In our country, the psychological theory of children's play was developed by L.S. Vygotsky, A.N. Leontiev and D.B. Elkonin. There are several definitions of the game, covering different aspects of this concept. So one of them is the definition given by D.B. Elkonin in his work "Psychology of play": "Play is an activity that recreates social relations between people outside the conditions of direct utilitarian activity." S.L. Rubinstein writes that the game "is an expression of a certain attitude of the individual to the surrounding reality." Its motives lie not in "... the material result that a given action usually gives on a practical non-play level, but not in the activity itself, regardless of its result, but in diverse experiences that are significant for the child, in general for the player, sides of reality."

"Play is a special form of mastering reality by means of its reproduction, modeling" - defines the concept of L.F. Obukhov. G.P. Shchedrovitsky defines a number important characteristics games:

“The game is:

The special relationship of the child to the world;

The special activity of the child, which changes and unfolds as a subjective activity;

Socially given, imposed on the child and assimilated by him type of activity (or attitude to the world);

An activity in the course of which the assimilation of a wide variety of contents and the development of the child's psyche take place. "

The development of play activity is associated with the entire course of the child's development. Until the age of three, the game is the manipulation of objects. By the end of early childhood, a child is able to use objects in play that replace real objects, build his play actions into logical chains, and compare his actions with those of an adult. All of these are prerequisites for the emergence of a new type of games - role-playing games.

Plot play arises in a child's life on the border of early childhood and preschool age, when he begins to think in holistic images - symbols of real objects, phenomena and actions. In the beginning, it is a copying of the actions and behavior of adults. Toys at this time are models of objects that adults "play" with. During the game, the child reproduces action plots. The focus is not on the role of, for example, a doctor, but on actions that imitate the actions of a doctor. The child is not yet sensitive to the rules.

In the middle preschool age, the role-playing game replaces the story game. It prevails up to 6-7 years. The most important thing in such a game for a child is role identification, the plot fades into the background. The point of the game is the separation of roles. In the game, he has the opportunity to live what is inaccessible to him in the life of adults.

Role play identifies and models social relationships through roles, play actions, play items, and substitutions. According to D.B. Elkonin, role play arises at a certain stage in the historical development of society as a special institution of socialization that allows the child to orientate himself in the system of social and interpersonal relations, to highlight the goals, objectives, meanings and motives of human activity. "Role-playing is an activity focused on social relations existing in the world of adults ... setting ... the ideal form for an adult and the most general relations between people."

D.B. Elkonin writes that “... the content of an expanded, developed form of role play is not an object and its use and change by a person, but relations between people, carried out through actions with objects; not a person is an object, but a person is a person. "

Playing as an adult, the child does not cease to remember his real age. In the mind of the child, a picture of his real limited place in the system of relations between adults is being formed. Thus, a new motive is gradually formed in the game - to become an adult and to actually carry out its functions. By the end of preschool age, he is embodied in the desire to go to school and perform a socially significant, approved function. The leading activity is gradually changing from play to educational.

But does this mean that the child simply refuses to play? Having ceased to be the leading activity, play remains characteristic of both primary school and adolescence. Children still spend a lot of time playing. It develops feelings of cooperation and rivalry, acquires a personal meaning such concepts as justice and injustice, prejudice, equality, leadership, obedience, loyalty, betrayal.

A.N. Leontiev showed that the development of play occurs according to the following law: a game with an open role, with an open imaginary situation and a hidden rule (role-playing game of preschool childhood) turns into a game with an open rule, but a hidden role and an imaginary situation (outdoor games, sports games). At the same time, there is no complete rejection of the role as such.

The game takes on a social connotation: children invent secret societies, clubs, secret cards, codes, passwords and special rituals. The roles and rules of children's society allow you to master the rules accepted in adult society. Playing with friends between the ages of 6 and 11 takes up the most time.

As they get older, the teenager spends more and more time "just talking with peers." Gradually, most games fade into the background. However, the need to master new forms of relations between people does not disappear, to try oneself in different social roles, to seek recognition from others. In his article "Possibilities for the development of role-playing games" V.V. Moskvichev makes the assumption that the expansion of the adolescent's sphere of knowledge, the development of thinking, and entry into more independent social groups increase the requirements for the complexity and depth of games that simulate reality. However, on his own, the child is no longer able to create a model that satisfies him. And then it is transferred from the sphere of play to the sphere of free fantasy.

"Why, then, not help the child to organize a model corresponding to his new interests, removing the organizational side from him and leaving the possibility of free action in the role?" ...

GAME AND MENTAL DEVELOPMENT

The final chapter of the book: Elkonin D.B. Psychology of the game. M .: Pedagogy, 1978.

Long before play became the subject of scientific research, it was widely used as one of the most important parenting tools. In the second chapter of this book, we put forward a hypothesis about the historical origin of play, linking it with a change in the position of the child in society. The time when upbringing became a special social function goes back centuries, and the use of play as a means of upbringing goes back to the same depth of centuries. In various pedagogical systems, play was assigned a different role, but there is not a single system in which, to one degree or another, a place was not assigned to play. Such a special place of play in various educational systems, apparently, was determined by the fact that play is in some way consonant with the nature of the child. We know that it is consonant not with the biological, but with the social nature of the child, the need for communication with adults that arises extremely early in him, which turns into a tendency to live a common life with adults.

With regard to younger ages, to this day, in most countries of the world, the upbringing of children before they enter school is a private matter of the family, and the content and methods of upbringing are passed on by tradition. Of course, in some countries, there is a lot of work on parenting education, but it mainly focuses on nutrition and hygiene issues. The problems of pedagogy of family education in relation to children of preschool age have not yet been sufficiently developed. Yes, and it is difficult to turn all parents into teachers, consciously guiding the processes of children's development in these most crucial periods of childhood.

As soon as questions of organized, purposeful, pedagogically expedient social education of children of the youngest ages arise, their solution is faced with a number of difficulties of an economic and political nature. In order for society to take care of the upbringing of preschool children, it must first of all be interested in the comprehensive upbringing of all children without exception.

In the conditions of the dominance of family education, there are only two types of activities that affect the processes of child development. These are, firstly, various forms of work in the family, and secondly, play in its most diverse forms. Labor is increasingly being ousted from the life of the modern family, and only some forms of everyday self-service labor remain. Play, like everything that is not labor, in a completely undivided form becomes the main form of the child's life, the universal and only spontaneously emerging form of raising children. Closed in the family circle and family relations Living within the limits of his nursery, the child naturally reflects in games mainly these relations and those functions that individual members of the family perform in relation to him and to each other. Perhaps it is from this that the impression is created of the existence of a special children's world and play as an activity that has as its main content all kinds of forms of compensation, behind which lies the child's tendency to break out of this vicious circle into the world of broad social relations.

The upbringing and educational system of the kindergarten includes the development of a wide range of children's interests and forms of activity. These are elementary forms of everyday work and self-service, and constructive activity with the inclusion of elementary labor skills, and various forms of productive activity - drawing, modeling, etc., and classes to familiarize with the phenomena of nature and society around the child, and various forms of aesthetic activity - singing, rhythm, dancing, and elementary forms of educational activities for mastering reading, writing, the beginnings of mathematics, and, finally, role-playing.

Some teachers still have a tendency to universalize the meaning of play for mental development, a wide variety of functions are attributed to it, both purely educational and educational, therefore it becomes necessary to more accurately determine the influence of play on child development and find its place in the general system of educational work of institutions for preschool children. Of course, all those types of activity that exist in an organized system of social education are not separated from each other by a wall and there are close ties between them. Some of them are likely to overlap in their impact on mental development. Nevertheless, it is necessary to more accurately determine those aspects of the child's mental development and personality formation, which mainly develop in play and cannot develop or experience only a limited impact in other types of activity.

