What is the game for children?

Long ago, psychologists and teachers called preschool age the age of the game. And this is not accidental. Almost everything little children do, left to their own devices, they call a game.

- What are you doing?

- I'm playing.

This is the typical answer of a small child, meaning a variety of activities: pouring sand into a bucket, throwing a ball, fussing with a friend, preparing a puppet dinner, etc. In other words, for a child, the game is his independent activity in which he can realize his desiresand interests without regard for the compulsion and necessity, the demands and prohibitions so characteristic of the adult world.

For a child, the game is a means of self-realization and self-expression. It allows him to go beyond the limited world of "child" and build his own world.

But the child has other activities, which he does not call a game, although in them he seems to be also free to realize his desires. This is drawing, modeling, designing. However, unlike the game, they have a tangible, tangible result - drawing, construction, etc. - and the child requires considerable effort to overcome the resistance of the material itself, to obtain the desired product.

There are no such problems in the game as in drawing, when the paint is not flowing where it should be, or in practical action, when things do not obey( try carefully lacing up your shoes!).

What attracts a child in the game? The very process of action. But the action in the game is special, not real. By the age of 3, children are beginning to realize the difference between the game and not the game, and by 4-5 years this difference between the present action and the game has already been clearly formulated by them: "This is for fun. ..", "Come on, as if I was riding. .."etc.

These "for fun", "as if", i.e., action in an imaginary situation, make the game an excellent means of self-realization for the child. In the game, he can do whatever he wants, and everything he "gets."In the game, the child is what he wants to be - a good boy, a beautiful princess, a traveler;in the game the child is where he wants to be - on the Moon, at the bottom of the sea, at school. He is a participant of interesting and attractive events - heals the sick, fights the dragon, extinguishes the fire. What of the fact that a child can not drive a real car? But he can, as much as he pleases, "ride" in a car built out of chairs and spin a wheel bought by his mother in the "Children's World";can arrange races of small cars with accidents and all kinds of traffic accidents;build garages for cars, hangars for airplanes and entire cities. If he does not go to school, like an older brother or a neighbor's girlfriend, it's not a problem either. After all, he can teach his plush rabbits and bears, give them assessments and explain tasks. Or maybe he himself became a student, having adapted his grandmother's bag instead of a knapsack and her own notebook instead of a notebook.

The game allows the child to stop an instant, repeat and live it many more times. For example, he traveled with his parents on the boat, and now this pleasant event can be repeated all the time in the game. The game helps the child not only to enjoy the "repetition" of pleasant events, but also to get rid of unpleasant experiences, feelings of dissatisfaction, if something did not succeed in reality. For example, the girl really wanted to be a Snow Maiden at a children's festival, but she only got the role of Snowflake. And now she attracts her grandmother as a spectator, and herself several times plays the script of the holiday that has already passed in the kindergarten, fulfilling the role of the Snow Maiden.

Thus, the child provides the game emotional well-being, allows to realize the most different aspirations and desires, and first of all the desire to act as an adult, the desire to control things( which in fact do not yet very much obey!).

Is this a sufficient reason to encourage and develop this activity? Probably, if the significance of the game consisted only in pleasure, then to some extent it would be possible to neglect it in favor of more serious, meaningful for the future life of the child's occupations. However, children's play is extremely important for the development of the child.

Perhaps one of the first who pointed out not only the "short-term" but also the promising utility of the game was the German scientist K. Groos, who proposed to view the children's game as an instinctive preparation for the future adult life: the game of girls in dolls is an exercise of the motherinstinct, the game of boys in the war - a manifestation of the hunting instinct, etc.

Modern scientists are far from attributing the instinctive nature to the child's play and equating it in this sense with the game of animals, as K. Groos did, but his suggestion about the enormous significance of the game for the whole future life of the child is now accepted by the researchers of the whole world for the axiom.

What does the game for the child's mental development give?

Psychologists and educators found that, first of all, the game develops the ability for imagination, imaginative thinking. This is due to the fact that in the game the child seeks to recreate broad areas of the surrounding reality that go beyond his own practical activities, and he can do this only with the help of conditional actions. First - it's actions with toys that replace real things. Expanding the content of the game( recreating increasingly complex actions and events from the life of adults, their relationships) and the inability to realize it only through object actions with toys entails a transition to the use of pictorial, verbal and imaginary actions( performed internally, "in the mind").

