In the majority world, how do children combine play with work and how does this support their cognitive development?
Play is an essential part of daily routines and is also very closely linked with the ongoing demands of household chores and other tasks that children are expected to help with. The demands on children to carry out these different tasks become extended by combining play with work (Punch, 2000 and Katz, 2004).
It is considerably tough to define ‘play’ and ‘work’ because they include a range of activities and are ideas which are both socially and culturally constructed. The term ‘play’ is often used to describe what children do (James et al., 1998: 90). Given the right environment, children’s play can happen anywhere (Ward 1990). Therefore, even children that are made to work within the majority world, can also enjoy the use of play and the developmental benefits that arise from it.
Play is not something that requires expensive toys and equipment to work, play can be done freely in many different forms. Children can play socially alongside other children, or they can play individually. All aspects of play can play a huge part in supporting cognitive development (Punch,2003).
Due to the fact that the children have very limited access to commercial toys, they tend to use their own resourcefulness to make their own toys by using the natural materials that are all around them, including, wood, stones, water, and mud. This is highlighting the fact that play helps to promote cognitive development, the children are able to use their pre-existing knowledge to create fun games and toys (Punch, 2000).
Many children will begin to combine play within the working environment to ensure the working environment is filled with more excitement. An example of this would be to sing and dance whilst doing different chores. This is also helping to support cognitive development, whilst the child is singing (an aspect of play) they are also using their memory and previous skills learned to sing the songs- this is supporting cognitive development.
Play can sometimes be a playground filled with negative, problematic and upsetting lessons. Yet, on the other hand, play can also provide the opportunity for increasing children’s gratitude for the acceptance and the conditions that go with it (Lofdahl and Hagglund, 2006). This relates to the theory of mind and understanding how it feels to be someone else’s position.
This can be applied to a working environment, where a younger child would like to help from an older sibling with a chore they are struggling with. The sibling will be able to think about how they would personally feel if they needed the help and how it will feel for the other sibling to feel accepted. Once the help had been given, the child will feel gratitude towards their older sibling, this is relating to the theory of mind and how cognitive development can be developed within the workplace. Also, by working alongside another child, the opportunity to combine play within the workplace has increased (Punch, 2000).
Another example of work and play combined would be a chore of scaring away crows. The children can use natural resources including stones to throw at the crows. Whoever scares the most crows is the winner. By adding the sense of play, the children will be intrigued, whilst also tallying up the winner- relating to cognitive development and the job is also completed (Punch, 2003).
References;
James, A., Jenks, C. and Prout, A. 1998. Theorizing Childhood. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Katz, C. (2004). Growing up Global: Economic Restructuring and Children’s Everyday Lives. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Lofdahl, A. and Hagglund, S. (2006). Power and participation: social representations among children in pre-school. Social Psychology of Education 9: 179–194.
Punch, S. (2000) ‘Children’s Strategies for Creating Playspaces: Negotiating Independence in Rural Bolivia’, pp. 48–62 in S. Holloway and G. Valentine (eds) Children’s Geographies: Living, Playing, Learning and Transforming Everyday Worlds. London: Routledge.
Punch, S. (2003) Childhoods in the Majority World: Miniature Adults or Tribal Children? Sociology, 37(2): 277-295.
Ward, C. (1990). The Child in the City. London: Bedford Square Press.
I like how you have taken a different approach to this question compared to the other blogs I have read. You have carried a theme of doing chores throughout your blog, mentioning how whilst doing chores children can play through singing. I really liked this as it is a different view point of how children can combine play with work. You have mentioned Punch in your blog, I found that it was really useful to refer to her work with this blog, it is interesting that you have referred to her work when mentioning the lack of available toys for children in the majority world. I found that she wrote some really useful points on how children combine work and play, her journal “Childhoods in the Majority World: Miniature Adults or Tribal Children?” (Punch, 2003) was a really useful reading source to use and I think if you was to read into this more you could distil more information that would fit in really nicely with your blog, as I can see you have only briefly mentioned this. Overall, this blog was really nice to read, it had an overall flow and you spoke about relevant topics throughout the blog.