The study of the significance of play for mental development and personality formation is very difficult. A pure experiment is impossible here, simply because it is impossible to remove play activity from the lives of children and see how the development process will proceed. This cannot be done for reasons of a purely pedagogical nature and in fact, since where, due to the imperfection of the organization of the life of children in preschool institutions, they will not have time for independent role-playing, they play at home, compensating for the shortcomings of the organization of life in kindergarten... These individual, home games are of limited value and cannot replace group play. At home, the doll is often the only playmate, and the range of relationships that can be recreated with the doll is relatively limited. A completely different matter is role-playing in a group of children with inexhaustible opportunities to recreate the most varied relationships and connections that people enter into in real life.

For these reasons, the actual experimental study of the significance of role play for development is difficult. Therefore, one has to use, on the one hand, a purely theoretical analysis and, on the other hand, a comparison of children's behavior in play with their behavior in other types of activity.

Before proceeding to the presentation of materials that make it possible to imagine the significance of play for mental development, let us point out one limitation that we set ourselves from the very beginning. We will not consider the purely didactic meaning of play, that is, the meaning of play for acquiring new ideas or forming new skills and abilities. From our point of view, the purely didactic meaning of the game is very limited. It is possible, of course, and this is often done, to use the game for purely didactic purposes, but then, as our observations show, its specific features recede into the background.

You could, for example, organize a shopping game to teach children how to use weights. For this, real scales and weights are introduced into the game, some loose material is given and children alternately, performing the functions of sellers and buyers, learn to measure and weigh certain objects. In such games, children, of course, can learn how to weigh, and measure, and count, and even count money and hand over change. Observations show that, at the same time, actions with weights and other measures, counting operations, etc., are at the center of children's activities, but relations between people in the process of "buying and selling" are relegated to the background. It is rare to find here the attentive attitude of the sellers to the buyers and the courteous attitude of the buyers to the sellers. But the content of the role-playing game is precisely in this.

This does not mean at all that we deny the possibility of such use of the game. Far from it, but we will not consider the significance of such use of the game. Role-playing is not an exercise at all. A child, playing the activities of a chauffeur, doctor, sailor, captain, salesman, does not acquire any skills. He does not learn how to use a real syringe, or drive a real car, or prepare real food, or weigh goods.

The role of role play for development has not been adequately explored yet. Our proposed understanding of its role should be considered only a preliminary outline, and by no means a final decision.

1. Play and development of the motivational-need sphere

The most important, although not sufficiently appreciated until recently, is the importance of play for the development of the child's motivational-need-sphere. L. S. Vygotsky was undoubtedly right when he brought to the fore the problem of motives and needs as central to understanding the very origin of role play. Pointing to the contradiction between the emerging new desires and the tendency towards their immediate realization, which cannot be realized, he only posed the problem, but did not solve it. This is natural, since at that time there were no factual materials that would enable a solution. Even now, this issue can only be resolved presumably.

A. N. Leont'ev (1965 b), in one of the earliest publications devoted to the further development of the theory of the game put forward by L. S. Vygotsky, proposed a hypothetical solution to this problem. According to A. N. Leont'ev, the essence of the matter is that “the objective world, perceived by the child, is expanding more and more for him. This world includes not only objects that make up the child's immediate environment, objects with which the child himself can and does act, but also objects of adult action, with which the child is not yet able to actually act, which are still physically inaccessible to him. ...

Thus, the transformation of play during the transition from preschool to preschool childhood is based on the expansion of the range of human objects, the mastery of which now confronts him as a task and the world of which he becomes aware of in the course of his further mental development ”(1965 b, p. 470).

“For a child at this stage of his mental development,” continues A. N. Leont'ev, “abstract theoretical activity, abstract contemplative cognition does not yet exist, and therefore awareness appears in him primarily in the form of action. A child mastering the world around him is a child striving to act in this world.

Therefore, in the course of the development of his awareness of the objective world, the child seeks to enter into an effective relationship not only to the things immediately accessible to him, but also to the wider world, that is, he seeks to act like an adult ”(ibid., P. 471). The last position expresses the essence of the issue. However, it seems to us that the mechanism of the emergence of these new desires is described by A. N. Leontiev not quite accurately. He sees a contradiction, leading to role-playing, in the clash of the child's classic “I myself” with the no less classic “no-one” of the adult. It is not enough for a child to contemplate a driving car, it is not enough even to sit in this car, he needs to act, drive, command the car.

“In the child's activity, that is, in its actual internal form, this contradiction appears as a contradiction between the child's rapid development of the need for action with objects, on the one hand, and the development of the operations carrying out these actions (that is, methods of action) - with another. The child wants to drive a car himself, he wants to row a boat himself, but he cannot carry out this action, and cannot carry it out, first of all, because he does not own and cannot master those operations that are required by the real objective conditions of the given action ”( ibid., p. 472).

In the light of the facts presented in the studies of F.I. Fradkina and L. S. Slavina, to which we have already referred, the process proceeds somewhat differently. The very expansion of the range of objects with which the child wants to act independently is secondary. It is based on, metaphorically speaking, the child's “discovery” of a new world, the world of adults with their activities, their functions, and their relationships. This world was obscured for the child by objective actions, which he mastered under the guidance and with the help of an adult, but not noticing the adults.

In early childhood, a child is completely absorbed in the object and methods of action with it, its functional meaning. But now he has mastered some, albeit still very elementary, actions and can perform them independently. At this moment, the separation of the child from the adult occurs and the child notices that he is acting like an adult. The child had actually acted like an adult before, but did not notice it. He looked at an object through an adult, as through glass. In this, as we have seen, the adults themselves help him, pointing out to the child that he is acting "like someone." The affect is transferred from the object to the person who previously stood behind the object. Thanks to this, the adult and his actions begin to appear before the child as a model.

Objectively, this means that an adult appears before a child primarily from the side of his functions. The child wants to act like an adult, he is completely at the mercy of this desire. It is under the influence of this very general desire, first with the help of an adult's (educator's, parents') hint, that he begins to act as if he were an adult. This affect is so strong that a small hint is enough - and the child happily turns, of course, purely emotionally, into an adult. It is precisely the intensity of this affect that explains the ease with which children assume the role of adults. The experiments of LS Slavina showed this with sufficient convincingness. These prompts from adults, as it were, indicate a way out for intense passion. Therefore, they should not be afraid, they go in the direction of the dominant affect that owns the child - to act independently and act like adults. (Note that in cases where this desire does not find such a way out, it can acquire completely different forms - whims, conflicts, etc.)

The main paradox in the transition from subject play to role play is that directly in subject | the environment of children at the time of this transition, significant changes may not occur. The child had and still had all the same toys - dolls, little cars, cubes, bowls, etc. Moreover, in the actions themselves at the first stages of the development of the role-playing game, nothing significantly changes. The child washed the doll, fed it, put it to bed. Now he does the same from the outside with the same doll. What happened? All these objects and actions with them are now included in a new system of the child's relationship to reality, in a new affectively attractive activity. Thanks to this, they objectively acquired a new meaning. The transformation of a child into a mother and a doll into a child leads to the transformation of bathing, feeding, cooking into childcare. These actions now express the attitude of the mother to the child - her love and affection, and perhaps vice versa; it depends on the specific conditions of the child's life, those specific relationships that surround him.

A child on the border of the transition from objective to role play still does not know either the social relations of adults, or the social functions of adults, or the social meaning of their activities. He acts in the direction of his desire, objectively puts himself in the position of an adult, while there is an emotionally effective orientation in the relationship of adults and the meanings of their activities. Here the intellect follows the emotionally effective experience.

The generalization and reduction of play actions is a symptom of the fact that such a separation of human relations occurs and that this separated meaning is emotionally experienced. Thanks to this, at first, a purely emotional understanding of the functions of an adult occurs as one who carries out activities that are significant for other people and, therefore, evokes a certain attitude on their part.

Added to this is another feature of the role-playing game that has been under-rated. After all, a child, no matter how emotionally he enters the role of an adult, still feels like a child. He looks at himself through the role he has assumed, that is, through an adult, emotionally compares himself with an adult and discovers that he is not yet an adult. The awareness that he is still a child occurs through play, and hence a new motive arises - to become an adult and to actually carry out his functions.

