environment organising it and resourcing it. In a pre-school room the blank shell should be divided into interest regions i. e.child-sized firmaments kind of than in a single large group spot. The supervisor should bring to pass well-defined domains of interest that encourage a admixture of types of play and financial aids children determine and experience the choices on offer. As you enter our room, the room the sinks and wash up area are to the left, as are the toilets.To the right is the table bring in area and arts & crafts corner. To the rear of the room, the book and reading corner is on the left hand side adjacent to the construction area, the set up stand is along the back fence, and the rest domicil corner is a soften area on the right hand side.Our building is relatively mod and the room is bright and airy, with most of the toys and equi pment in a good demesne of repair. There is no obviously old or shabby area that needs attention. Primary Research In deciding which area of the room needed improvement, I needed to conduct some primary research. The areas of appraisal and planning have become increasingly weighty in childcare. In order to support childrens learning and development, providers must support distri preciselyively individual child by providing appropriate opportunities, experiences, activities, interactions and materials within the daily service.Therefore, I decided to carry out an ceremony on the children playing, and an loose reference with the children. Observation and opinion processes can be used to identify the strong point of the setting, specific areas of the setting, specific activities and the practitioner.Through observing the children and/or the learning environment we can revise plans and, perhaps, changes to the environment, to improve provision. In carrying out my research I obse rved the children when they were playing using a trail record observation sheet to determine the most and to the number 1est degree popular areas of interest. observed how the space and organisation of the environment was supporting or hindering play interpret what I saw and heard in the play used the assessment information gathered in planning for improving the play areas. The children were invited to recruit and give their opinions on the room during the informal interview with the group. Indeed consulting with the children in relation to the development of the space and materials can be empowering for the children and give them a backbone of ownership.The results of my research indicated to me that the book area and typeset up areas were the least utilised areas of the room during free play time. The book area didnt overly concern me, as we incorporate reading and storytelling into our curriculum during the day, but I was concerned to see the lack of interest in the wind ow- array up area. Home Corner/ Dress Up Area The dress up area should be a very(prenominal) active area in the preschool room where children engage in a lot of role play.When children put on dress-up clothes and bring in to be grown up, they are discovering more than how it feels to dress as an adult. Pretend play helps children to understand how former(a) people think and feel. It gives children the opportunity to discover virgin experiences or new short letters they can see only in their imagination. This is called symbolic thinking and is fact mood of Piagets pre-operational stage of development. Symbolic thinking is an important, complex skill necessary for some(prenominal) tasks in life, including language and communication, social skills, and even algebra and geometry.When we watch children playing in dress-up clothes, we notice they often use problem-solving skills they see adults use. Negotiation and shared business become easier when children are pretending to be ad ults. They are gaining a sense of adult rules and expectations. Some generation children may find the dress-up area a place to confront fears and work through stressful situations. By pretending to be a doctor or a monster, a child gains a sense of power over the unk flatn, or by acting out a traumatic event and talking about it, it becomes less alarming to the child.Furthermore, engaging in dress up play can help further develop practical skills, as little fingers are learning to tie, zip, button and snap. Providing dress up supplies and dress up time allows younker children to practice these skills without the pressures of time constraints. Preschoolers will be building fine beat back skills and improving self-help while using their imaginations, enjoying creative play and having fun. Dress up play in any case encourages language skills as kids discuss amongst themselves what they are wearing, the colors and textures of the clothes, and the roles they are playing.Proposal of R ecommendations From my observations, I saw that the children often bypassed the dress up stand on their way to other areas, or at times even forgot that it was there. When the children did stop and have a look, they usually pulled out one costume, put it on and ran off to play elsewhere. Our dress up area consists of a child sized clothes rail with 4 costumes 1 x fairy, 1 x princess, 1 x bob the builder, 1 x fireman, and two rings with some doctor/ draw paraphernalia, a hardly a(prenominal) scarves, a straw hat, a couple ofHalloween masks, fairy wings, a poll and a plastic gun.It became obvious to me from my observation and interview with the children that our assortment of dress up clothes was completely inadequate, both in quantity and in variety. Our costumes were limited to a number of fairytale or cartoon characters, with no reference to ordinary everyday practical contexts. I also agnize that we were sadly lacking in accessories, to enable the children to adapt and change the outfits on a day to day basis, thus maintaining interest and motivation.Furthermore, the location and reveal of the dress up clothes needed attention, to attract the children to this very important play area. Rather than the dress up area existing as a separate area, it should be incorporated into another relevant interest area much(prenominal) as the Home Corner, to help extend play between areas. I picked up on this concept from observing the children, when one child dressed up as a fireman and thusly went to the Home Corner to put out a fire in the fitchen.Of course it comes naturally to children when engaging in symbolic or pretend play to link areas such as dress up and home corner. In conducting some reading and research into how to effectively organize a dress up area, I learned that the area should be lovely and inviting to children, yet well organised in order for children to discover and look for various costumes, accessories and items of enclothe. There also n eeded to be enough space to allow groups of children to play in the area at the same time. Materials and equipment should be kept visible to the children