ISSN : 2241-4665
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ISSN : 2241-4665
Ημερομηνία έκδοσης: Αθήνα 22 Ιουνίου
2018
« CHARACTERISTICS
OF DIDACTIC GAMES FOR PRESCHOOL CHILDREN»
«ΤΑ ΧΑΡΑΚΤΗΡΙΣΤΙΚΑ ΤΟΥ
ΕΚΠΑΙΔΕΥΤΙΚΟΥ ΠΑΙΧΝΙΔΙΟΥ ΓΙΑ ΤΑ ΠΑΙΔΙΑ ΠΡΟΣΧΟΛΙΚΗΣ ΗΛΙΚΙΑΣ»
Makrogiannaki Aikaterini
Prescolar Education Teacher
Περίληψη
Το παιχνίδι αποτελεί την βασική δραστηριότητα του παιδιού και «σημαδεύει» όλη την ύπαρξή του. Τα παιδιά καταναλώνουν την μεγαλύτερη ενέργειά τους στο παιχνίδι, ατομικό είτε σε ομάδες. Τα παιχνίδια είναι σύνολο ενεργειών που αποσκοπούν στην απόλαυση και την αναψυχή και μπορούν επίσης να χρησιμοποιηθούν για εκπαιδευτικούς σκοπούς σε ελεγχόμενο και οργανωμένο περιβάλλον. Προκειμένου τα παιδαγωγικά παιχνίδια, να αποφέρουν το μέγιστο όφελος στην ανάπτυξη των παιδιών, είναι απαραίτητο να βρεθεί η σωστή φόρμουλα για την ένταξή τους στην ευρύτερη εκπαιδευτική διαδικασία.
Abstract
Playing is the central activity of
the child and it marks his/her whole existence. Children dedicate most of their
energy for playing, either alone or with others. Games are sets of actions that
are meant to bring enjoyment and recreation and they can also be used for
instructive purposes in controlled and organized environments. In order for
didactic games to bring the greatest benefit to children’s development it is
necessary to find the right solution for their integration into the larger
educational process.
1. Basic notions about didactic games
During
play, children receive opportunities for social interaction with peers and
adults. They learn the importance of social rules and how playing may help them
to get along with others. Children learn to express and control their emotions
and resolve possible conflicts by using these social interactions[1]. A didactic game is that type of game that has
specific educational purposes and it can be used in children’s education, more
usually in kindergarten and for preschool ages. Each of these games provides
learning experiences and serves the greater purpose of consolidating
information about surrounding reality. “It
may take place in a classroom, gym, playground or outdoors. It has its own
rules, and requires constant supervision and final assessment. It is meant for
both individuals and groups of pupils, while the role of a pedagogic leader has
a wide scope: from a main organizer up to an observer”[2]. By playing, children are provided with
opportunities for social interaction with peers. Children learn the importance
of social rules and how to get along with others through play. It is during
this social interaction that children learn to express and control their
emotions and to resolve conflicts with others.
The main issue implied
by the technology and methodology of didactic games is the requirement to
create the most effective fusion of all its main
elements, such as: the content, the rules, the educational task, the
actions and the purpose[3]. Neglecting one of these aspects may lead to
an undesirable change from one attractive activity to one usual activity.
Therefore, all the game elements must be carefully chosen and arranged and they
must follow the overall theme of learning, so that children’s attention can be
caught and maintained throughout the game’s length.[4]
Regarding
the game’s content, for each game we identify the didactic task. This is
transposed into specific problems that children must solve independently or by
cooperating with others. In these conditions, their joint interest expands
greatly. Newer problems must be still accessible to children and they should
require new investigation efforts, while also keeping the interest much alive.
Even when we discuss repeating or verifying certain knowledge, this knowledge
will not be taken by the game in the shape and size in which the knowledge was
previously transmitted, but with a larger scope - by using different variants
of the game, we intend to reactivate not just memory, but also most importantly
the thinking process (operations capacity of association flexibility,
fluidity).