LI Bozhovich (1951) showed that by the end of preschool age, a child has new motives. These motives acquire the concrete form of a desire to enter school and begin to carry out serious socially significant and socially appreciated activities. For a child, this is the path to adulthood.

Play, on the other hand, acts as an activity that is closely related to the child's needs sphere. In it, a primary emotional-effective orientation takes place in the senses of human activity, there is a consciousness of its limited place in the system of adult relationships and the need to be an adult. The tendencies pointed out by a number of authors as underlying the emergence of play are in fact the result of development in preschool age, and role play is of particular importance.

The significance of play is not limited to the fact that the child has new motives of activity and tasks associated with them. It is essential that a new psychological form of motives arises in play. Hypothetically, one can imagine that it is in play that a transition occurs from motives in the form of preconscious affectively colored immediate desires to motives in the form of generalized intentions that are on the verge of consciousness.

Of course, other types of activity also influence the formation of these new needs, but in no other activity there is such an emotionally filled entry into the life of adults, such an effective allocation of social functions and the meaning of human activity, as in a game. This is the first and foremost importance of role play for child development.

2. Play and overcoming "cognitive egocentrism"

J. Piaget, who devoted a large number of experimental studies to the study of the child's thinking, characterizes the basic quality of thinking in preschool children, on which all others depend, as "cognitive egocentrism." By this feature, Piaget understands the insufficient delimitation of his point of view from other possible ones, and hence its actual dominance. Quite a lot of various studies have been devoted to the problem of "cognitive egocentrism", the possibility of overcoming it and the transition of thinking to a higher stage of development.

The process of transition from the level of thinking characteristic of the preschool period of development to higher forms is very difficult. It seems to us that the allocation of an adult as a model of action arising on the border of the early and; preschool periods of development already contains the possibility of such a transition. Role play leads to a change in the position of the child - from his own individual and specifically childish - to a new position of an adult. The very acceptance of the role by the child and the associated change in the meanings of things involved in the game is a continuous change from one position to another.

We assumed that play is an activity in which the main processes associated with overcoming "cognitive egocentrism" take place. An experimental verification of this assumption was carried out by VA Nedo-spasova (1972) in a special study that bore the character of the experimental formation of "decentration" in children.

In one of its early works J. Piaget (1932) drew attention to a vivid manifestation of egocentrism when children solve the Vinet problem about three brothers. The essence of such a decision is that by correctly indicating how many brothers he has, the child cannot correctly indicate how many brothers any of his brothers has, that is, to take the point of view of one of his brothers. So, if there are two brothers in a family, then to the question: "How many brothers do you have?" - the child correctly answers: "I have one brother, Kolya." To the question: "How many brothers does Kolya have?" He replies: "Kolya has no brothers."

Subsequently, this main symptom of egocentrism, that is, the dominance in the child's thinking of his immediate position and the impossibility of taking a different position and recognizing the existence of other points of view, was obtained by J. Piaget and his collaborators in solving a variety of problems, the content of which was spatial relations and the relationship between the individual sides of various phenomena.

In preliminary experiments carried out by V.A.Nedospasova, in which the problem of three brothers was proposed not in relation to one's own family, but in relation to another's or one's conditional family, the egocentric position either did not manifest itself at all, or manifested itself to a much lesser extent. This served as the basis for the assumption that if the child forms an attitude towards his family as a "stranger", that is, form a new position in the child, then all the symptoms of "cognitive egocentrism" can be removed.

The experiment was carried out according to the classical scheme of experimental genetic formation. Children (5, 6, 7 years old) were selected who, when solving the problem of three brothers and a series of other problems proposed by Piaget's employees, as well as specially designed by Nedospasova, clearly showed "cognitive egocentrism." In these children, the formation of a new position was carried out, which we called conditionally dynamic.

Previously, the children were introduced to relationships within the family. For this, three dolls representing brothers and two dolls representing parents were placed in front of the child. During the conversation with the child, relationships were established: parents, son, brother. After the children were relatively easy to navigate in family relationships within this doll family, the parents left, only brothers or sisters remained, and the formation process began, which took place through two phases. In the first phase of the experiment, the child, with the help of the experimenter, identified himself with one of the brothers (sisters), called himself by the name of the doll, assumed its role, the role of one of the brothers, and reasoned from this new position.

For example, if a child in this situation became Kolya, then he had to determine who his brothers were, pointing to other dolls and calling their names, and then giving his name, that is, establishing his position. The child consistently identified himself with all the dolls and determined who in each of these situations becomes his brothers, and then who he becomes if his brothers are these dolls.

The whole experiment was carried out on dolls, the child saw the whole situation in front of him and at the same time expressed his opinion about each situation. Then the experiment was carried out on conventional graphic symbols of the brothers. Brothers were indicated by colored circles, and children, assuming the role of one brother or another, outlined their brothers with their color, at the same time calling their names. So the child passed, on a purely conditional level, consistently to the position of all brothers. Finally, the same actions were performed on a purely verbal level. The transition from action on puppets to actions on graphic symbols and, finally, on a purely verbal level occurred only after the child was sufficiently free to perform actions in a given way.

Control measurements carried out after this phase of formation showed that the final overcoming of "cognitive egocentrism" does not occur. Only in some children were higher levels of control problem solving obtained. Analysis of the results of this control experiment allowed us to identify a phenomenon that we called "sequential centering". Taking conditionally each time a new position, a new role with which the child considers the situation, he nevertheless continues to isolate, although each time new, but only obvious for him interrelations. However, these positions exist as not related to each other, not intersecting and not coordinated with each other. Children. are connected by the position that they occupy in each individual case, without assuming the simultaneous presence of points of view of other persons and other aspects of the object or situation in question. Children do not notice that, having taken a different position, they themselves have become different in the eyes of other participants (in our experiment, other dolls), that is, they are perceived differently. As Kolya, the child sees that he has become a brother for Andrei and Viti, but does not yet see that as Andrei he has become a brother of other persons, that is, not only he has new brothers, but he himself has become a brother of others persons.

Having established the presence of "sequential centralization" in children, VA Nedospasova proceeded to the second phase of the experiment. The situation was recovering. Three dolls were again placed in front of the child. The child identified himself with one of them, but now he had to name not his brothers, but the brothers of someone from those with whom he did not identify himself. For example, there are three dolls on the table in front of the child - Sasha, Kostya and Vanya. The child is told: “You are Vanya, but do not tell me who your brothers are. I know that. You tell me, who are Sasha's brothers? At Kostya's? Whose brothers are you and Sasha? And you and Kostya? " The shaping was carried out with puppets, then graphically and, finally, purely verbal. The formation ended when the child, without any support, that is, on a purely verbal level, made all the reasoning, taking a conditional position, but reasoning from the point of view of another person. Let's give an example: an experiment with Valya (5; 3). Exp .: Let us have three sisters in the problem. Which for example? Let's call one Zina, another Nadia, and the third Anya. If you are Zina, what kind of sisters will Ani have? Valya: Anya will have me and Nadia. Expert: Then what kind of sisters will Nadia have? Valya: When I am Zina, Nadia has me and Anya. Exp .: And if you are Nadia?

Valya: Then Anya has me, Nadia and Zina. Zina has me and Anya. After completing the formation on a purely verbal level, all children were offered control tasks that included the problem of three brothers; the problem "Three mountains" and the problem "Beads" (both used by Piaget's staff); the problem of determining the right and left sides and several problems invented by VA Nedospasova, in which the phenomenon of "centralization" was very vivid. In all age groups, all these tasks were solved without any help from the experimenter in 80-100% of cases, and with a little help - by all children. Thus, under the conditions of this pre-experimental game, it was possible to overcome the phenomenon of "cognitive egocentrism."

Of course, in reality everything is much more complicated. Experimental genetic research is only a model of actual processes. What are the reasons to think that the experiment carried out is a model of the processes occurring in the role-playing game, and that it is the role-playing game that is the activity in which the mechanism of "decentration" is formed?

