Associative Play Observation

Between the months of January and March, the observer was able to spend five days in a Cardiff Nursery to observe, with written consent from the mother, the development of a child. The child in question, who for confidentiality’s sake will be referred to as Neil, was a three-year-old boy who attended the nursery during the morning sessions from 9 o’clock to 11:30. During this time the children were separated into pre-organised groups and rotated around activities run by both the Head of Nursery and two Teaching Assistants; one outdoors, one creative, one writing-based activity and free play. For this study, the observer focused mainly on Neil’s free time in order to determine his development in terms of social relationships and play. In the

In co-operative play therefore, the interest lies both in the players and the activity itself, the participants are assigned roles and there is a form or organisation. In this observation study, it is more likely that Neil will be engaging for the most part in parallel and associative play as co-operative play requires a level of social maturity and organisational skills that many 3 year olds will not possess. The observer was able to not that Neil participated in associative play slightly more frequently than he did parallel play, for example he sat in the reading corner with one of his peers and they looked through the pictures and turning the pages, though at times it appeared they were moving slightly out of sync; as in Neil would be looking at a picture while the other boy was attempting to move on to the next page. He also demonstrated associative play with multiple children when they were playing with puzzles that had been laid out, working together but again, without organisation as some children snatched puzzle pieces away or took out pieces that had already been correctly