CHAPTER ONE

1.0 INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

Play materials are any useful object a child plays with regardless of their intended use. These materials are very important for the mental development of children. Infact, they are tools for the natural learning of young children. These play materials vary according to the age of the child, types and availability of functional play materials. Childhood is the most precious and formative period of life even one that should be wholesome in order that adulthood may be fruitful and rewarding. Saracho (2002) emphasized that children need to have an opportunity to explore some materials and play objects and this opportunity also advances children creativity. He also emphasized that cognitive ability or mental ability which makes understanding possible develop in two stages, but to the children between 2-5years, it involves the pre operational stage and sensory stages. During the sensory motor stage of mental development, children begin to develop and understand themselves separate and distinct from the environment. Insenberg (2002) opined that mental development comprises the process that generate, shape and re-shape the nervous system from the earlier stage of embryogenesis to the final years of life. The study of neural development aims to describe cellular basis of brain development which start at (3) three months, where the brain of the child grow in size and weight and responds to the environment.

He generalizes without any proper control. At (9) nine months the growth and responsiveness of the child continues and arrangement of the muscles becomes apparent. Learning becomes more obvious and there is improvement in the control of the motor activity. Ozbay (2005) signified the following example, vocal organs begin to produce syllables, at (18) eighteen months the child’s growth continues. He develops words, perhaps, only intelligible to the mother. At 2-3 years the child growth continues and the child forms vocabulary of 200 words. At 3-5 years, the child increases in curiosity and thirst for knowledge. The child increases in his thinking concrete terms and vocabulary grows rapidly and speech is made in proper sentences. At 6-12 years the brain grows fully and curiosity continues. Therefore, there is great increase in factual knowledge and the beginning of reasoning.

Moreover, further perception enables person to accurately interpret events an information so that they may respond in meaningful way. Though in normal perception, this shows the efficient and importance of learning games in relation to the academic skills. Bodrova and Leong (2007) opined that children engage in other regulation before developing self-regulation. That is, children learn about their own behaviours through recognizing and assisting in the changes of others. Ifeyemi (2007) carried out research on the effects of play materials on mental development of pre-school children and give the following report statements. Children who are physically, mentally, and emotionally impaired can also developed through the use of play materials because what they can visualize and touch with their hands can surely given them understanding which can least in their brain more than just what the hear. However, deficiency in motor skill development may adversely aect other aspects of development such as understanding. Russ (2008) opined that some components like play materials have an important role in play especially play materials that have positive impact on a child to learn and explore the world with a rich imagination in joyful way. He further explained that play materials are activity for children which provides an important window for them to understand the usefulness of their creativeness.

Moyless (2008) emphasized that as children become mature, they would be able to represent their experiences mentally and begin to use mental cognitive processes to create play base on their materials used in activity. Vig (2009) expressed that previous studies about children play and materials have shown that in recent years, creativity in children’s play have decline and the preference of play materials have changed in some aspects due to lack of play materials in pre-primary schools. Therefore, as mentioned by many researchers play materials is an important factor for creativity. Previous studies on children’s play stressed on the positive relationship between play and creative thinking. Moore (2009) opined that children who had opportunities to play freely are considered as ‘high fantasizers’ and have greater tendencies towards being creative with materials and situations. He also stressed that play simply enriches the quality life because it enhances creative thought, he further explained that playing children were expected to be creative. Therefore, the premise on which this project is based is on the degree to which the use of play materials enhances the mental development of children of pre-primary school children age (2-5years).

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Children of today are adults of tomorrow, however all adults of today who have played a significant role in the society were surely adults who played with materials during their upbringing. Children (age 2-5years) who train without play materials are likely to have deficiency in their motor development such as cognitive or mental ability which makes understanding possible. The problem is clearly shown-if the parents and teachers do not train our pre-primary school children well, how can there be well trained adults? And if our children are to get proper training through the use of play materials, what are the possible impact that these play materials have on mental development of these children?