Playing god…
Playing god traditionally means using modern technology to run interference with the will of nature, think AI or GMO foods. It could also mean allowing yourself an ego that overruns your actual power over a situation. I’m not talking about either, I mean playing god a little more literally. I’m referring to an ability to manipulate and explore your soundings on a smaller scale, often referred to as small world play. There’s a few ways to set up this type of activity, lets explore the concept together.
First the theory, the idea of small world play is to make a seemingly big world small. Decreasing the size of the world allows your child explore elements of their world on a smaller, more accessible scale. This allows your child to form a view and gain an understanding of the world around them and visualise how it operates, better setting them up for a life ahead. The theory is that children who are allowed to play god over a miniaturised version of their world have a better idea of how said world functions in adulthood.
Lets now take the opportunity to talk about what this looks like, small world play may look like your child using dress ups to play pretend. It may look like giving your child your old phone, computer or keyboards when you get a new one. It may be a sensory activity done on a tuff tray as we’ve explored before in our activity cookbook and activity of the week segments. It could be building and then playing with your cardboard box dolls house. Some of this is done on the cheep with things you’ve already got, who doesn’t have an old box from online shopping these days? It could cost you a little more in time, money or both dependant on what your child is into at a given point in time.
As to not leave you high and dry, I’m going to do the thing where I include the activity of the week in the blog itself as to explain how and why educators do it. You will need:
A large sheet of strong cardboard
Toilet or paper towel rolls
Cellophane
Paint
Cotton wool
We’re going to build your suburb from your child’s point of view. In my local area, we have two public pools, one is indoors and owned by a local gym and the other owned by the council. There is a creak that runs though past the primary school into the river and a major motorway running though the middle. So I would take the children on an excursion to the pools, along the creek, though the primary school and along the bikeway that runs along the motorway. Upon returning to the childcare centre I would have the children map this out. This condenses a suburb into a large sheet of cardboard.
The reduction of scale means that your child can look over the area and gage it’s size though playing on the model made. The model don’t have to be to scale or visually accurate to what the area actually looks like. Finally place ‘your house’ this could be a photo of your home or a craft to represent it onto the model, Teach your child the address, your phone number and another way of contacting you and ensure your child knows the ‘safe people’ within your community. This means if they ever become separated from you they can get a ‘safe person’ to contact you. You can see why that’s important.