and easily reached.The supervisor should answer sure that the shelving is low level and that dress up equipment is within easy reach of the children. Choosing vaporish containers allows the children to see what is inside without taking it from the shelf, or using labels on the impertinent of the boxes would help the children greatly in choosing items and also at tidy up time, which is an important part of the High/Scope philosophy. In appendix to these criticisms of our dress up area, I realised that we have not do whatsoever effort to bring cultural or ethnic diversity to our selection.In developing the home corner and dress up area, you should take the write of the children attending your service into account. Our pre-school has 4 children of different ethnic backgrounds attending, and we as room leaders should endeavour t o include their ethnic clothes, music, dance, food and customs into the room, as well as those of other ethnic groups also. Implementation of Recommendations I had an informal meeting with my pre-school blighters and the substance passenger car to outline my observations, and proposal of recommendations for improving the dress up area.From this meeting we came up with the following plan of action return Area Action Required Delegated to Comments Location of dress up areaTo be moved to, and incorporated into Myself & The layout will be changed one afternoon the home corner colleague after playschool session vaunt supererogatory rail needed My colleague My colleague was to purchase items after Two surface racks to be fitted on wall funds do available by manager, and Baskets to be swopped for clear terminus arrange for congregation with caretaker boxes Two redundant boxes req. Full length mirror req. Variety Additional costumes req. My colleague Funds to be made available by manager Additional everyday clothing items req. Myself for purchase of costumes. Other items to Ethnic clothing req. Myself be sourced by myself via request for Variety of accessories req. Myself parental contributions and charity shops/ confuse sales Curriculum Dress up time to be strategically Myself & We will do this through drama, music and incorporated into curriculum colleague dance activity. Therefore to follow through on our plan of action, our centre manager made 100 available for the purchase of necessary items and additional costumes. My colleague went to Home base and purchased the coat racks, child clothes hangars, storage boxes and mirror, and then purchased a child sized clothes rail in Smyths as well as some new additional dress up items. These items included a policemans costume, nurses costumes and some additional props.Dress up clothes should ideally comprise a wide variety of clothes which reflect the occupations of family member s, local customs and people in the community, and should not be limited to superheroes or stereotyped dress up clothes. We re-arranged the home corner incorporating the dress up area on a Thursday afternoon, and my colleague had the caretaker fit the coat racks on the wall beside the clothes rails and the mirror. I sent home a letter with the children requesting donations for our dress up corner including a variety of accessories, and I also included the request in our pre-school newsletter.I also asked all the staff in the childcare facility for same. I made sure to specify that all donations should be clean, in a good state of repair and non hazardous for children. I included a cite of suggested items which would be greatly appreciated. The response was overwhelming and we took in approximately 5 black refuse sacks of items for use in the area. I went through all the items and took out what I felt was appropriate. These items were washed and sanitized, and double checked by my c olleague and centre manager for any safety hazards.I took the rest period of the dress up items given to us, and donated them to our nearest Barnardos charity shop on behalf of the pre-school. This list of items I requested was as follows Phones Old Hair Dryers cord Removed Sunglasses Small suitcases Hats Large model pieces Purses & Wallets Aprons Belts Baby items such as bottles, dodies, babygros, Ties Feather boas blankets etc. Empty toiletries i. e. shampoo bottles, facecream jarsScarves Jackets or shirts with buttons, zippers and etc.Capes & Shawls snaps Sponge Curlers Tool belts Crowns Handbags Uniform items Shoes with laces Small dresses Football kit Wands Leg warmers Gloves We managed to procure most of the items requested via donations, and the families of the foreign national children very kindly donated some items of clothing and accessories from their cultures. For example the mother of the Chinese girl very kindly gave us a piece of Chinese silk fabric and a Chinese fan, whilst the Zimbabwean family gave us an ethnically printed tunic and a small turban style printed hat.We carefully displayed all our dress up items so as to make it interesting for the children to try different combinations, and make it easy for them to find things. Dress up clothes were put on hangars on the rails, hats and belts and aprons etc. were hung on the coat racks, whilst scarves and other accessories were stored in understandably labeled storage boxes and baskets at the base of the rails. A special basket was filled with props such as wands, microscopes, toy swords and other such items to bring fantasy to life.One very important new addition to the dress up area was a full length mirror, which was fitted to the wall beside the rails. This is very important in maintaining interest in the dress up area, and helps the children to observe and assess their choices. Furthermore, allowing kids to self-verify the results of their work is very Montessori. The o verall result is that we now have a first class area which the children love. The time played out in the dress up area and home corner area in general has increased hugely, and the children have great fun move different combinations of costumes.pic pic Bibliography Harding, Jackie Meldon Smith, Liz How To Make Observations & judicial decisions 2nd Edition Hodder & Stoughton UK Hayes, Noirin too soon Childhood An previous Text 1999 Gill & MacMillan Dublin Madigan, Imelda Defining, Assessing and Supporting Quality in Early Childhood Care and Education The High/Scope Ireland Model http//www. cecde. ie/english/pdf/Questions%20of%20Quality/Madigan. pdf Miller, Patricia H Theories of evolutional Psychology 2002 Worth Publishers US.Sylva, Kathy Lunt, Ingrid Child Development A First Course 1982 Blackwell Publishing UK Aistear National Council for Curriculum and Assessment www. ncca. ie www. education. com http//www. ehow. com/how_10055611_set-up-fancy-preschool-classroom. htmlixzz29H s4JKT9 http//www. kildarechildcare. ie/wp-content/uploads/Guide-to-Play-The-Learning-Environment. pdf http//education. scholastic. co. uk/resources/144269 http//www. sagepub. com/upm-data/9656_022816Ch5. pdf