Do children enjoy coming up with make-believe characters and spending time dreaming-up and living in their own fantasy world, more than they value trying to help assist their parents with practical tasks?
According to a study that was published several months ago in the journal Developmental Science, it might not always be accurate to assume that the a child is going to naturally find fantasy play more appealing.
Their study revealed that for kids who were between the ages of 3 to 6 that they preferred engaging in real activities as opposed to fantasy-related activities.
They investigated the preschoolers' preference for a variety of different activities that were either deemed to be a pretend or real activity. They tested at least 100 children, between the ages of 3 and 6 years old, and found that they overwhelmingly preferred to engage in the real activities instead.
In their study they showed the children pairs of photographs and in 1 photo they would see a child engaged in a behavior like talking on the phone or cutting vegetables and then in the 2nd photo they saw a child pretending to do what the kid in the 1st photo was doing.
So when asked if they would choose to either really cut vegetables or pretend to cut vegetables, they selected the real activity.
Perhaps so many of them decided to choose the real activity because pretending to cut vegetables isn't all that fun. The fantasy options couldn't really compare, could they? Though when asked why they selected the real activities, the kids expressed reasoning such as wanting to learn a new practical skill. The kids also saw the hands-on activities as being fun.
In a follow-up study, that included 16 participants that were between ages 3 to 6, which also investigated the preference for either real or fantasy play, the kids again selected the real activities.
For that follow-up study, the participants had been given an option of choosing between real objects to spend time playing with, or they could choose toy versions of the same object (fantasy option) to play with.
Did they want to play with a real microscope? Or did they want to play with a toy microscope? And researchers saw that their preference for going with the real activities would increase with their age.
Researchers say that the findings support the notion that children crave and need real and practical experiences and not just fantasy play time. And that perhaps there has been too much focus and attention placed on the importance of fantasy play time for kids.
A number of researchers have previously asserted that fantasy play is highly overrated and there are always going to be some who don't believe that it's important to foster childhood fantasy play or that it could provide any sort of benefit to the life of the child.
Aside from the critics however, there are a number of researchers who still insist that fantasy play time is a valuable ingredient to foster social and emotional child development.
Fantasy play time for children has been said to help to provide a variety of possible benefits. It might help them to develop problem-solving skills; they can use their imagination to try and come up with a solution to the different problems that they might face. It can also enable a child to address and face their own fears and can give them the tools so that they can construct their own vision for their aspirations and dreams that they might have.
Pics:
Pixabay
Sources:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/kids-play-fantasy-reality
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/desc.12582/abstract
https://www.wired.com/story/ar-toys-the-future-of-play/
Related Posts:
A New Way For Students To Take A Field Trip
https://steemit.com/technology/@doitvoluntarily/a-new-way-for-students-to-take-a-field-trip