The ability of the preschooler in the game to operate with images of reality "in the mind" creates the basis for further transition to complex forms of creative activity. In addition, the development of the imagination is important in itself, because without it, no, even the simplest, specifically human activity is possible.

The game is important not only for the mental development of the child, but also for the development of his personality as a whole.

Taking on various roles in the game, recreating the actions of people, the child is imbued with their feelings and goals, empathizes with them, which means the development of his human, "social" emotions, the beginnings of morality.

Great influence is exerted on the development of children's ability to interact with other people. In addition, the child, playing in the game interaction and mutual relations of adults, learns the rules, the ways of this interaction, in a joint game with peers, he acquires an experience of mutual understanding, learns to explain his actions and intentions, to coordinate them with other children.

In the game, the child also receives experience of arbitrary behavior - learns to control himself, observing the rules of the game, restraining his immediate desires for the sake of maintaining a joint game with peers, already without adult supervision.

There is no need to explain how much all these qualities are necessary for the child in later life, and first of all in the school, where he must join a large peer group, focus on the explanations of the teacher in the classroom, control his actions while doing homework.

Psychological studies show that a child who "did not finish playing" as a child will find it more difficult to learn and establish contacts with other people than children who have a rich gaming experience, especially the experience of playing together with peers.

From all this it is clear that the game is of great importance for the overall development and upbringing of the child. But it helps to solve even more narrow pedagogical tasks. In the game, the child can acquire certain knowledge, skills, and skills. However, this already requires a special pedagogical organization of the children's game - including in it such content that would require the child to update certain knowledge, perform certain actions. It is possible, for example, to build a game in school so that a child will be very interested in learning to read the alphabet, and a specially organized game in the store can help to consolidate elementary counting skills. But these tasks can be solved only in the joint game of children with an adult.

In other words, adults should realize that the game is not an empty occupation, it not only gives maximum pleasure to the child, but is also a powerful means of its development, a means of forming a full-fledged personality.

Having found out what the game is for, we must now understand the following question: Should adults specially cultivate a children's game, teach children to play? Indeed, maybe the game is inherent in the child, just do not stop him from playing, giving him time and place to play?

In the psychology of the XIX - early XX century. The view on the game as a phenomenon accompanying the child's development was extended. The child's body matures, develops and inherent in it initially the makings, memory, imagination, and thinking become more perfect. And the game - only a manifestation of the child's imagination, thinking, as if the indicator is inherent in the child properties. With such a view on the development of the child, neither to cultivate the game, nor to influence it is necessary - it will appear in time for each child and disappear when the "age of the game" passes.

However, modern domestic psychology has proved that the specific human abilities developed in the course of historical development are, as it were, deposited, accumulated in various types of human activity. The child develops, mastering this or that type of activity, which is assigned to him by the social environment. A certain type of activity requires the child to have specific abilities and, as it were, responsible for their development. For each period of childhood there is a historically established type of activity that ensures maximum development of the child - this activity is called the leading one for a given age. For an infant( up to a year) is an emotional communication with a close adult;for an early child( 1-3 years) - subject-manipulative activity;for children of preschool age - game activity;for children After 6-7 years - educational activities.

Thus, the game is not a mystical, inherent quality to the child, but a historically developed activity, which he is mastering.

By itself, age does not at all guarantee the occurrence of a particular type of activity in a child. The formation of leading activities occurs gradually and depends on a complex system of social impacts( including the effects of close adults), who in one form or another assign this activity to the child.

For example, when entering a school, the child first only formally becomes a student. Mastering special knowledge in different subjects, he must also learn how to be a student - to be able to accept a learning task, to choose the means of solving it, to monitor and evaluate his actions. Only then can we say that he has formed educational activity.

The game is no exception. In order for the game to become the generator of development, the child must master this activity in its entirety, become a person playing, i.e., learn how to play. And an adult can help him in this.

And here we come across the puzzled reaction of the pan and mothers:

- But nobody taught us to play!

Is this really so?