Abstract
Traditional notions view children’s development occurring through activities such as games, dramatic play, sand and water play. In essence, these views foreground the activity which then leads to children’s development. In this chapter we offer an alternative view: that young children interact with their peers during activities to engage playfully with concepts and ideas that promote development. This chapter utilises vignettes involving 3 and 4-year-old children playing around with concepts. We argue that teachers’ roles include the facilitation of rich conceptual and contextual situations that provoke children’s thinking. These situations provide a context for children to play together with concepts that may lead to new understandings and thinking.
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Acknowledgements
The peer play episodes are selected from data in Joanna and Daniel’s PhDs-in progress. Both studies are qualitative in nature and involved significant fieldwork in efforts as researchers to get to the heart of what matters for children and to explore the complexity of social interactions. We wish to thank the early childhood centres involved in our respective projects.
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Williamson, J., Lovatt, D., Hedges, H. (2020). Looking Beyond Books and Blocks: Peers Playing Around with Concepts. In: Ridgway, A., Quiñones, G., Li, L. (eds) Peer Play and Relationships in Early Childhood. International Perspectives on Early Childhood Education and Development, vol 30. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42331-5_13
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