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Author: tbsuperuser
Home Articles Posted by tbsuperuser
EVENTS
July 10, 2023

World Play Day 2023: ‘Play helped me hone my skills, elevate my mood’

I never knew doodling could be so fun and engaging. On June 4, 2023, as part of World Play Day, I attended an Ink and Doodle workshop organised by Toybank – Development Through Play.  

The workshop was organised in collaboration with Arzan Khambatta, renowned architect and sculptor. We also had Karan Shah, an artist, display his artwork called ‘Different Perspectives’.  The event included children from Toybank- Development Through Play’s centres, and those part of the Creativity Action Service (CAS) programme. It began with interesting and fun ice-breaking activities, where all of us children got to know each other and introduced ourselves. 

Arzan Sir demonstrated different ways to doodle, and helped us draw easy shapes, while encouraging us to think outside the box. He displayed common doodling techniques with squares and rectangles, and other shapes, and helped us understand there was no right or wrong in our artwork. 

Being in Class 10, I often feel the pressure of studies, but I also realise that I need to remove time from my day to play. Being part of this doodle workshop helped me relieve my stress, and elevated my mood. The workshop kept me engaged till the very end.  We were also asked to name our doodles towards the end. Some of the creative names included, ‘An Infinite World’ and ‘The Unknown in the Known’. 

In addition, Karan Shah, whose art focuses on looking at everyday objects through a different lens, left us amused with his presentation. He showed us everyday objects and helped us think from different perspectives, something we had never thought about before. I realised that imagination has no limits. A non-living object can be transformed into a living one just by the  powers of creative imagination. 

Jiya Gada is a  Class 10 student, who attended the workshop organised for World Play Day. 

DONATIONREPORT
June 13, 2023

Annual Report 2015-16: Every child needs play

Children are too full of life to be confined by just letters and numbers, and going beyond basic literacy and numeracy is the need of the hour in an ever-evolving world.

DONATIONREPORT
June 13, 2023

Annual Report 2021-22: Navigating the new world

Our planet heralded the emergence of a ‘new normal’ as norms of living got redefined. But the childhood pandemic that denies children their Right to Play has barely waned.

DONATIONREPORT
June 13, 2023

Annual Report 2016-17: Play without prejudice

Children know no malice – unacquainted as they are with the biases of religion, caste, race, or class.

DONATIONREPORT
June 13, 2023

Annual Report 2017-18: Power of play

The mountain of rings is a riot of colours, like looping the rainbow!

It may seem simple, but the stacking activity is replete with benefits. It teaches about colours and sizes perception along with problem-solving; enhances coordination movement, stimulates visual development, strengthens the sense of touch and improves motor skills – just like play at large.

DONATIONREPORT
June 13, 2023

Annual Report 2018-19: Reaching a milestone

Toybank is a journey we embarked on — to give every child in the world a toy to play with — 15 years ago. As we reach this significant milestone, our heart is brimming with not only pride for touching the lives of tens of thousands of children but also immense gratitude towards those who have helped us every step of the way to get here.

IMPORTANCE OF PLAYRESEARCH
June 13, 2023

Play helps children build skills to become creative, engaging adults

Play is the primary way in which young children connect and engage with the world around them. Through play, children may imagine and explore a world they can control, thus overcoming their fears. When playing together, children are not just having fun, but are building skills of communication and collaboration that will benefit them in the long-run. As we move into adulthood, our definitions of play change, but many motivations remain the same, which help us form a framework of play across ages. 

Beginning in the first year of life, play becomes an infant’s primary mode for engaging with others and with the world, setting the bar for interactions with the world to be as pleasurable as play throughout the life-span. Attuned play encourages a child to grow up to be a playful adult who experiences life as a playground. This is not only an expression of healthy development, it is also an inherent characteristic of homosapiens. Unfortunately, not every child is so lucky. According to the original research on attachment styles conducted by psychologist Mary Ainsworth, up to 50 percent of individuals do not have secure attachment experiences. Without attachment security, these children are much more likely to grow up seeing the world as a proving ground, a battleground, or a prison. These worldviews can become self-fulfilling prophecies, establishing feedback loops that engender the world the child expects. 

In the past few decades, research has repeatedly shown that play experiences are not merely fun, nor just a way to pass the time along the way to adulthood. Instead, play has a central role in learning and in preparing you for challenges later on in childhood and through adulthood. The Russian developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky says that play is essential to the growth of what is referred to as “symbolic representation”. The ability of humans to use different types of symbolic representation for culturally significant purposes is the foundation of human thought, culture, and communication. 

Psychologist Sigmund Freud has also correlated early-childhood experiences with mental health in adulthood; but only in the last half century has play been included as one these formative childhood experiences and a factor in healthy development. 