In practice, if the
possibilities of the children are underappreciated and the given tasks are too
simple, or if we overrate their possibilities and give to them difficult tasks
then the results can be negative[5]. Those tasks that are too easy will make
children used to easy work, which could later lead to apathy, laziness, or even
to a passive thought process. However, if the tasks are overwhelming, children
could lose their confidence in their own abilities and cease to gain interest
for intellectual activities.
The rules of the game are also very important, because they establish
the conduct and actions of the children and they have a predetermined and
obligatory nature for the participants[6]. Choosing the rules is made depend on the
particular structure of the selected didactic game. Generally speaking, the
rules indicate how the children will participate in the game and how can we
evaluate their results.
The rules represent the
main element of organization of the didactic game and they demand the child to
interact and behave in a certain way. Children must be aware of these rules,
remember them, wait for a specific signal and only then act accordingly[7]. Sometimes they also have to refrain from
another idea or behavior that has no part in the game, while having to execute
some required actions. This situation requires a greater level of discipline
from the children, by determining them to solve the didactic tasks with speed
and accuracy.
Maintaining children's attention
during the didactic game is realized through the creation of emotional
dispositions, surprises, guessing tasks, competition scenarios and through game
acts. In a didactic game, one or several playful actions can be introduced, but
their number or variety does not automatically mean that our objective will be
completed. What really matters is to create a sound correlation between these
playful and fun actions on one side and the didactic tasks on the other side.
Adding a game approach to a didactic activity can provide a more attractive and
interesting feeling, brings diversity and excitement and also prevents the
installation of monotony, fatigue or boredom.
The didactic material
has a special role in solving intellectual problems and it has to be attractive,
diverse and especially sufficient. Depending on the didactic material used,
retaking, completing or even organizing new games can be suggested. Organizing
the games with didactic material may require careful planning or even the
existence of a special supply of resources, such as: tables and boards made by
the teacher, toys, board games, other printed pictures or documents, chips etc.[8]
In practice, the
didactic game can be seen under several types:
-
As
a way of specifically organizing the learning activities in order to gather new
knowledge and also to evaluate knowledge individually or in the group;
-
As
a procedure during the larger learning activities, focused on consolidating the
new material;
-
As
part of a learning activity;
Judging by their content,
the didactic games can be classified as follows[9]:
-
Lexical/Linguistic/Literary
games;
-
Arithmetical/Mathematical
games;
-
Geographical/Environmental
games;
-
Musical/Artistic
games;
-
Sports-related
games.
So, as a first
conclusion, a didactic game is an activity that is different from other
activities with similar content because of its specific structure, its unity
between the didactic tasks and the playing activity, and its nature of fun time
that stays fully embraced.
Regardless of the way it
gets applied, we observe from practice that these didactic games create for
children a context for independent actions, stimulating active participation
and intellectual engagement, by requesting them to create connections between
object, to discover causes, effects and so on. Didactic games ensure an
efficient learning process, because children are directly involved in solving
problems through their personal efforts. Teacher’s participation and
indications are necessary as the children get more and more immersed into the
games, not just to provide guidance over the sphere of action, but also for
assessment, encouragement and other types of assistance[10].
Organizing and
conducting didactic games may have different purposes depending on the age of
the group. For instance, younger preschoolers may play these games mostly for
object identification and understanding basic meanings, while those children
closer to the first year of school can participate in these activities for
consolidating knowledge or evaluating certain learned content[11].
Given the overall
efficiency of implementing didactic games for psychological development, positive
influences are noticed not only on the level of intellectual development, but
also on the general scale of personality[12]; children are introduced to some degree of
effort required for the next steps in learning and for a successful adaptation
to the school environment.
The collaboration
between the main instances of education (kindergarten, school and also family)
is vital for the success of the integration. The kindergarten environment
supports future school activities and its main purpose remains the overall
preparation of the children for school years and more specifically, for
organized and rigorous learning. Didactic games represent a very effective
method of such preparation.
