What does the EYLF say about play?

1. PLAY & Learning
2. EYLF has a specific emphasis on PLAY-based learning and recognises the importance of communication and language (including early literacy and numeracy) and social and emotional development
3. PLAY-based learning: a context for learning through which children organise and make sense of their social worlds, as they engage actively with people, objects and representations
4. PLAY allows for the expression of personality and uniqueness
5. PLAY enhances dispositions such as curiosity and creativity
6. PLAY enables children to make connections between prior experiences and new learning
7. PLAY assists children to develop relationships and concepts
8. PLAY stimulates a sense of wellbeing
9. Partnerships also involve educators, families and support professionals working together to explore the learning potential in every day events, routines and PLAY so that children with additional needs are provided with daily opportunities to learn from active participation and engagement in these experiences in the home and in early childhood or specialist settings
10. Educators plan and implement learning through PLAY
11. Educators are also responsive to children’s ideas and PLAY, which form an important basis for curriculum decision-making
12. Responsiveness enables educators to respectfully enter children’s PLAY and ongoing projects, stimulate their thinking and enrich their learning
13. PLAY provides opportunities for children to learn as they discover, create, improvise and imagine
14. When children PLAY with other children they create social groups, test out ideas, challenge each other’s thinking and build new understandings
15. PLAY provides a supportive environment where children can ask questions, solve problems and engage in critical thinking. PLAY can expand children’s thinking and enhance their desire to know and to learn
16. PLAY can promote positive dispositions towards learning
17. Children’s immersion in their PLAY illustrates how PLAY enables them to simply enjoy being
18. Early childhood educators take on many roles in PLAY with children and use a range of strategies to support learning
19. They actively support the inclusion of all children in PLAY, help children to recognise when PLAY is unfair and offer constructive ways to build a caring, fair and inclusive learning community
20. As children are developing their sense of identity, they explore different aspects of it (physical, social, emotional, spiritual, cognitive), through their PLAY and their relationships
21. Children feel safe, secure, and supported
22. Children confidently explore and engage with social and physical environments through relationships and PLAY
23. Children initiate and join in PLAY
24. Children explore aspects of identity through role PLAY
25. Educators provide opportunities for children to engage independently with tasks and PLAY
26. Children explore different identities and points of view in dramatic PLAY
27. Children and Educators engage in and contribute to shared PLAY experiences
28. Educators organise learning environments in ways that promote small group interactions and PLAY experiences
29. Educators model explicit communication strategies to support children to initiate interactions and join in PLAY and social experiences in ways that sustain productive relationships with other children
30. Children cooperate with others and negotiate roles and relationships in PLAY episodes and group experiences
31. Children understand different ways of contributing through PLAY and projects
32. Children are PLAYful and respond positively to others, reaching out for company and friendship
33. Educators ensure that children have the skills to participate and contribute to group PLAY and projects
34. Children use PLAY to investigate, project and explore new ideas
35. Routines provide opportunities for children to learn about health and safety. Good nutrition is essential to healthy living and enables children to be active participants in PLAY
36. Educators challenge and support children to engage in and persevere at tasks and PLAY
37. Educators show enthusiasm for participating in physical PLAY and negotiate PLAY spaces to ensure the safety and wellbeing of themselves and others
38. Educators draw on family and community experiences and expertise to include familiar games and physical activities in PLAY
39. Educators use PLAY to investigate, imagine and explore ideas
40. Children initiate and contribute to PLAY
41. Educators join in children’s PLAY and model reasoning, predicting and reflecting processes and language
42. Children use the processes of PLAY, reflection and investigation to solve problems
43. Educators think carefully about how children are grouped for PLAY, considering possibilities for peer scaffolding
44. Educators explore ideas and theories using imagination, creativity and PLAY
45. Educators engage in enjoyable interactions with babies as they make and PLAY with sounds
46. Educators use language and representations from PLAY, music and art to share and project meaning
47. Children contribute their ideas and experiences in PLAY, small and large group discussions
48. Children exchange ideas, feelings and understandings using language and representations in PLAY
49. Educators engage in enjoyable interactions with babies as they make and PLAY with sounds
50. Children exchange ideas, feelings and understandings using language and representations in PLAY
51. Children take on roles of literacy and numeracy users in their PLAY
52. Educators engage children in PLAY with words and sounds
53. Educators join in children’s PLAY and engage children in conversations about the meanings of images and print
54. Children use language and engage in PLAY to imagine and create roles, scripts and ideas
55. Educators join in children’s PLAY and co-construct materials such as signs that extend the PLAY and enhance literacy learning
56. Children use symbols in PLAY to represent and make meaning
57. Children identify the uses of technologies in everyday life and use real or imaginary technologies as props in their PLAY
58. Educators integrate technologies into children’s PLAY experiences and projects

Reflect on the ways the EYLF uses PLAY and how you are currently seeing PLAY in your centre.