Relevance of Play Activities Integrated in Early Childhood Development and Education Curriculum

Abstract

Play is the most relevant way through which children learn. Play-based teaching and learning promotes positive social skills in children. Today many children are not given time to play and teachers do not integrate play fully in curriculum because many teachers seem not to recognize the relevance of play to children, leading to poor performance of children yet the entire teaching and learning of small children is supposed to be entirely based on play. The study was therefore meant to establish the relevance of play activities integrated in Early Childhood Development and Education (ECDE) curriculum. The study was based on Descriptive survey design. It involved; 430 teachers drawn from 215 pre-schools (33% of the study population) and 1 Sub-County Program Officer, selected using Simple random sampling and Saturated sampling techniques respectively. Data was collected by a questionnaire, an interview schedule and a lesson observation schedule. The study found out that: Most teachers integrate relevant types of play activities except Construct and Manipulative play which seem to be; complicated, not interesting and irrelevant to teaching and learning of young children. The relevance of the play activities integrated in ECDE curriculum was found to be ranging from; being used to teach various subjects to being used for entertainment, refreshment of minds and for physical development of the child. The study recommended that: Proper method of integrating complicated play activities in ECDE curriculum should be devised.