When the preschooler
makes the transition to school years, play becomes secondary, and a radical
change in the life of the child takes place. All the organized learning
activities from the kindergarten period have prepared the pupil to sustain
schooling activity during classes[13].
The dominant role that
playing used to have in the child's life and development is slowly but surely
put into second place, while learning becomes the central activity. Later on,
working will take the time place of learning in this whole scheme of main
activities of one's life[14]. Practice has proven that chronologically and
naturally the laws of human development follow this path, from playing to
learning, and then to working.
Passing from one
dominant activity to another is done gradually over time, so it is not
something that happens all of a sudden. On the contrary, the coexistence of two
activities that are harmoniously combined will lead to an easier jump from one
step to the other.
Didactic games create a
way for passing from playing to learning as the dominant activity in the life
of a child, and these games are used with great success together with the rest
of the much diversified class activities[15]. This is similar to the way students make the
transition from learning in school to working, by attending practice courses
and programs. Schools must continue the process of instruction and learning
that begins in kindergarten, in order to follow the main goal of education as a
whole – that is, continuously preparing children for life in general.
Therefore, preparing children for school years depends on the formation of
several school related skills during kindergarten, especially in the last year
before moving to school[16]. Also, the continuation of some activities
like didactic games and logical games will help children react to the
increasing exigencies of the school environment.
2. Mathematical didactic games
One of the main goals of
mathematics in general is to teach students how to logically use reason, which
is one capacity that can be transferred to other disciplines and to so many
other activities unrelated to school. Some concepts known to be fundamental in
mathematics (sets or relations for instance) can be implied in common knowledge
of children. Progressively, this knowledge will generate the foundations for
various notions. In kindergarten, children must be guided in their activities
with concrete objects and also for recognizing and understanding logical
patterns of the games they play, therefore making the first steps towards a
rational thought processing.
Modern
mathematics has an influence in all the domains that request rational thought.
Therefore, a key educational activity in kindergarten’s mathematics is to start
this process of training children into the qualities of rational thought[17]. By doing so, the kindergarten environment
integrates itself into the larger, uniform framework which is the teaching of school
mathematics.
The
fundamental and immediate goal of math-related activities in kindergarten is to
prepared children for understanding and assimilating mathematical content from
the first school year, which could represent, for instance, creating some
intellectual capacities that allow the 6 or 7 year olds to consciously perceive
the number as a collective expression of a sum of objects, understanding how
the series of numbers are formed, completing simple operations of addition and
subtraction or analyzing the characteristics of geometrical shapes[18].
We
can indicate two main objectives of math-related activities in kindergarten[19]:
-
Preparing
children for building the concept of natural number and introducing the series
of numbers from 1 to 10;
-
Developing
logical thought processing of the children.
Preschool teachers have
the task to make children understand the notion of a number as a symbol for
equivalent sets, and later on, to understand how that number can be composed or
decomposed[20]. In kindergarten, math games are also used for
other objectives except learning per se. These games can be useful for
evaluating children’s knowledge and intellectual accomplishments or with the
purpose of developing logical thought, but all these games must be preceded by
at least one main activity of teaching numbers. So, math games will get the
task to repeat in a new and attractive way what was previously explained and
shown. Through didactic games, children are getting opportunities to
independently solve problems, and to use their own direct efforts in order to
gain some skills and knowledge which will later become the basis for acquiring specific
mathematical knowledge.
In some of these games,
children have the possibility to count certain quantities (the number of birds
in the tree, the flowers in the garden), to discover the number of counted
objects, to establish the place of each object in a succession (answering
questions like “Which truck is loaded?” with a number, such as “The third”), to
make connections between numbers and respective quantities (for instance,
rolling a dice and stacking as many chips as the dice number says). Other games
may give children the chance to compare numbers, or to discover equality or
inequality between two sets of objects (like finding a number of objects
greater than the teacher’s).