First of all, let us point out that this experiment is not a model of any role-playing game, but only one in which there is at least one partner, that is, a collective game. In such a game, the child, who has assumed a certain role, acting from this new position, is forced to take into account the role of his partner.

The child now turns to his comrade not in the same way as in ordinary life, for example, as Kolya to Vanya, but in accordance with the new position that is determined by the role he has assumed. It may even be the case that in real life there is a relationship of antagonism between two children, but as play partners they are replaced by relationships of caring and cooperation. Each of the partners now acts in relation to each other from a new conditional position. He must coordinate his actions with the role of a partner, although he himself is not in this role.

In addition, all objects that are involved in the game and which have been assigned certain values ​​from the point of view of one role should be perceived by all participants in the game in precisely these meanings, although they do not really work with them. For example, in the repeatedly described game of the doctor, there are necessarily two partners - the doctor and the patient. The doctor must coordinate with the patient's role and vice versa. This also applies to items. Imagine that the doctor is holding a syringe stick. She is a syringe for the doctor because he acts with her in a certain way. But for the patient, a stick is a stick. She can become a syringe for him only if he takes the point of view of a doctor, not taking on his role at the same time. Thus, the game appears as a real practice not | only a change in position when taking on a role, but also as a practice of relations with a partner in a game from the point of view of the role that the partner performs, not only as real; the practice of acting with objects in accordance with the values ​​assigned to them, but also as the practice of coordinating points of view on the meanings of these objects without directly manipulating them. This is the process of "decentration" taking place every minute. Play acts as a cooperative activity of children. J. Piaget has long pointed out the importance of cooperation for the formation of operator structures. However, he, firstly, did not note that the child's cooperation with adults begins very early, and, secondly, he believed that real cooperation occurs only towards the end of preschool age, together with the emergence of games with rules, which, according to J. Piaget, require general acceptance of the admitted conditions. In fact, this kind of cooperation arises with the emergence of role play and is a necessary condition for it.

We have already indicated that Piaget was interested in play only in connection with the emergence of a symbolic function. He was interested in the individual symbol through which the child adapts, according to Piaget, a world alien to him to his individual egocentric thought. Indeed, in an individual game, in which the child at best has a doll as a partner, there is no strict need either for a change of position or for coordinating his point of view with the points of view of other participants in the game. Maybe, . that at the same time the game not only does not fulfill the function of "moral and cognitive decentration", but, on the contrary, fixes even more personal, the only point of view of the child on. C objects and relationships, fixes the egocentric position. Such a game can really take a child away from the real world into closed world his individual desires, limited by the framework of narrow family relations.

In the experimental study of VA Nedospasova, play appeared to us as an activity in which both the cognitive and emotional "decentration" of the child takes place. In this we see the most important role of play for intellectual development. The point is not only that individual intellectual operations develop or are formed anew in play, but that the child's position in relation to the world around is radically changed and the very mechanism of a possible change in position and coordination of his point of view with other possible points of view is being formed. It is this change that opens up the opportunity and path for the transition of thinking to new level and the formation of new intelligent operations.

3. Play and development of mental actions

In Soviet psychology, research into the formation of mental actions and concepts has been extensively developed. We owe the development of this most important problem primarily to the research of P. Ya. Gal'perin and his collaborators. P. Ya. Galperin (1959), as a result of numerous experimental studies, which were in the nature of the experimental-genetic formation of mental actions and concepts, established the main stages through which the formation of any new mental action and the concept associated with it must pass. If we exclude the stage of preliminary orientation in the task, then the formation of mental actions and concepts with predetermined properties proceeds naturally in the following stages: the stage of formation of actions on material objects or their material substitute models; the stage of forming the same action in terms of loud speech; finally, the stage of formation of the actual mental action (in some cases, intermediate stages are also observed, for example, the formation of action in terms of expanded speech, but to oneself, etc.). These stages can be called stages of the functional development of mental actions.

One of the unsolved until now, but at the same time the most important problems is the problem of the relationship between functional and ontogenetic, age-related development. It is impossible to imagine the process of ontogenetic development without a functional one, if we accept, of course, the main thesis for us that the mental development of a child cannot occur otherwise than in the form of assimilation of the generalized experience of previous generations, fixed in the methods of action with objects, in cultural objects, in science. , although development is not limited to assimilation.

It is possible, though purely hypothetically, to imagine the functional development of any new mental action as a condensed repetition of the stages of ontogenetic development of thinking and, at the same time, as the formation of the zone of its proximal development. If we accept the stages in the development of thinking established in Soviet psychology (practical-effective, visual-figurative, verbal-logical) and compare with the stages established during functional formation, then this assumption has some grounds. Considering the child's actions in play, it is easy to notice that the child is already acting with the meanings of objects, but still relies on their material substitutes - toys. An analysis of the development of actions in play shows that the reliance on substitute objects and actions with them is increasingly diminishing. If at the initial stages of development, a substitute object and a relatively expanded action with it (the stage of materialized action, according to P. Ya. as abbreviated and generalized gestures accompanied by speech. Thus, play actions are of an intermediate nature, gradually acquiring the character of mental actions with the meanings of objects, taking place in terms of loud speech and still slightly relying on external action, but which has already acquired the character of a generalized gesture-indication. It is interesting to note that the words spoken by the child during the game are already generalized. For example, when preparing for dinner, a child comes up to the wall, makes one or two movements with his hands - washes them - and says: “Have washed”, and then, making a series of food movements in the same way, bringing a stick-spoon to his mouth, declares: “Here and had lunch. " This path of development to actions in the mind by meanings divorced from objects is at the same time the emergence of prerequisites for the formation of imagination.

In the light of the above considerations, play acts as an activity in which the preconditions for the transition of mental actions to a new, higher stage are formed - mental actions based on speech. The functional development of play actions merges into ontogenetic development, creating a zone of proximal development of mental actions. Perhaps this model of the relationship between functional and ontogenetic development, which we observe so clearly in play, is a general model of the relationship between functional and ontogenetic development. This is the subject of special research.

In connection with the discussion of the role of play in the intellectual development of a child, the views of J. Bruner are of great interest. In the article already mentioned by us (J. Bruner, 1972), he highly appreciates the importance of manipulative games of higher monkeys for the development of the intellectual activity of these animals and even believes that such games contain the prerequisites for their subsequent use of tools. We have already expressed our point of view on such manipulative games when analyzing the views of Buytendijk.

In one of his subsequent works, J. Bruner (1975) experimentally shows the role of preliminary manipulations with material (elements of tools) for the subsequent solution of intellectual problems. Preschool children were offered a routine task for practical intelligence, such as the Koehler problem. One group of children, before solving the problem, watched an adult connect the sticks with a staple; the other practiced self-attaching the brace to one of the sticks; the third observed how adults solve the whole problem; the fourth was given the opportunity to play with materials outside the solution of the problem (freely manipulate with the material); the fifth group did not see the material at all before presenting the problem for solution. It turned out that the play group (the fourth) performed the task as well as the one in which the children watched the entire process of solving the problem by adults, and much better than the children in the other groups.

Based on these very interesting experiences J. Bruner highly appreciates the importance of play for intellectual development, since in the course of the game such combinations of material and such orientation in its properties can arise, which can lead to the subsequent use of this material as tools in solving problems.

It seems to us that in these experiments we are not talking about play, but rather about free experimentation with material that is not connected with the solution of any particular problem, a kind of free constructive activity in which orientation in the properties of the material occurs more fully, since it is not connected using this material to solve a specific problem. In Bruner's experiments there was not a game, but a special activity that ethologists call research.

In the game, it seems to us, more general mechanisms of intellectual activity develop.

4. Play and the development of voluntary behavior

During the study of the game, it was found that every role-playing game contains a hidden rule and that the development of role-playing games proceeds from games with an expanded game situation and hidden rules to games with an open rule and hidden roles behind it. We will not repeat all the facts obtained in the relevant studies and already cited by us. Vygotsky's position was fully justified that in play “the child cries like a patient and rejoices like a player” and that in play every minute the child abandons fleeting desires in favor of fulfilling the role he has assumed.

