School Age
School age kids are more or less physically proportioned like adults. Their language skills continue to increase and their social patterns mature. Not only do they master role-play; ‘rules play’ has an increased role. Children this age love competitions, love to show their adults what they can do – and love to win.
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NATURE 4-12 Years
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Sports games can now be understood. To schoolchildren the gap between themselves and preschool age, however recent, now seems enormous. Schoolchildren consider themselves BIG. So activities for this age group can have other characteristics over and above the traditional playground signals. These children like to show off and, provided they have developed normally, they are increasingly agile, physically and socially.
The older school age children fi nd themselves torn between two different types of play and interaction. On the one hand they love challenges and are curious about new events. On the other hand they are really fond of the traditional games such as ‘do-not-touch-the-ground’ and tag. They love action – and they like just being together, chatting. Teenage and adolescence
No life stage is as loved and loathed in equal measure as being a teenager. For children this should to be a wonderful time – they are fi nally being becoming grown-ups and can manage most things on their own. But it’s also a time of great confusion.
To begin with teenagers go through an amazing growth spurt. Apart from an increased need for sleep, the growth spurt challenges the sense of balance, often resulting in clumsiness. So from a play perspective teenagers should be offered plenty of opportunities to improve their sense of balance. The teenage brain undergoes signifi cant development, furthering the cognitive skills. Socially teenagers simply need to be with their peer group. Their friends are the only ones who understand just how ignorant parents are and how diffi cult we are to live with!
Of course, teenagers do not call what they do ‘play’. Teenagers hang out. But maybe even more than in earlier in life, opportunities to meet and move on play equipment are crucial to a teenager’s feeling of belonging, of being noticed. Few things are as important to teenagers as gaining attention.
Teenager activities are many and varied but sports and games are still popular, as are climbing and balancing. Things that seems a bit scary or daring, where you can show off, are popular.