A didactic game can be
organized as an independent activity in which all children in the kindergarten
class can be involved, or it can be used as part of a frontal, supervised
activity. In the first case, the theme, the content and the tasks of these
games may be found in the kindergarten educational activities schedule. When
they are used as an integral part of a fontal activity, games facilitate the
reiteration of certain content in a more attractive way.
Depending on the content
of the mathematical activities and the age of the children, the didactic
tasks of various math games have the following characteristics[21],[22]:
-
They
relate to only one aspect of the content;
-
They
create a problem / scenario that must be possible to solve by all children in
the group;
-
They
specify what exactly must children do consciously during their activity in
order to complete the specific objective;
-
They
provide training for the thought processes in earlier stages of development:
analysis, synthesis, comparison, abstraction etc.;
-
They
offer different paths of assessing children’s skills and knowledge in the field
of mathematics.
The connection between
the didactic task and the game’s actions is made through the establishment of a
set of game rules. Each math game has at least these two rules:
-
The
first one translates the didactic task into a concrete action, transforming the
exercise into a playing situation and bringing a contribution to the
stimulation of children’s cognitive processes and to their overall intellectual
education;
-
The
second one has an organizing role and it establishes when does a game’s action
have to start and when to end, and also sets the order of all these actions.
Even with the element of
attractiveness on their side, math games cannot be effective if the
mathematical language used is not adequate, close to the understanding of all
children. Considering that this type of language has many abstract ideas and
concepts, there are always some difficulties of learning, especially in the
beginning. All the respective notions and concepts must, first of all, be
understood by children in a broader and more “friendly” language environment, relevant
to the age level of the group[23]. After this step, the ideas and notions can be
introduces in the current language, which enriches itself with new words,
concept, ideas etc.
Mathematical games help
children to think more actively, to make analogies, to bring discipline to
their activities, while using, perhaps surprisingly, just simple problems and
exercises. Younger preschool children get familiarized with new skills and
knowledge to group objects, or to express and indicate special relations
between them. As children get older and closer to school years, the game types
develop as well into new requirements, such as gathering some sets of objects
by following some criteria, comparing them and appreciating the quantities, forming
pairs and counting them etc. In the final year before entering school,
practicing these math games intends the deeper understanding of the numbers and
basic calculating skills.
3. Didactic games for language training
By its nature, a
language represents a system of organized signs which are determined by the
supreme purpose of human communication[24]. Children get accustomed with the language’s
features intuitively, when they are old enough to form the basic communication
abilities. Their learning is based on spontaneous acquisitions from
pre-kindergarten years, while preschool education describe the stage for
acquiring linguistic performance, thanks to social integration[25].
Most language related
activities during preschool years focus on the phonetic dimension, because
preschoolers have to be aware of the sounds that create spoken language and
their differences[26]. Regarding grammar structure and developing
expressiveness, these areas can also be explored in other types of daily
activities.
Because they are
attractive and accessible to children, didactic games for language training
offer them the best possibility to internalize new notions and the basic
elements of grammar structure, through the transition from simple sentences to
more complex ones – the ones that require elaborating logical relevance between
notions. Knowing the level of speech development at preschool age, teachers
must first of all follow the training of the practical part of language, helping
children to handle various expression rapports.
Didactic games for
educating oral communication and expression may be conducted in different
forms, such as:
-
Games
of composition, that feature a series of images that are used as support for
creating dialogue;
-
Games
that focus on forming sentences and knowing their components;
-
Games
of word recognition, as a basis for forming sentences;
-
Games
for anticipating sounds and syllables.
A preschooler does not
learn grammar rules, doesn’t know definitions, or the nature of nouns and verbs
for instance, because he learns to speak by following the “speaking models” of
others. If the child interacts with people who don’t speak the language
correctly, this creates a negative influence that cannot be easily corrected.
Therefore, speaking exercises are very important throughout the whole preschool
period. During these years, children are familiarized with the simple sentence and
in order to understand the notion of a sentence, examples must be provided.