All the above facts show with sufficient convincing evidence that a significant restructuring of the child's behavior takes place in play - it becomes arbitrary. By arbitrary behavior, we mean behavior that is carried out in accordance with a pattern (regardless of whether it is given in the form of the actions of another person or in the form of a rule that has already been distinguished) and controlled by comparison with this pattern as a standard.

A.V. Zaporozhets was the first to draw attention to the fact that the nature of the movements performed by the child under conditions of play and under conditions of direct assignment is significantly different. A. V. Zaporozhets established that in the course of development the structure and organization of movements changes. They clearly distinguish between the preparation phase and the execution phase. “Higher forms of the structure of movements for the first time appear in the early genetic stages only when solving problems that, due to their external design, thanks to the clarity and obviousness of those requirements that they present to the child, organize his behavior in a certain way. However, in the process of further development, these higher forms of organization of the movement, which before each time needed favorable conditions, subsequently acquire a certain stability, become, as it were, the usual manner of the child's motor behavior and manifest themselves in conditions of a wide variety of tasks, even in those cases when there are no external circumstances favorable to them ”(1948, p. 139).

A. V. Zaporozhets gives important results of the research of T. O. Ginevskaya, who specially studied the importance of play for the organization of movements. At the same time, it turned out that both the effectiveness of the movement and its organization significantly depend on what structural place the movement occupies in the implementation of the role that the child performs. So, in the dramatized game of the athlete, not only did the relative efficiency of the jump increase, but the very nature of the movement changed - the preparatory phase, or the phase of a kind of start, was much more prominent in it. “The qualitative difference in motor behavior in the two compared series of experiments,” writes A. V. Zaporozhets, “consisted, in particular, in the fact that in a situation of dramatized play, the majority of children switched to a more complex organization of movement with a clearly defined preparatory and executive phase, i.e. .e. gave better results than in the game "Hares-Hunters" ”(ibid., p. 161).

Concluding his research, A. V. Zaporozhets writes: “Play is the first form of activity available to a preschooler, which involves the conscious reproduction and improvement of new movements.

In this respect, the motor development performed by the preschooler in play is a real prologue to the conscious! physical exercises for schoolchildren ”(ibid., p. 166).

3. V. Manuilenko (1948) conducted a special experimental study of the development of voluntary behavior. The object of the study was the ability of a preschool child to voluntarily maintain a posture of immobility. The criterion was the time during which the children could maintain this position. Of all the experimental series carried out, it is of interest to us to compare the results of two series - when performing the role of a sentry in a collective game and with a direct task to stand motionless in the presence of the entire group. The results obtained have shown very eloquently that in all age groups the duration of maintaining a posture of immobility in a situation of performing a role exceeds the indices of maintaining the same posture in conditions of a direct task. This advantage is especially great in children 4-6 years old, and it falls somewhat towards the end of preschool age.

What's the matter? What is the psychological mechanism of this kind of "magic" of the role? Undoubtedly, the motivation of activity is of great importance. The performance of the role, being emotionally attractive, has a stimulating effect on the performance of actions in which the role is embodied. An indication of the motives is, however, insufficient. It is necessary to find the psychological mechanism through which motives can exert this effect. The answer to this question is helped to find a series of experiments, additionally carried out by 3. V. Manuilenko. These series consisted in the fact that when performing the role of a sentry, in some cases a playing group was present, while in others the performance of this role was taken outside the playroom and the child performed his role in a situation of loneliness. It turned out that in the presence of a group, the pose of immobility was performed longer and more strictly than in a situation of loneliness. When playing a role in the presence of a group, children sometimes pointed out the need for a certain behavior to the child playing the role. The presence of children, as it were, strengthened the control over their behavior on the part of the performer himself.

There is reason to believe that when performing a role, the pattern of behavior contained in the role becomes at the same time a standard with which the child himself compares his behavior and controls it. In play, the child performs, as it were, two functions at the same time; on the one hand, he fulfills his role, and on the other, he controls his behavior. Voluntary behavior is characterized not only by the presence of a sample, but also by the presence of control over the implementation of this sample. Role-playing behavior in the game, as it turns out from the analysis, is complexly organized. It contains a model that, on the one hand, acts as an orienting behavior and, on the other hand, as a standard for control; it contains the execution of actions defined by the pattern; it has a comparison with a sample, i.e. a control. Thus, when performing a role, there is a kind of bifurcation, that is, reflection. Of course, this is not yet conscious control. The whole game is dominated by attractive thoughts and is colored by an affective attitude, but it already contains all the basic components of voluntary behavior. The control function is still very weak and often still requires support from the situation, from the participants in the game. This is the weakness of this emerging function, but the meaning of the game is that this function is born here. That is why play can be considered a school of voluntary behavior,

Since the content of roles, as we have already established, is mainly concentrated around the norms of relations between people, that is, its main content is the norms of behavior that exist among adults, then in play the child seems to move into the developed world of higher forms of human activity , in the developed world the rules of human relationships. The norms underlying human relationships become, through play, the source of the development of the child's own morality. In this respect, the importance of play can hardly be overestimated. Play is a school of morality, but not morality in presentation, but morality in action.

Play is important for the formation of a friendly children's team, and for the formation of independence, and for the formation of a positive attitude to work, and for correcting some deviations in the behavior of individual children, and much more. All these educational effects are based as on their basis on the influence that play has on the mental development of the child, on the formation of his personality.

Those aspects of mental development that we have identified and in relation to which the determining influence of play has been shown are the most significant, since their development prepares the transition to a new, higher stage of mental development, the transition to a new period of development.

Schiller: play is a pleasure associated with being free from externals. waste by the manifestation of excess vitality.

Spencer: play is an artificial exercise of strength; in the game the lower ways find expression, and in the aesthetic. activities are the highest.

Wundt: Play is a child of labor; in play, everything has a prototype in the form of serious labor, which always precedes it both in time and in its very essence.

Elkonin: human. game - activity, in the cat. are recreated social. the relationship between people outside the conditions of directly utilitarian activity.

When describing children. psychologists have especially emphasized the work of imagination and fantasy.

J. Sellie: the essence of children. the game consists in performing some role.

Elkonin: it is the role and the actions associated with it that constitute the unit of the game.

Game structure:

game actions with a generalized and abbreviated character

game use of objects

real. relationship between playing children

The more generalized and abbreviated the play actions, the more deeply the meaning, the task and the system of relations of the recreated activity of adults are reflected in the play; the more concrete and detailed the game actions, the more the concrete-objective content of the recreated activity appears.

The plots of the game will be decisively influenced by the act surrounding the child, social. conv-i life.

The game is especially sensitive to the human sphere. activity, labor and relations between people ( Railway- played only after they were shown concrete. mutual relations, actions).

About the historian. emerged and role-playing.

Plekhanov:

in the history of the human. general labor is older than the game

the game arose in response to the consumption of society, in the cat. children and assets live. members of the cat. they should become

will amaze. stability children. toys (the same among different peoples)

primitive toys. Society-in and recent historian. the past are essentially the same - the toy responds in some way unchanged. nature. to the specialties of the child and is not connected with the life of society (contradicts Plekhanov); but Arkin speaks not of all, but only of the initial toys: sound (rattles), movement (ball, snake, top), weapons (bow, arrows, boomerangs), figurative (image of the belly, dolls), rope (from figures make it).

Elkonin: These toys are not original, but also arose out of the box. stages of development of the community, they were preceded by the invention of the person-com objectified. tools of labor (N., making fire by friction, friction is provided by rotation, hence rotational toys, kubars, etc.)

