RMIT University, Australia
"Conventional playgrounds are designed by adults - they don't actually take into consideration how the children want to play, how the children actually direct their play."
"Schools are putting all this money into designing playgrounds, and requiring all this funding,'' Mr Hyndman said.
"This is a very cost-effective, simple idea and it's just showing a range of benefits that have been even better than your fixed, conventional playgrounds." link
Children with severe learning disabilities
take much longer to learn basic concepts
through play with educational or
manipulative toys and have difficulty
generalising skills. They will benefit from
having access to a wide range of toys
which offer them the opportunity to repeat
the same skills in different and interesting
ways. Toys need to be motivating and
rewarding to encourage a child with
severe learning disabilities to play. They
will need time to respond, assistance to
succeed and may want to repeat the
activity beyond the boredom threshold of
the adult playing with them!
Other skills can be developed in play e.g.
attention and concentration, size, shape,
colour, positional concepts, matching,
sorting, selecting and naming, number
and time. However, toys involving more
than one basic concept, e.g. colour and
shape, may cause confusion and
therefore each concept is best taught
separately before combining them.
Messy play is an important activity for
children with all types of disabilities as
they are less likely to enjoy the tactile
experience of getting themselves into
messy situations in everyday life.
Finger paints, gluing collage materials,
cornflour mixed to a paste with cold water,
play dough, aerosol cream and shaving
foam, jelly, instant puddings, and cooking
etc can all be used to provide messy play
activities in which children with physical
disabilities can be assisted to participate.
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