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Preschool 3 - 6 years old. Scaffolding abilities

The preschoolers increasingly express themselves through spoken language. This leads to hours of role-play, acting out role models from the world they are keen observers of and eager participants in. The driver of role-play is to control the uncontrollable: Young children deal with the world they are to decide more and more over through acting out the observations they have made. Great play signals for this age group are activities that not only address the high action level of the preschoolers but also talk to their instinct of observation, pretend games and need for gathering.

 

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Language and role play    
Some researchers state that language development begins before the child is born: if mother, father and siblings “speak to the stomach”, sing songs, the newborn will recognise their voices.  Language development begins early, but it takes a lot of sensomotor training to develop language.  We know that rhythm is a decisive factor, that balance and coordination are important – that the development of the senses is important to language development.

The language development effects the way children play: Till the age of app. 3 years, children tend to play parallel: They mostly play next to one another. They get inspired by one another and might play for some minutes, but a long-lasting play, built up during a whole afternoon, as we see it with the 3-6 year olds is not reachable before you have a developed set of language tools to work with, and thus is able to agree, build up stories and use your imagination.

When children reach the age of approximately three years they will have developed language skills to form sentences. This opens a new world of play: They are able to play together. Toddlers play parallel, next to one another. Kindergarten kids can play together. One of their favourite games is role-play: Play father, mother, and child. Imitation of the adult world is a way to get more familiar with the patterns of it.

Role models for the role-play will often be the parents. But it will certainly also be stereotypes of gender role models. Every boy of 3-4 wants to be Superman, or a very masculine role model: cowboy, knight, fire engineer. The power plays should be respected for what they are: An experiment of gender roles and social skills and limits: If I hit him, what will happen next? The games give experiences of social life and how to handle conflict. The girls on their side like to be princesses. They can dress up in pink tulle for hours, there is nothing better than wearing mummy’s shoes and make-up. The role models are just as stereotyped as those of the boys.

The gender differences are evident. But we should remember not to exaggerate their meaning. In fact the differences in the group of boys and the group of girls internally are bigger than the differences between boys and girls.  Researchers disagree on the meaning of gender roles. But there are some characteristics most researchers agree upon: Girls have greater verbal ability than boys, tend to avoid physical conflicts more and have a tendency of playing in smaller groups of two-three male children. Some research shows, that the play patterns of boys and girls are different: Girls tend to have a negotiation culture, mainly to avoid physical conflicts, whereas boys have hierarchies and do not seem to fear physical conflicts as much.


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