Research and practice in the field of early childhood increasingly supports the full inclusion of young children within early childhood environments. Until 2009, the field lacked a national definition

"When we treat children's play as seriously as it deserves, we are helping them feel the joy that's to be found in the creative spirit. It's the things we play with and the people who help us play that make a great difference in our lives."

Fred Rogers

May 31, 2020

Dear Editor

The game allows children to understand the world by making use of their own experience and significantly affects every stage of their development, growth, and learning. While playing games, children gain the power to do something for themselves, gain control, test and use their skills, and trust themselves.

With a good game-based curriculum is to realize an educational environment where children love learning deeply, trust their skills as learners, strengthen their social and emotional skills, develop deep relationships with their peers and teachers, and are excited to come to school as part of the student community. It creates a classroom where teachers use their time by working directly with students, and establishing a relationship of trust with them, and seeing students as a whole, where they have experienced teaching experiences for their needs.

According to Geist and Boum (2005), Teachers are the ones who are most familiar with the abilities, needs, and interests of children as practitioners in their classrooms outside the general curriculum. They can create an appropriate study course that supports students with proper learning and development. However, Gray (2019) mentions that In ECE, long-term academic education does not have a long-term benefit. On the contrary, he says that it can cause long-term losses. We raise it with unhappy children who are deprived of the game to prepare for the next teacher and curriculum, and are increasingly forced to do "desk work." The child may need more play when he/she goes to primary education, and the child who has been deprived of play in previous years may fail in what he/she has to do academically. He continued his idea that slightly increases academic test scores in the first grade. Still, benefit in the third grade is lost, and those exposed to academic kindergartens perform academically and emotionally worse until the fourth grade, according to some of the best studies Gray (2019).

A textbook cannot do any of the learning activities by itself; it assumes that all children are at the same level at the same time. After such an assumption, students who are not at the textbook level will lag, and many leading ones will be bored or restless (Fosnot 1989; Geist and Boum, 2005).

The general objectives of project-oriented education in ECE are to improve the mental, emotional, moral, and aesthetic sensibilities of children and to ensure their active participation as much as teachers. In the kindergarten where the project approach is applied, teachers consider themselves as individuals who learn and discover with children during the learning process. The resulting success and happiness live together. "In a project approach the curriculum is child-centered, a central tenet of developmentally appropriate practice, rather than subject-centered (Geist and Boum, 2005)."

The current academic pressure on children aged five and six causes early childhood students to have problems in self-regulation, independence, and creativity. Many children who sit for a long time experience tension and muscle cramps and can be devastating. Games; it seems to be beneficial in developing cognitive skills such as thinking independently, understanding others' thoughts and intentions, following their ideas, being conservative, starting and ending a business, problem-solving, imagination and creativity, decision making and self-control (Ashiabi, 2007; Broadhead, 1997, 2004; Durualp and Aral, 2010; Miller and Almon, 2009; Wood and Attfield, 2005; Woolf, 2013; Guven, 2017).

As a result, it will be much healthier to develop age-specific concepts in the natural process by evaluating this period with the abundant play before moving on to learning activities in early childhood.

Sincerely

Behice Aksoy

References list:

Guven – Gol, M. (2017). The Effect of Game Based Experiences on Classroom Environment, Students' Behaviors, School Perceptions and Conflict Transforming Skills. Available from: www.researchgate.net/publication/320717188_Oyun_Temelli_Experience_Sinif_Ortami_Students_Davranislari_Okul_Algilari_ve_Catisma_Dovenme_Becerleri_Ertisi

Wardle, F. (n.d.). Play as curriculum. Retrieved August 1, 2010, from http://www.earlychildhoodnews.com/earlychildhood/article_view.aspx?ArticleID=127

Gray, Peter. Ph.D (2019). Kindergarten Teachers Speak Out for Children’s Happiness. Psychology Today. www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/freedom-learn/201911/kindergarten-teachers-speak-out-children-s-happiness?fbclid=IwAR24RAfns2H7SsSHue_Ks-ZybLbtrPHuyxlrBySp9rZ_Re3zkow9W_Bn-Uo

Geist, E., & Baum, A. (2005). Yeah, But’s that keep teachers from embracing an active curriculum. Young Children, 60(4), 28–36.