The Importance of Play

  1.- To explore Children, from their first years, start developing different ways of discovering and interpreting their environment by testing objects, creating sensory-motor schemes and stablishing contingency; a phase that is recognized as the initial or exploratory moment for them to create learning. Those schemes generated by children allow them to organize, structure and deal with events from their environment and will give them the capability of predicting and regulating situations. Therefore, their implicit learning will be highly connected to their daily context. So that, preschool years imply an inclusion in the physical, social and personal world. This exploratory phase is extremely important to develop social skills such as; autonomy, confidence and self-esteem which will allow them to strengthen their interaction experiences and lead them to construct a positive emotional load and be able to regulate and control insecurity and their creation of ideas.   2.- ...

  At the very beginning of the school year, most students are not familiarized with school anymore after a long period of vacation. However, the process of adaptation is certainly different from grade to grade; many teachers find first-grade as an extremely difficult grade due to the drastic change students face coming from a completely distinct playful surrounding offered by preschool. It is noticeable the relevant role of play during those first stages of preschool education; nevertheless, it changes severely when entering to primary education. Several aspects such as, the curriculum, teachers’ training, resources, directives, parents, etc. start interfering with a play-oriented approach or a play-based learning which make children feel unfamiliar and anxious in the new surroundings. The process of adaptation may vary depending on the country due to the different strategies applied by schools in preschool and first grade. Particularly, in Colombia, this process of adaptation take...