The authors have analyzed psycho-pedagogical features of a game in preschool age. The authors consider the game as a multilateral phenomenon, as a special form of the existence of all aspects of the collective's life without exception. The progressive, developing value of games consists not only in the realization of the opportunities for the all-round development of a child, but also in the fact that it promotes the expansion of the sphere of his interests, the emergence of the need for the formation of the motive for a new activity — educational, which is one of the most important factors of the child's psychological readiness for learning at school. Authors also emphasize that in this age game are considered as the most important kind of activity. Games are effective means of a preschooler’s personality formation, his moral qualities and in game the need for affection the environment occurs. It causes a significant change in his psyche. The article demonstrates that children reflect not only actions and operations with objects, but also the relationships between people. The main changes in the activity, consciousness and personality of the child is the emergence of voluntariness of mental processes — the ability to purposefully manage their behavior and mental processes — perception, attention, memory, etc. There is a change in the perception of self, its image I. A special place is occupied by games, which are created by children themselves they are called creative. Thus, the authors point out that in these games preschoolers reproduce in roles all that they see around them in the life and activities of adults.
A game is the most available kind of activity to children, a way of processing information obtained from the environment. A game clearly exposes peculiarities of a child’s thinking and imagination, his emotionality, activeness and developing need for communication.
Preschool childhood is a short but very important period of personality formation. In these years a child receives primary knowledge of the surrounding environment around him, he starts to develop a certain attitude towards people and work, he start to develop skills and habits of behavior, his character is being formed.
A.S. Makarenko has characterized the role of children’s games as such: «A game has the same importance to a child as work and service to an adult. The way the child plays is the way the child will work. That is why the nurture of a future activist happens during a game in the first place».
Historical development of a game does not repeat. In matter of ontogenesis the role game stands chronologically first and serves as the origin of a child’s social consciousness in preschool age. Psychologists have long been studying child and adult games, looking for their peculiar content, comparing them with other types of activity. A game can originate from the need for leadership or competition. A game can also be viewed as a compensating activity, which provides opportunity for satisfaction of unrealizable desires. A game is an activity that is different from daily routines. Humanity creates its imaginary world again and again, new existence that coexists with the real world, the world of nature. Ties that bind a game and beauty are very tightly knit and multi-formal. Any game is a free and voluntary activity.
A game progresses for the sake of this game, for satisfaction, that happens at the beginning of execution of gaming action.
A games is an activity that reflects a person’s to the world that surrounds it. It is the world that causes the necessity for change of the environment. When a person has a desire that cannot be realized at once, the pre-requisites for gaming activity are being created.
Child’s independence in the middle of a gaming plot is limitless, it can go back in time, look into the future, continuously repeat the same action that brings joy, gives opportunity to feel oneself important, almighty and wanted [1; 218]. While playing a child doesn’t learn how to live but lives his true, independent life. A game is the most vivid emotional activity for schoolchildren. A famous researcher of children’s game
D.B. Elconin has underlined that in game the intellect follows emotional and effective experience, and functions of an adult are perceived emotionally. Thus, primary emotional-effective orientation in the contents of human activity occurs.
The significance of games to personal formation is hard to overestimate. It is no coincidence that L.S. Vygodsky calls a game «the ninth wave of children’s development».
In a game as in the leading preschooler’s activity some actions are performed which otherwise he would be able to do after some time.
Performing an action, even a disadvantageous one, a child does not learn any new experience related to completion of emotional intention which was realized in process of this action [2; 307].
The preface of a game is an ability of transferring certain functions of an object onto the others. It starts whenever ideas are separated from an object, when a child is freed from a harsh field of perception. A game in an imaginary situation frees from situational connection. While playing a child learns to act in a situation that requires knowledge and which is not experienced directly. Acting in an imaginary situation results in a child learning to not only perceive objects or real circumstance but the meaning of the situation. An individual develops a new quality of attitude towards the world: a child already sees the surrounding reality that is not only greatly diversified but carries knowledge and meaning.
A random object, which a child separates into a specific object and its imaginary meaning or function, becomes a symbol. A child is able to transform any object into anything as it becomes the first media for imagination. It is very hard for a preschooler to direct his thought away from the object and that is why he must have some kind of support in another thing. For instance, to imagine himself a horse he must find a stick as the support. In progress of this symbolic action a mutual experience and fantasy occurs.
Children's awareness separates the image of the real stick that requires real actions performed to it.
However, the motivation of the game action is not completely independent from the objective result.
The main motive of classic game is not in the result of the action but in the process itself, in the action that bring the child joy.
A child’s fantasy is born in a game that stimulates this creative path, creation of own special reality and world.
In the early stages of development a game is placed closely to practical activity. Imagination already participates during actions with surrounding objects, when a child realizes that she feed the doll with an empty spoon, for instance, although there is no expanded gaming transformation of objects yet.