The original unity of work and education. Education in a primitive. general-wah:

the same upbringing of all children

the child should be able to do everything that adults do

short duration of the period of upbringing

direct. participation of children in the life of adults

early inclusion in work (!!!)

where the child m / work with adults at once, there is no game, but where it is needed it will be preceded. preparation - there is.

there is no sharp line between adults and children

children become really independent early

children play little, games are not role-playing (!!!)

if this work is important, but not yet available to the child, reduced tools are used to master the tools, with a cat. children exercise in conv-x, close to real ones, but not identical to them (the Far North - a knife is important, they teach how to handle it from early childhood; throw a rope on a tree stump, then on a dog, then on an animal); bldg. there is an element of the play situation (the conditionality of the situation: a tree stump is not a deer; acting with a reduced object, the child acts like a father, i.e. an element of role play)

Identity of games for children and adults - outdoor sports games

there are imitative games (imitation of a wedding, etc.), but there is no imitation of the work of adults, but there are games with a cat. reproduced situations of everyday life, cat. not yet accessible to children

The complication of the tools of labor - the child cannot master the reduced forms (if you make the gun smaller, it no longer shoots) - a toy has appeared, as an object that only depicts the tools of labor.

The role-playing game appeared in the course of history. development as a result of the change in the place of the child in the system of societies. attitude, social in origin.

Game theory.

Groos Exercise Theory:

Each. a living being has inherited predispositions, which give expediency to his behavior (in the higher belly, this is an impulsive striving for activity).

At higher. living beings, innate reactions are insufficient to perform complex. vital. tasks.

In every life. higher. creatures are childhood, i.e. period of development and growth, parental care.

The goal of childhood is to acquire adaptations necessary for life, but not developing directly from innate reactions.

Striving to imitate elders.

Where the individual is from int. motivation and without ext. goals manifests, strengthens and develops their inclinations, we are dealing with the original phenomena of the game.

Those. we do not play because we are children, but we are given childhood so that we can play.

Groos did not create a theory of play as an activity typical for the period of childhood, but only indicated that this activity was for him. def. biological important function.

Objections:

considers himself an individual. experience arises on the basis of hereditary, but opposes them

it is strange that in the game of the belly, not associated with the struggle for existence and, therefore, occurring in other conditions, not similar to those in the cat. will happen, N., hunting, there were real adaptations, tk. no real reinforcement.

transfers without reservations biological. the meaning of the game with animals per person

Stern. He shared Groos's views, but added:

the idea of ​​the premature maturation of abilities

recognition of the game as a special instinct

necessary for the preparation of the ripening ways of their intimate contact with external impressions. the world

Groos, unlike Stern, does not raise the question of the role of the external. conditions in the game, because was an opponent of Spencer's position on imitation as the basis of the game.

Buhler. To explain play, he introduces the concept of functional pleasure. This concept is delimited from pleasure-pleasure and from the joy associated with anticipating the result of activity. Further, he said that for the selection of forms of behavior, an excess is necessary, a wealth of activities, body movements, especially in young animals. And also the principle of form, or striving for perfect form, governs the game.

Buhler's criticism: functional. pleasure is the engine of all sorts of trials, including erroneous ones, it should lead to repetition and consolidation of any activities and movements.

Boytendijk. Argues with Groos:

instinctive forms of activity, like the nerve. the fur-we underlying them ripen regardless of exercise

separates exercise from play

play does not explain the meaning of childhood, but on the contrary: the creature plays because it is young

The main features of behavior in childhood:

non-directional movement

motor impulsivity (young belly is in constant motion)

"Pathic" attitude to reality - opposite to the gnostic, directly affective connection with the environment. the world, arising as a reaction to novelty

shyness, fearfulness, shyness (not fear, but an ambivalent attitude, which consists in moving to and from a thing)

All this brings the animal and the child to play.

Restriction of the game from other activities: the game is always a game with something - move. animal games are not games.

At the heart of the game is not the department. instincts, but more general drives. Following Freud: Exodus 3. drives leading to play:

attraction to liberation, removal of obstacles emanating from the environment that fetter freedom

attraction to merge, to community with others

tendency to repeat

The game object for d / w is partially familiar and at the same time has unknown possibilities.

The game is in its outcome. form is a manifestation of orienting activity.

Claparede objected:

features of the dynamics are young. the body is not m / w the basis of the game, because:

they are characteristic of cubs and those bellies that do not play

dynamics manifested itself not only in games, but also in other forms of behavior

adults also have games

naib. openly these individuals manifested themselves in such activities as fun, idleness and games of very little ones, a cat. according to Boytendijk are not games

Boytendijk limits the concept of a game: round dances, somersaults do not belong to him as games, although they are characterized by the indicated features of children. speakers

Cons of all these theories:

phenomenological. approach to distinguishing games from other types of behavior

identification of the course of the psychic. child and animal development and their games

Elkonin: the game arose for objectivity. stages of evolution of the belly. the world and is associated with the emergence of childhood; play is not a function of the organism, but a form of behavior, i.e. activity with things, and with elements of novelty. The game is young. belly-x - exercise is not a department. motor systems or department. instinct and type of behavior, and exercise in fast and precise control of the movement. we will behave in any of its forms, on the basis of the images of the individual. conv-th, in the cat. there is an object, i.e. exercise in orienting activities.

J. Selli - features of role-playing game:

transformation by the child of himself and the surrounding objects and the transition to the imaginary world

deep absorption in the creation of this fiction and the life in it

Stern. The tightness of the world, in the cat. the child lives, and the feeling of pressure he experiences is the cause of the tendency to move away from this world, the cause of the emergence of play, and fantasy is the mechanism of its implementation. But Stern contradicts himself: he himself said that the child introduces into his play the activities of adults and related objects, because the world of adults is attractive to him.

Z. Freud. There are two primary drives: for death (the tendency towards compulsive reproduction is associated with it) and for life, for self-preservation, for power, for self-affirmation. This is the main. dynamic forces. mental. lives that are unchanged in an infant and an adult. Children's play, like culture, science, art - forms of bypassing barriers, cat. puts the general in the original drives, looking for a way out for themselves. When analyzing the play of a small child with throwing things and with the "appearance - disappearance" of a spool of thread, Freud assumes the symbolization in this game of the situation of the mother leaving the traumatic child.

Objection: the fact of such an early symbolization is doubtful.

The period of childhood according to Freud is a period of continuous trauma to the child, and the tendency to obsessive repetition leads to games, play as the only means of mastering through repetition of those unbearable experiences that these traumas bring with them. Those. people from childhood have been a potential neurotic, and play is a natural therapeutic tool.

The game arose on the basis of the same mechanisms that underlie the dreams and neuroses of adults.

An important thought: children's play is influenced by the dominant desire at this age - to become an adult and do as adults do.

Adler - a feeling of weakness and dependence, painfully felt, the child tries to drown out in himself with the fiction of power and domination - he plays a magician and a fairy. Games are attempts to create a situation that identifies those social. attitude, on the cat. the affect is fixed, i.e. role-playing game as a semantic center for them. social the relationship between adults and between an adult and a child.

Hartley. Observation of the role play - finding out how the child imagines adults, the meaning of their activities, relationships, and also in roles. the game the child enters into real life. relationship with other players and shows its inherent quality and some. emotional. experiences.

Disadvantages of Freud's interpretations:

biologization, does not teach the history of ontogenetic. development of a bang, identifies DOS. cravings of the bang and belly and reduces them to sexual

transfers hypothetical. fur-we are psychic dynamics. life from sick adults to children

the idea of ​​the relationship between the child and the community as antagonistic, leading to trauma, and play is a form of the child's departure from real life. really

Ignored the emergence of games in the history of the community and in the development of the department. the individual, not considered the meaning of the game for the psyche. development

Piaget. The child assimilates the surrounding reality in accordance with the laws of his thinking, first autistic and then egocentric. This assimilation creates a special world, in Oct. the child lives and satisfies all his desires. This dream world is the most important for the child, it is the real reality for him. The path of development from the point of view of Piaget: first, for the child there is a single world - the subjective. the world of autism and desires, then under the influence of pressure from the world of adults, the world of reality, two worlds arise - the world of play and the world of reality, and the first is more important for the child. This world of play is something like a remnant of a purely autistic world. Finally, under the pressure of the world of reality, these remnants are also repressed, and then a kind of single world with repressed desires arises, acquiring the character of dreams or dreams.