Today’s world is uncertain and constantly changing. Children need skills and mindsets allowing them to step into this uncertainty, create opportunities for themselves and their communities, and learn throughout life. Using the simple, yet compelling words by researchers Golinkoff & Hirsh-Pasek (2016), realising children’s potential in the face of this uncertainty means supporting them to be “happy, healthy, thinking, caring, and social children who will become collaborative, creative, competent, and responsible citizens tomorrow”. 

In playful experiences, children tap into a breadth of skills at any one time. A game of hide-and-seek helps them to manage feelings about the unknown, while also helping them to think about what other people know and see. Beyond enjoyment, playful experiences have the potential to give children the skills they will need in the future that go beyond facts. Playful experiences appear to be a powerful mechanism that help children not only to be happy and healthy in their lives today, but also develop the skills to be the creative, engaged, lifelong learners of tomorrow.

The benefits of playfulness in adults overlaps in many ways with those for children, including enhanced creativity, humour, motivation, and positive effect. In addition, playfulness predicts numerous health benefits in both children and adults. Research shows that playful adults live an average of 10 years longer than their less playful peers. Perhaps most significant of the benefits conferred by a playful approach to life is its relationship to stress reduction and coping strategies in adults.

The real world, in any case, is often a politically violent and an economically insecure place—anything but a playground. Is it possible that the condition of our world both reflects and reinforces a prevailing degree of attachment insecurity. If so, the greatest hope for interrupting this dangerous feedback loop is to support and restore a basic sense of security generated, reflected, and reinforced by attuned play. Not only does play provide critical resources for dealing with stress and engendering well-being as adults, but repeated play can also rewire the brain, establishing and reinforcing the neural pathways that lead to the development of playfulness.

Source: Origins of Play and Playfulness, Gwen Gordon; Lego Foundation, learning through play, nov 2017; Guided Play:Where Curricular Goals Meet a Playful Pedagogy, Deena Skolnick Weisberg, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, and RobertaMichnick Golinkoff, 2013; Learning through play, Lego Foundation, February 2019; The future of play, Lego Learning Institute

IMPORTANCE OF PLAYPLAY2LEARN
June 12, 2023

Play sheets keep children engaged during Covid-19 pandemic

Vinay, a student of Class 3, had a tough time keeping himself engaged during the Covid-19 lockdown. He had to share his cellphone with his younger brother Raju, studying in Class 2. Their single room dwelling in the Malvani slums did not make life any easier. Clashing classes made it hard for Vinay to continue studying. Some days, when they could settle on a manageable time schedule, the boys would struggle with the internet connection. Their parents were quite worried, as the gap in their education kept widening and they both grew restless at home. 

When they were introduced to Toybank’s playsheets, they started by solving them together. They would download the sheets from the internet and sit for hours engaged in learning through the playsheet-based activities. Their parents were relieved that both the boys were happy and learning together. Vinay would help Raju read big words and both grew fond of puzzles, word searches, and playsheets that developed their problem-solving skills.

“We like learning new English words through these playsheets,” said Vinay enthusiastically.

IMPORTANCE OF PLAY
June 12, 2023

COVID-19: Play made learning easy for students during pandemic

Although an eager learner, Ritu couldn’t concentrate in her virtual classes, as she lives in a joint family. The Class 5 student especially struggled with the English and Science syllabus, and sought help from her classmates, but was unable to completely grasp everything. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, teachers could give her special attention but doing that with every child virtually was nearly impossible. 

The teacher asked Ritu to speak to our Programme Officer and she confided how she missed being outdoors and playing games like Kho-kho, Kabaddi, Pakadapaki and Langdi. Our Programme Officer suggested that Ritu solve English and Science-based playsheets to motivate her and keep her on track with the syllabus. 

Ritu loved the playsheet ‘Short-Cuts’ which taught her English abbreviations, and the math-based playsheet Crack It. She was relieved by how easy it was to learn through Play, and was at par with her classmates uninhibited.

IMPORTANCE OF PLAYPLAY2LEARN
June 12, 2023

Play helped Sahil build confidence, taught him teamwork

Children would not mingle with Sahil and gradually, he grew averse to group activities. He would only mingle with his best friend Devika and no one else. When Play2Learn Sessions resumed at his school, Sahil was very excited and beamed at the thought of all the games he could play with, but revolted when he was asked to play together with his classmates. Knowing that teamwork is a crucial soft skill, the Programme Officers insisted that he had to share his games but allowed him to select Devika as his partner.

 

Instantaneously, he grabbed a game and began playing—completely engrossed in finishing all the puzzles in Match It. He became the first to complete a game amongst the rest of his class. Excitedly, he went ahead and even asked his classmates if he could play with them, building his fine motor skills through Curly caterpillar, and pattern recognition through the game ‘Pair of.’ At the end of the session, Sahil confided in the Programme Officers that he avoided the other children, as they would often tease him about being a slow learner. Now that he was able to solve the puzzles before them, it gave him the self-confidence to know that he was still good at learning and applying the concepts taught to him.