For preschoolers the main line of progress lies in formation of non-object actions and the game appears as a floating process.
Over the years, when these kinds of activities change places, the game becomes a leading, dominating form of custom world creation [3; 239].
Not to win but play is the main formula, the motivation of children’s games (O. M. Leontyev).
A child can master a broad, but not directly available circle of reality only in game, while playing. This process of mastering the world via game actions in this world includes both game awareness as well as the game unknown.
A game is a creative process and as any real creative work it cannot be realized without intuition. In game all sides of a child’s personality are developed as well as his psyche is changed that prepares it for shifting to new, higher form of development. This explains big educational opportunities of games, which psychologist consider being the leading preschooler’s activity.
Games that are created by children themselves occupy a special position – they are called creative or story-driven role games. While playing these games preschoolers reproduce in roles everything they see around themselves in life or in actions of adults. A creative game is the one that forms a child’s personality much more fully, therefore being an important means of education.
A game is a reflection of life. Here, everything happens «as if» or «for fun», but in this situational environment that is created by a child’s imagination there is a lot of real: actions of participants are always real, their feeling and experience are true and genuine. A child knows that a doll and a teddy bear are only toys but loves them as if they are alive and realizes that he is not a «real» pilot or a sailor but feels like a brave pilot or a daring sailor who is not afraid of danger and is really proud of his victory.
Mimicking adults in games is connected to the work of imagination. A child does not copy the reality; he combines various impressions of life with his personal experience.
Children’s creativity appears in the plot of a game and in search for means of its realization. It requires a lot of imagination to decide what journey to go on, what ship or plane to make and what equipment to prepare! In game children pose as dramatists, property men, decorators and actors at the same time. But they do not nurture their design, they do not prepare to perform as actors for a long time. They play for themselves, expressing their own dreams and aspirations, thoughts and feelings that are on their minds.
Thus, a game is always improvisation [4; 13–15]. A game is an independent activity during which the children come into contact with their peers. They are connected by the same goal, by joint effort toward its achievement and by common interests and experiences.
Children choose the game and arrange it themselves. At the same time no other activity has such strict rules as this. That is why a game teaches children to direct their thoughts and actions towards a certain goal, helps to develop purposefulness.
In game a child start feeling as a part of the group, to assess actions and doings of his comrades accordingly. The task of an educator is to concentrate players’ attention on such objectives that would have caused solidarity of emotions and actions to help establish connections between children, which are based on friendship, fairness and mutual responsibility [5; 7, 8].
First condition that determines the essence of a game is that motives of a game lie in various experiences, sides of reality that are important for the player. A game as any human activity is motivated by attitude towards goals important for an individual.
In game one performs only actions the goals of which are important for the individual in terms of its inner contents. This is the main feature of a gaming activity and this is its main charm.
The second characteristic feature of a game lies in the fact that a game action realizes multi-formal motives of human activity without being interconnected in excurrent goals by means of action also by which these actions are performed out of game.
A game is an activity which solves the contradiction between fast growth of a child’s demands and limitation of his operative abilities. A game is way to realize a child’s needs and demands within his abilities.
The next, more evident feature of a game, in reality deriving from internal features of a game activity listed above is the ability, being a need at the same time, to replace objects within the limitations determined by the plot of the game, which function in according out-of-game practical action, with other objects that can be used to complete the game action (a stick – a horse, a chair – a car, etc.). The ability to creatively transform the reality first appears in game. This is the primary purpose of a game.
Does this mean that while being shifted into an imaginary situation a game becomes a way of escaping reality? Yes and no. In a game there is a slight shift from reality but there is also its penetration. That is why there is no leaving, no escape from the reality to some fictional, unreal world. Everything the game lives with and what it brings to life it acquires from the reality. A game leaves the borders of one situation, then it is distracted from one sides of reality to expose the others in more detail [6].
In Soviet pedagogics and psychology there were many people who were actively involved in developing game theory, such as K.D.Ushinsky, P.P.Blonsky, G.V.Plekhanov, S.L.Rubinstein, L.S.Vygostsky, N.K.Krupskaya, A.N.Leontyev, D.B. Elconin, A.S.Macarenko, M.М.Bakhtin, F.I.Fradkina, L.S.Slavina, Y.A.Flerina, V.А.Sukhomlinsky, Y.P.Azarov, V.S.Mukhina, O.S.Gazman and others.