Objections. The premises are incorrect: that the child's needs were given to him from the very beginning in the form of a psychic. formations, in the form of desires or consumption; that the child's needs are not being met. Research by Lisina: the initial consumption of a child was the consumption of communication with an adult. The world of a child is, first of all, an adult person. The world of a child is always some part of the world of adults, in a peculiar way refracted, but part of the objective world. And besides, no satisfaction of consumption in an imaginary world is possible.

K. Levin, schematic views:

Psychic. the environment of an adult man is differentiated into layers with different. degree of reality.

Transitions from one plan to another are possible.

Children also have this, but their differentiation is different. degrees of reality are not so clear and the transitions from the level of reality to the level of unreality are made easier.

Main mechanism of transition from layers of different. the degree of reality to the surreal layers is a substitution.

Main in play: it deals with phenomena related to the level of reality in the sense that they are accessible to the observation of outsiders, but much less bound by the laws of reality than non-play behavior.

Sliozberg (research). In a serious situation, the child vol. refusal to play substitution. In the game, he often rejects the real. things or real. actions offered to him instead of the game ones. Pts. an important factor in the acceptance of substitution is the degree of intensity of consumption. The more you spend, the less the value of the substitute action becomes.

Levin and Sliozberg: play is a special layer of reality, but the dynamics of the actions in the game are close to the actions in the surreal layers.

Piaget. The child uses his body and department. movement for idiosyncrasy. modeling of position, movement and sv-in some. objects (Zaporozhets also indicated). The study of imitation leads Piaget to the idea that the one who is born thinks. the image is an internalized imitation. Thus, according to Piaget, imitation is a sensorimotor that has emerged from undivided ones. of movements, pure accommodation to visual or acoustic patterns. And play is, first of all, simple assimilation, functional or reproductive. Psychic. assimilation is the inclusion of objects in behavior patterns, which themselves are nothing more than a canvas of actions that have the ability to actively reproduce.

One of the criteria for a Piaget game is liberation from conflicts.

3 main structures of the game according to Piaget:

exercise games

symbolic games

games with rules

All of them are forms of behavior, in which assimilation prevails, but their difference is that for each. stage, reality is assimilated by different schemes. What is the structure of the child's thought at this stage of development, so is his play, for play is the assimilation of reality in accordance with the structure of thought.

Symbolic play is pure egocentric thought. Main the function of the game is to protect the child's “I” from forced accommodation to reality. Symbol, being the child's personal, individual, affective language, was the main means of such egocentric assimilation.

The game is so self-centered. assimilation into the cat. use-Xia special language of symbols, which creates the possibility of its most complete implementation.

Piaget's ideas about play as an expression of the unconscious. conflicts and the convergence of the symbolism of play with the symbolism of dreams - the closeness of his understanding of play to the psychoanalytic.

Objections: play is not a conservative force, but, on the contrary, an activity that makes a genuine revolution in the child's relationship to the world, including in the transition from centered thinking to decentralized, plays a progressive role in the child's development. Symbolic the game is not self-centered. thought in its pure form, as Piaget thinks, but, on the contrary, overcoming it. In play, the child acts with his experiences, he takes them out, re-creating the material conditions for their emergence, transforms them into a new form, gnostic (the girl, amazed by the sight of a plucked duck, lies on the sofa and says in a muffled voice: "I am a dead duck").

Piaget believes that in a game any thing can serve as a fictitious substitute for anything. But this is not the case. Vygotsky: some items can easily replace others, bld. the similarity is not important, but the functional use is important, the ability to perform a depicting gesture with a substitute.

One cannot agree with Piaget in the convergence of the symbolism of play with the symbolism of dreams.

Merit of Piaget: he put the problem of play in connection with the transition from sensorimotor intelligence to thinking in representations.

Chateau. Pleasure, cat. the child gets in the game - this is moral pleasure. It is connected with the fact that in every game there is an objectivity. plan and more or less strict rules. The fulfillment of this plan and rules creates special moral satisfaction. The child has no other self-affirmation sp-bov, except for the game. Self-affirmation for Chateau is an expression of the desire for improvement and overcoming difficulties, for new achievements.

Soviet Ψ. Ushinsky emphasized the importance of play for the general development of the soul (for the development of the personality and its moral side), Sikorsky - the role of play in the mind. development.

Vinogradov - taking in the main. Groos's theory, believes that he did not sufficiently take into account the "human factors": imagination, imitation, emotional moments.

Basov: playing them. structural features, naib. characteristic is the absence in the child of any. def. obligations, this freedom in relationship with the environment leads to special kind behavior, the main driving force and feature of the cat. yavl-Xia procedural. Man - an active figure, rejection of purely naturalistic. theories of play, which saw its sources within the personality, and not in the system of the child's relationship with the surrounding reality.

Blonsky. Games:

imaginary games (manipulations)

building games

imitative

dramatizations

movable

intellectual

What we call play is, in essence, the building and dramatic art of the child. The problem of play hides the problems of labor and art in preschool age.

Vygotsky.

Primitive in children's games. man is happening. their preparation for future activities. The game is human. the child is also aimed at future activities, but chapters. way to work social. har-ra.

Play is the fulfillment of desires, but not isolated, but generalized affects. The central and characteristic of the play situation was the creation of an imaginary situation, which consists in the child taking on the role of an adult, and its implementation in the play environment created by the child himself. The rules in the game are the child's rules for himself, the internal rules. self-restraint and self-determination. In the game, everything is internal. processes are given in ext. action. Play continuously creates situations that require the child to act not on an immediate impulse, but along the line of greatest resistance. Play was, although not the predominant, but the leading type of activity in preschool age. The game contains all development tendencies, it is a source of development and creates zones of proximal development, behind the game there are changes in consumption and a change in the consciousness of the general character.

Rubinstein. Exodus. the specialness of the game - the specialties of its motives. The motives of the game are not in the utilitarian effect and the material rez-those, the cat. about. gives this action in practice. non-play plan, but not in the activity itself, regardless of its result, but in the diverse experiences that are significant for the child of the sides of the reality. In play, actions are more expressive and semantic acts than operational techniques.

The emergence of play in ontogeny.

The entire first half of the first year of life passes with the advanced formation of sensory systems. Feeling movements of the hand are important for the subsequent development of the act of grasping. First, the hands accidentally bump into the object, the image of the subsequent direction of the hands to the object when it is on the object. distance from the eye, bringing to objectified. position of the hand and fingers at the sight of an object under the definition. angle of view. During the formation of the act of grasping, the connection between the audience. perception and movement is established instantly. In the process of grasping, feeling, a connection is formed between the retinal image of the object and its action. form, size, remoteness, the foundations of spatial object perception are laid.

Development repeat. movements begin with patting on the object, then they become more varied. In the call and maintenance of repeated and chain actions with objects, a large role belongs to orientational-research activities associated with the novelty of objects and the variety of their inherent quality. The child predominantly focuses on a new object and grabs it. Manipulative actions in the first year of life appeared when all the necessary prerequisites for this appeared, as well as coordinated movements regulated by sight. Orientation to the new, developing throughout the second half of the year, is already a form of behavior, and not a simple reaction. Exhaustion of the possibilities of novelty leads to the cessation of actions with the object. Elkonin does not call the initial manipulative actions a game. By the end of the first year of life, an immediate emotional. communication between a child and an adult is replaced by a new one. a qualitatively unique form that unfolds in joint. activities with adults and mediated manipulation of objects. The child seeks the assessment and approval of an adult.

