Pedagogical Science on the School Reform: One Year Earlier [Part III].

We have spoken of the need to seek out new methodological approaches to the formal instruction of six-year-olds. The school and the kindergarten can both gain a great deal from this by trading experiences. Here we present just a few examples of these new approaches. The most typical is the inclusion of an element of play in formal learning activities. However, unlike the fun and games in which children usually engage, this play has an instructive, didactic import, and makes it possible to abandon to a signficant extent the rigid behavioral and instructional regimentation of children that psychologists view with well justified disfavor. One should not be surprised to find, in Russian language or mathematics lessons, the little ones playing with dolls or balls, standing in a circle, going up to the teacher and whispering their answers or backing up their responses by holding up pictures or objects, getting together to illustrate a fairy tale, making models in groups on the rug, building towers, making paper cut-outs, modeling in clay, and so forth. Play is now both a teaching method and a way of organizing the children's activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]