Playmates, adults and learning through play: Looking at play from the children's perspective

Play is easy to recognise, though not as easy to define. Its conceptual definitions are numerous and different, depending on their theoretical starting points. What connects them is the importance they attach to play as a divergent activity of the child in which all the child's potentials are activated. Hovewer, research around the world has shown that children in kindergartens spend considerably less time playing and exploring than doing structured activities; that their opportunities to play in open spaces are constantly decreasing; that, even when they are engaged in play, it is often superficial and chaotic; and the way in which adults perceive children's play is often inconsistent with what play represents from the children's point of view. The aim of the research presented in this paper is to look at how children perceive play - what elements of play children identify as most important, how they perceive their relationship with other children and adults while playing, and how they see learning through play. The descriptive method used relied on the techniques of drawing and interviewing. The study included 47 children aged 4 to 7. The results of the research confirm that what children find most important during play are their playmates, that adults' involvement in children's play is very low, and that children's learning through play is linked to the very experience of playing. The most significant conclusion of this research is that children are often left to their own devices in play, so it is necessary to pay more attention to their play and to support it both in the family and in the institutional context by providing children with different experiences and models of creative behaviour.