The main scientific approaches to explanation of reasons game appears are as follows:
- Theory of excessive mental capacity (G.Spencer, Schurz);
- Theory of instinctiveness, function of exercise (K.Gross, Stern);
- Theory of functional pleasure, realization of inborn desires (K.Buler, Freud, A.Adder);
- Theory of religious origins (Heizinga, Vsevolodsky-Gerngross, Bakhtin, Sokolov and others);
- Theory of rest in-game (Steintahl, Schaler, Patrick, Lazarus, Waldon);
- Theory of a child’s spiritual development in game (Ushinskiy, Piageot, Macarenko, Levin, Vygotsky, Sukhomlinsky, Elconin);
- Theory of affection environment via game (Rubinstein, Leontyev);
- Connection of game with art and aesthetic culture (Pluto, Schiller);
- Labor as origins of a game (Wundt, Plekhanov, Lapharg and others);
- Theory of generalization of cultural impact of games (Heizinga, Ortega-and-Gasset, Lem).
A game is attributed many various function including purely educational, so there is a necessity to determine peculiarities of preschooler’s gaming activities more clearly, its impact on a child’s development and to find place for such an activity in the general system of educational work in children’s establishments.
It is necessary to precisely determine the sides of psychological development and formation of a child’s personality that mostly develop in-game or that are less affected by other types of activities.
The research of effect of games on psychological personality development is very complicated. Here, a pure experiment is impossible simply because one cannot extract gaming activity from children’s lives and observe how the development process would go.
The most important is impact of game on a child’s motivational-demanding sphere. According to Elconin’s works [7; 274], the problem of motives and needs is brought to the
At the base of game transformation while shifting to preschool childhood lies the expansion of range of human object, mastering which is presented now as an objective and the world of which is understood by him during his further psychological development. The expansion of the object circle itself with which the child wants to interact is secondary. In its essence there is a «discovery» by a child of a new world, the world of adults with their activities and their relationships. At this point a child does not know about either social connections of adults, social functions or the social importance of their actions. He acts in general direction of his desire, places himself at the level of adult. During this emotional-operative orientation towards adults and meaning of their action occurs. At this point the intellect follows emotional-operative experience. The game poses as an activity having the closest connection to the child’s needs. In progress of this activity primary emotional-operative orientation in meaning of human activities occurs, a child comes to realization of his place inside the limited system of adult relations and the need to be an adult. The significance of the game is not limited to the fact that the child has new motives for activity and related tasks. Essentially important is that a new psychological form of motives arises in the game. Hypothetically, one can imagine that it is in the game that there is a transition from immediate desires to motives that take the form of generalized intentions that are on the verge of consciousness.
Before speaking about development of mental action during the game it is necessary to list main stages that the formation of every mental action and related notions have to pass through:
- the stage of the formation of action on material objects or their material substitute models;
- stage of the formation of the same action in terms of loud speech;
- the stage of formation of the actual mental
Considering the child's actions in the game, it's easy to notice that the child already acts with the meanings of objects, but still depends on their material substitutes toys. If at the initial stages of development an object is required a substitute and relatively detailed action along with it, then at a later stage of the development of the game, the object appears through words the name already is like a sign of the object, and the action is as abbreviated and generalized gestures accompanied by speech. Thus, game actions are of an intermediate nature, gradually acquiring the character of mental actions with the meanings of objects that are committed to external actions.
The path of development to the actions in the mind with values that are detached from objects is simultaneously the emergence of prerequisites for the formation of the imagination. The game acts as such an activity in which the formation of prerequisites for the transition of mental actions to a new, higher stage occurs mental actions with reliance on speech. Functional development of game actions is poured into ontogenetic development, creating a zone of the nearest development of mental actions.
In the game activity there is a significant reorganization of the child's behavior it becomes voluntary. Voluntary behavior is a behavior that is carried out in accordance with the image and controlled by comparison with this image as a stage.
Zaporozhets [8; 139] was the first to draw attention to the fact that the nature of the movements performed by the child under the conditions of the game and under the conditions of direct assignment are significantly different. He also determined that in the course of development the structure and organization of movements change. One can clearly distinguish the preparation phase and the execution phase in them.
The effectiveness of the movement, and its organization, depend significantly on the structural place of movement in the realization of the role that the child performs.
The game is the first form of activity available to the child, which supposes conscious education and improvement of new activities.
Z.V. Manuleiko [9] discovers the question of the psychological mechanism of the game. Relying on her work, we can say that the motivation of the activity is given great importance in the psychological mechanism of the game. Performing a role, being emotionally attractive, has a stimulating effect on the performance of actions in which the role finds its embodiment.
Indication of the motives is, however, insufficient. It is necessary to find that psychic mechanism through which motives can exert this influence. When performing the role, the behavioral pattern contained in the role becomes simultaneously the stage with which the child compares his behavior and controls it, as if the child in the game performs two functions; On the one hand, he plays his role, and on the other hand he controls his behavior. Voluntary behavior is characterized not only by the presence of a role model, but also by the presence of control over the performance of this role model. When performing the role there is a kind of split, that is, «reflection». But this is not a conscious control, because the control function is still weak and often requires support from the side of the situation, on the part of the participants in the game. This is the weakness of the emerging function, but the significance of the game is that this function is born here. That's why the game can be considered a school of voluntary behavior.