Preschoolers start creating sentences based on images, followed by objects in
the environment, and then they create them freely[27].
Using children’s
experiences, a few grammar categories can be foreshadowed using didactic games
that require naming objects, establishing some traits for these objects or
their actions (these words and notions will be later found in the areas of
nouns, verbs or adjectives). Other games may introduce children to correct
expression, requiring them to fill a sentence using a specific word. Each child
must correctly pronounce the sounds and words that compose the sentences, and they
also have to show promptness in thinking and to develop creative imagination.
4. Didactic games for discovering and understanding
environment
Knowing the environment represents,
for preschool education, a key matter determined by the necessity to show them
the world they live in, and to bring them information about different aspects
of the environment for the greater goal
of expanding their knowledge and developing their intellectual capacities.
Both theory and practice
have shown didactic games to be effective as a contributor to the creation of
an intellectual and moral profile of the future pupils[28]. For discovering the environment in a safe and
organized manner, children have the possibility to have direct contact with
their surroundings, and with the help of the preschool teacher they learn how
to observe these facts. The teacher helps them to perceive differences, to
focus on special features of a certain object or being and to memorize what
they discover. This systematic guidance leads to the formation of an
observational availability and to increased interest towards discovering
anything new that may come in the children’s way. This is a warranty for
successfully solving the didactic games for knowing the environment.
The didactic task of
these games require preschoolers to undergo a considerable intellectual effort,
for establishing relations, sorting, deducting, comparing and even for
abstraction or generalization. During these games, children have an opportunity
to operate with different concepts and to apply them in real-life scenarios
made possible through the game’s actions. The surrounding world must appear
into the child’s conscience as a circle determined by concrete phenomena, a
circle that constantly gets larger as he discovers observable connections
between objects and facts.
Considering the content
and the objectives, games for discovering the environment may be classified
as follows[29]:
-
Games
for verifying knowledge about the human being (body parts, objects for personal
use, clothing, food, furniture, toys etc.);
-
Games
for consolidating knowledge about human activities (work at kindergarten, basic
professions, travel vehicles and others);
-
Games
for consolidating knowledge about nature (plants, animals, birds, seasons
etc.);
-
Games
for bonding representations about time (the moments of the day, the daily
kindergarten schedule and so on).
At preschool age,
didactic games may be used successfully for developing children’s interest in
overall knowledge and science, which thus becomes a psychological background
for training skills and gaining information. When planning these games, one
must follow the necessity of establishing a connection with other common
activities. As the child acquires greater knowledge and information in a
certain domain, he gets more chances to apply what he learns using his own
filters.
The activities for
knowing the environment don’t have just the purpose to discover the immediate
reality, but also to familiarize children with scientific notions and concepts.
Observing plants and animals, or the changes during the four seasons are good
ways to accomplish this. Explaining scientific elements, the cause of some
phenomena, the differences between Earth areas etc. help children understand
that nature is in continuous movement, development and transformation. By
noticing there are changes in the weather during the four seasons or that water
can become solid, preschooler may start to understand the connections between
various natural elements, which will later become the basis for school
activities that have the general name of “science”. Direct contact with reality
is always very effective when it comes to attract and maintain children’s
attention for a longer time.
From the multitude of
didactic games for knowing the environment, teachers can choose and make use of
the ones that will show results not just for developing and consolidating
knowledge related to this specific type of activity, but also for influencing
the further development of children’s cognitive processes and language. That
way, preschoolers can adapt to the school activities and requirements more
easily.
As a general conclusion,
didactic games are never just an alternative to the classical teaching
scenarios. They are necessary tools for providing the best learning experiences
for the very young, and their role is greater at preschool ages. These games
follow rules and focus on children’s natural activities, being relatable, easy
to understand and follow but still, not without an intellectual challenge. Main
domains such as mathematics, communication and natural environment can be
gradually uncovered by future pupils through didactic games that will grant
them not just more information and knowledge, but also opportunities to develop
and maintain a set of problem-solving skills.
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