Meaning of children's solitary play with respect to the development of self

Parten, M.B. (1932) categorized plays of children in the context of their social development. According to his theory, children begin to play with peers cooperatively as they grow older. However we often observe a child who plays alone even if he/she can play with peers together. In order to understand the meanings of solitary play, I observed plying activities of preschool children. Out of 6 observations of playing children, I chose 2 cases for discussion. The first case was a 5-year-old boy who built blocks to make a tunnel. The second case was a 4-year-old boy making a paper toy with scissors. In both cases, children were talking to themselves, and through their monologues, they corrected their maneuvers, invited new strategies and attained their goal. According to Wallon. H. (1983), children make conversations with the second ego in their mind, and these conversations developed one’s ego. Based on his theory, I assumed that when a child plays alone, he/she may talk to oneself in his/her mind. In this study, I tried to understand the meanings of their monologues while they played alone. It is proposed that inner conversation that I observed in this study might attribute in building their self

"Development of Finger Dexterity in Preschool Children": An Experimental Study with Maze-Drawing Task

Development of finger dexterity is known to be associated with social and cognitive abilities. This study examined the development of finger dexterity in preschool children through the “Maze-Drawing task” experiment. Participants were forty seven 4-5-year-old children （20 boys and 27 girls） and forty four 5-6-year-old children （23 boys and 21 girls）. The results showed that the finger dexterity of 4-5-year-old boys was characterized as “quick and incorrect” drawing, while those of 4-5-year-old girls were either “quick and incorrect”, “quick and correct” or “slow” drawing. On the other hand, the finger dexterity of 5-6-year-old boys and girls were both characterized as “quick and correct” drawing. It was suggested that children acquire preciseness in drawing between 4 and 6 years of age, while drawing speed remains fairly unchanged. A gender difference in the acquisition of finger dexterity was noted

The process of shape-configuration play for a 2.3 year old child using origami: Origami as a tool for instruction to develop a child?s ability to configure shapes

This study treated origami like pieces of a puzzle, by creating simple and regular origami forms, which required folds into point-symmetric shapes (parallelograms) and other folds into line-symmetric shapes (isosceles triangles). The purpose of this research was to examine how access to an existing tradition of origami, as tool for instruction, could be used to create and configure of shapes through child’s play and practice. Observation research was conducted on 26 infant subjects aged between 30 and 44 months of age at a nursery school. First, we examined the way in which the 2 to 3 year old children play with origami. The results were broadly classified into 3 patterns: (1) movement constitution type; (2) insertion type; (3) transformation type. Next, we investigated the difference in development of play by different ages. The results were that the lower the age they connected the pieces using their unchanged forms. As the age increased, it was seen that they developed from playing with many pieces to connecting them using their unchanged forms and by inserting a few pieces through playing, and by modifying a few pieces. The results showed that the 2 to 3 year old child had the opportunity to experiment using origami techniques to fold the paper into line-symmetric shapes and point-symmetric shapes through a form of play, wherein the child formed and created new shapes using his/her own methods