The game is important for the formation of a comradely children’s team, and for the formation of independence, and for the formation of a positive attitude towards work and for many other things. All these educational effects rely both on their own basis, on the influence that the game has on the child's mental development and on the establishment of his personality.
The previously considered definitions of the game, its effects on the personal development of preschool children, allow us to distinguish the following psychological features of a game:
- The game is a form of active reflection by a child of surrounding life and people;
- A distinctive feature of the game is the very way the child uses in this activity. The game is carried out by complex actions and not by separate movements (as, for example, in work, writing, drawing).
- The game, like all other human activities, has a social character, so it changes with the changing historical conditions of people's
- The game is a form of the child's creative reflection of reality. Playing, children bring in their games a lot of their own inventions, fantasies,
- The game is the operation with knowledge, the means of their refinement and enrichment, the way of exercise, and the development of cognitive, moral abilities and child’s
- In expanded form, the game is a collective activity. All participants in the game are in a cooperative relationship.
- Developing children in many ways, the game itself also changes and develops. With systematic guidance from the teacher, the game can change:
- from start to finish;
- from the first game to the following games of the same group of children;
- the most significant changes in games occur as children develop from younger ages to older
- The game, as a kind of activity, is aimed at the child's knowledge of the surrounding world through active participation in work and everyday life of
The means of the game are:
- Knowledge of people, their actions, relationships, expressed in images of speech, in the experiences and actions of the child;
- Ways of handling certain items in certain circumstances;
- Moral assessments and feelings that appear in judgments about a good and bad action, about useful and harmful actions of
Thus, the gaming activity of preschoolers has the following features and meanings.
For the child, the game provides the opportunity to present himself as an adult, to copy the actions he has seen, and thereby acquire certain skills that may be useful to him in the future. Children analyze certain situations in games, come to conclusions, predicting their actions in similar situations in the future.
Moreover, the game for the child is an enormous world that is personal, sovereign, where the child can do whatever he wants. The game is a special, sovereign sphere of a child's life that compensates him for all restrictions and prohibitions, becoming the pedagogical basis of preparation for adulthood and a universal development tool that provides moral health and versatile education for the child.
The game is simultaneously a developing activity, a principle, a method and a form of vital activity, a zone of socialization, security, self-rehabilitation, cooperation, co-operation, co-creation with adults, a mediator between the child’s world and the adult world.
The game is spontaneous. It is always updated, changed, modernized. Each era gives birth to its games based on modern and relevant subjects, which are interesting for children in different ways.
Games teach children the philosophy of understanding the complexities, contradictions, tragedies of life, teach, not yielding to them, see the bright and joyful, rise above the troubles, live with benefits and festively, «playfully».
The game is a real and eternal value of the culture of leisure, social practice of people in general. It is on equal terms with work, knowledge, communication, creativity, being their correspondent. In game activity, certain forms of communication between children are formed. The game requires the child to have such qualities as initiative, sociability, and ability to coordinate their actions with the actions of a group of peers in order to establish and maintain communication. Gaming activities affect the formation of arbitrariness of mental processes. Inside a gaming activity, educational activity begins to take shape, which later becomes the leading activity.
References
- Krayg, G. (2001). Psikholohiia razvitiia [Psychology of development]. Saint Petersburg: Piter [in Russian].
- Asmolov, A.G. (2001). Psikholohiia lichnosti. Printsipy obshchepsikholohicheskoho analiza [Psychology of personality. General psychoanalysis principles]. Moscow: Smysl [in Russian].
- Volkova, P. (2007). Pedahohika [Pedagogics]. Kiev: Academiia [in Russian].
- Nikiting, B.P. (1991). Stupenki tvorchestva ili razvivaiushchie ihry [Small steps of creativity or educational games]. Moscow: Prosveshchenie [in Russian].
- Maksakova, I., Tumakova, G.A. (2005). Uchite ihraia [Teach while playing]. Moscow: Prosveshchenie [in Russian].
- Vygotsky, S. (2001). Ihra i ee rol v psikhicheskom razvitii rebenka [Game and its role in the child's mental development].Psikholohiia razvitiia – Psychology of development. Saint Petersburg: Piter [in Russian].
- Elconin, V. (2008). Psikholohiia ihry [Game psycholog]. Moscow: Vlados [in Russian].
- Zaporozhets, A.V. (1977). Razvitie proizvolnoho povedeniia u detei doshkolnoho vozrasta [Development of voluntary behavior in preschool children]. Moscow: Prosveshchenie [in Russian].
- Manuleyko, Z.V. (2003). Izmenenie motoriki rebenka v zavisimosti ot uslovii i motivov [Change in a child's motor skills based on conditions and motives]. Moscow: Prosveshchenie [in Russian].