Preschool children's using of play materials creatively

Play is one of the important components of a child's life and it is one of the major activities that promotes children's imagination and creativity Children can learn the basic and social skills and develop through play. Also some components such as play materials, play ground and play mate have a considerable role in play. Especially play materials have a positive impact on a child to learn and explore the world with a rich imagination in a joyful way. Previous studies on children's play have stressed on the positive relationship between play and creative thinking ability. In addition, previous studies about play and play materials have shown that in recent years creativity in children's play have declined and the preference of play materials have changed in some aspects. Therefore main purpose of the present study was to examine creativity in children's play and their preference of play materials in a materialist and technological world. 40 children (20 female, 20 male) were selected from four preschools in the city of Kocaeli in Turkey. The study consisted of two steps. In the first study, preschool children's (4-5 and 6 years old) preference of toys and real objects as play materials in a pre-organized play area was observed. Observation process was 35 minutes. The first 5 seconds and the last 10 minutes were not recorded in case of the children's attention could be disturbed. Children's preference of play materials and/or real objects as play materials and their creative expressions in play were recorded by two observers. In the second study; children's individual views about real objects (a whisk, nutcracker, colander, wrench, hanger, and a badminton ball) as play materials were evaluated within three weeks after the first study. The data were evaluated by two blind coders for an inter-rater reliability. The general results showed that most of the children can not be able to show creative expressions with different kinds of play materials in their play. In the first study the results showed that children were highly preferred to use toys as play materials. In the second study it was found that most of the children cannot be able to use real objects as play materials creatively. It's hypothesized that playing children were expected to be creative, but the results showed that children have to spent more time for quality and free playing, and the preschool teachers have to encourage their students to play freely with different unstructured materials and tools and play in different areas and situations. Also further studies could be planned with a wide age range of children and with different kinds of play materials. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.