CHCECE011 - Implementing Free Flow Of Activity Throughout The Day

[trainee]

Choose one of the above features and provide an example of how you could implement this within a children’s service.

i have choosen - Encourages a free flow of activity throughout the day.

am i on the right path

answer
You could have an art center set up all day everyday where the children can come and go as they please. You would have the room set up so it would have a nice free flow the children could move about with ease.

[Lorina]

The following is an abridged extract from Tina Bruce’s 1991 book Time to Play in Early Childhood Education:

Features of Free Flow Play:

1) Play is an active process without a product
2) Play is intrinsically motivated
3) Play exerts no pressure to conform to rules, goals, tasks or to take definite directions.
4) It is about possible, alternate worlds which involve the concepts ‘supporting’ and ‘as if’ and which lift the player to the highest levels of functioning. This involves being imaginative, creative, original and innovative.
5) Play is about participants wallowing in ideas, feelings and relationships, and becoming aware of what we know (metacognition).
6) It actively uses first hand experiences.
7) It is sustained, and when in full flow, helps us to function in advance of what we can actually do in our real lives.
8) In play we use technical prowess mastery and competence that we have previously developed. We are in control.
9) Children or adults can initiate play but each must be sensitive to each others personal agenda.
10) Play can be solitary.
11) It can be with others each of who is sensitive to fellow players.
12) Play integrates everything we learn, know, feel, relate to and understand

Ways to help children develop high functioning free flow play:

1) Organise the play environment so that it is indirectly structured – pay careful attention to the organisation of materials so that they are accessible.
2) Indirectly structure the use of time using sensitively chosen moments for direct teaching.
3) Ensure that adults offer language to support the children’s learning.

Ref: The Importance Of Free Play

Hope this helps,

,
Lorina

[trainee]

thanks