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Play

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Describe the ways in which play is said to promote children’s development.
To what extent do you think that this influence is beneficial?

Research into advancing children’s development in regard to the essence of play has been focused upon more so in the 20th century than ever before. Play appears in a variety of domains during a child’s development, from dropping objects to play-fighting with friends, and shall be thoroughly explored within this essay. The purpose of this discussion is to illustrate accordingly: the distinct types of play demonstrated by children, the degree to which play can influence the development of a child, resulting evidence promoting links between play and development, and the consequence of the removal or replacement of play within childhood. Play denotes an act of behaviour specifically demonstrated in children, which is felt to be enjoyable without displaying a visually obvious logical purpose. Play is not only experienced by children humans as animals have similarly been observed to enjoy a few wonders of play. Infants tend to start their adventure in the ‘world of play’ by experiencing pleasure in the discovery of dropping objects on floors or banging objects together in order to produce a noise. This manipulation of an object’s properties was noted by Piaget as sensorimotor play, and often classified as object play. Infants next move on to what is known to be pretend play, this is when a child starts to exhibit pretend behaviours, such as play-acting ‘going to sleep’, and pass these characteristics of play onto their toys, e.g. ‘teddy’ is placed into their bed to

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