Focusing on creative playtime (and using video to do it)

There's something delightful about watching young children immerse themselves in make-believe worlds, and although there are no kids here at this NAEYC institute in New Orleans, there have been several opportunities to watch videos of kids playing "pretend."

This morning in a session organized by the Alliance for Childhood, I gave a talk called "Video Screens and Cardboard Boxes," in which I showed a home video of my girls playing with two big boxes and some oversized pieces of chalk -- all of which was inspired by their watching of Pinky Dinky Doo on Noggin. (One of my points was that we need to be more specific in talking about technology: Let's look more closely at what content and forms of technology inspire versus stifle creative play.)

An hour later, video clips were the highlight of a presentation by Deborah Leong of the Metropolitan State College of Denver and Elena Bodrova of Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning. They started by zooming in on theories of how children's play evolves, first with simple props but then graduating to moments of role-play and "invisible" friends. These are levels of play that can be hard to grasp when you read about them on paper, but that become perfectly understandable when you see the kids playing.

The larger point of Leong and Bodrova's talk, however, was to recommend the use of video and photographs as a way of giving preschoolers "virtual field trips." Their research, they said, has shown that today's children need some guidance on how to play pretend. In their experience, adults in children's lives often say they are too busy to bring their children along on shopping outings or let them get involved in preparing dinner.

This is why, they said, teachers have to step in. "Teachers have to teach play intentionally," Leong said.

They suggest showing children videos of people interacting in various settings -- such as bakeries where cashiers talk to customers or medical offices where doctors treat patients. (They described real-life field trips too, but pointed out that they aren't always possible.) These videos, they said, give children new ideas for play, leading them to re-enact what they saw -- with and without guidance from nearby preschool teachers.

By the end of the session, a representative for the Fred Rogers Institute was chatting with Leong about how to use old clips of Mister Rogers' field trips to bring more videos into her preschool curriculum. (Anyone remember that field trip episode of Mister Rogers at the crayon factory?)