The emergence of role play is genetically associated with the formation of object-oriented actions under the guidance of adults in early childhood. Thing. actions - historically established, assigned to objectivity. objects of public sp-would be their use. Bearers of the subject. actions are adults. Development subject. actions - the process of assimilation, taking place under the direct guidance of adults. In the course of the form-I object. actions the child first learns commonly. scheme of action with an object associated with its societies. appointment, and only then the department is adjusted. operations to physical. the form of the object and the conditions for the implementation of actions with it. Assimilation by observing the actions of adults. 2 types of transfer: the transfer of an action with an object to other conditions and the implementation of the same action, but with a substitute object. For the first time, the replacement of one object with another arises when it is necessary to supplement the usual situation of action with a missing object. Cut something with a knife - use a stick, because it can do the same outwardly.

Name of objects: children name an object after an adult has named it and after an action is performed with the object.

Children already perform a number of activities performed by adults, but do not yet call themselves the name of adults. Only at the very end of early childhood, between 2.5 and 3 years, the first rudiments of a role appeared: the name of the doll appeared by the name of the character and the child's conversation appeared on behalf of the doll. Actions are performed with dolls, but this is a series of unrelated departments. actions, there is no logic in their deployment: first lulls, then walks, then feeds, then shakes on a rocking chair ... No logical. last, cat. is in life, actions m / repeat several times. Only by the very end of early childhood do games begin to appear, which are a chain of life actions. About. in the center is a doll.

During the development of the subject. the child does not learn to act better with objects - to use a comb, a spoon ... physical sv-in items. Into the subject. the game is assimilated chapters. image of the meaning of objects, there is an orientation towards their societies. function, societies. usage.

There is a generalization of actions and their separation from objects, there is a comparison of their actions with those of adults and calling themselves the name of an adult.

The child produces an object. actions first on those objects on the cat. they were formed with the help of adults; he transfers these actions to other subjects, offered first to the adult; names objects by the names of objects being replaced only after actions with them and calling them adult game names; call himself the name of those people, the actions of the cat. reproduces at the suggestion of adults.

The game does not arise spontaneously, but with the help of adults.

Game development in preschool age.

Arising on the border of early childhood and preschool. age, role play develops intensively and reaches its highest level in the second half of preschool age.

Arkin - 5 main game development lines:

from sparsely populated groups to more and more crowded

from unstable groupings to more and more stable

from plotless games to storyline

from a series of unrelated episodes to a systematically unfolding plot

from the reflection of personal life and the immediate environment to the events of public life

Rudik will point out a number of new symptoms:

betrayal of the character of conflicts among elders in comparison with younger ones

transition to the cat. each the child plays in his own way, to the game, to the cat. the actions of the children are coordinated and the interaction of the children is organized on the basis of the roles taken

betrayal of the character of the stimulation of the game, the cat at a younger age arises under the influence of toys, and at an older age - under the influence of a plan, regardless of toys

changing the character of the role, which at first has a generalized character, and then is increasingly endowed with individual traits and typed.

Junior games age, they wear a procedural character; on wednesday preschool. the age of the role is of paramount importance, the interest of the game for children lies in the performance of the role; at an older age, children are interested not only in this or that role, but also in how well it is performed.

Mendzheritskaya - new people. games:

the development of Spain by children is different. items in the game, the cat is when replacing the real. the subject is dressed in a playful manner from a distant resemblance to an increasingly demanding attitude and similarity

smoothing out with age the contradictions between inventing a plot and the possibility of its implementation

the development of the plot comes from the image of the external. sides to convey their meaning

the appearance in the older age of the plan, although schematic and imprecise, but giving a perspective and clarifying actions each. participant in the game

strengthening and at the same time changing the role of the organizers of the game by older age

Observations by Slavina.

Characteristic features of the games of older children. Children vol. agree on the roles and then unfold the plot of the game according to the definition. plan, recreating the lens. logic of events in a definite, strict sequence. Each. the action of the child to them. logical continuation in another action that replaces it. Things, toys, furnishings are getting objectified. game values, cat. persist throughout the game. Children play together, their actions are interconnected. Actions are subject to plot and role. Their fulfillment is not in itself a goal, they are always for them. service. meaning, only realizing the role, are generalized, abbreviated, integral character.

Junior game. children wear a different character. Kids will consider toys, choose naib. attractive and begin to individually manipulate them, performing monotonous repetitive actions for a long time, showing no interest in what toys and how the other child plays. But it is important for children that a role and an imaginary situation are present in the game, although in fact they are almost never played up. 2 motivational plans in the game: 1) direct. motivation to act with toys, 2) taking on objectified. a role that gives meaning to actions performed with objects.

Mikhailenko set up experiments. In advance. series, the possibility of the implementation of elementary children by children was clarified. forms of games. activities according to the assigned adult models. Children from 1.5 to 3 years old. The plot was set differently. sp-bami. The first series - in verbal form - bld. out of 55 children, only 10 over 2 years old started playing. The second series - the experimenter not only told the plot, but also played it out in front of the children. Of 45 children, cat. did not accept the plot in the 1st episode, 32 children accepted. Then a special series - to translate the learned elementary. action with a plot. toys in playrooms - they offered children to reproduce actions with the wrong object on the cat. they were assimilated, but with substitute subjects. Some of them were accepted by verbal suggestion. and part only after the show.

In the course of generalization and reduction of the action, its meaning changed: the action with a spoon turned into feeding the doll. But although the actions became playful in form, they were not yet role-playing. Mikhailenko suggested that the transition to playing the role is associated with 2 conv-s: with the attribution of a number of actions to the same character (the doctor - listens, gives medicine, injections ...) and with the acceptance of the role of the character, the cat. set in the plot, on itself.

Development of the role in the game. Expert. The first series: games in ourselves, in adults and in comrades. The second series: games with a violation of the sequence of actions when the child plays the role. Third series: games with violation of the meaning of the role.

Younger children refuse to play in themselves, without motivating refusal. Have Wednesdays. preschool. from the same refusal, but it is always replaced by the proposal of another game. The older children suggest from vol. classes as the content of the game or offer to repeat the entire routine of children. garden. Realizing this content, children perceive the relationship with the expert not as playful, but as serious. The game is only possible if you have a role!

The role of educator is willingly taken, but the role of children is not accepted by the elders. The role of the child is not m / to serve as the realization of the motive of the game (the motive of the game is the role), but the relationship with the teacher for them no longer seemed essential in the content of their life.

An offer to take on the roles of companions with the younger ones. children are greeted with the same attitude as playing with themselves. A senior. children, taking on the role of another child, isolate typical actions, activities, specific traits behavior. Probably, the younger ones cannot isolate this, therefore they do not take on such roles.

The essence of the game is to recreate social media. relationship between people. The meaning of the game for children is different. age. groups is changing. For the younger ones, he is in the actions of that person, the role of the cat. the child performs. For the average - in relation to this person to others. For seniors - in a typical relationship of a person, the role of a cat. performed by the child. For every the role conceals known rules of action or societies. lead me.

Game development levels:

First level.

there are roles, but they are determined by the nature of the actions, and do not determine the action

actions are monotonous and consist of a number of repetitive operations

the logic of actions is easily broken without protests from the children

Second level.

religions are called children, a division of functions is outlined, the fulfillment of a role is reduced to the implementation of actions related to this role

the logic of actions is determined by their sequence in real life. really

violation of the sequence of actions is not actually accepted, but not contested, rejection is not motivated by anything

Third level.

roles are clearly delineated and highlighted, children name their roles before the start of play, roles define and guide the child's behavior

the logic and character of actions is determined by the role taken on, the actions become diverse, a specific role-playing speech has appeared, addressed to the playmate in accordance with his role and the role performed by the comrade

violation of the logic of actions is protested with a reference to the real. a life

Fourth level.

the roles are clearly delineated and highlighted, throughout the game the child clearly leads one line of behavior, the role functions of children are interrelated, speech is clearly role-playing character

the actions unfold in a clear sequence that strictly recreates the real world. logic, they are diverse, rules that refer to real life are clearly outlined

violation of the logic of actions and rules is rejected not just by reference to the real. life, but also an indication of the rationality of the rules

Violation of the meaning of the role (in the expert, the role was placed in contradiction with the actions that the child could produce). They asked to play in such a way that the coachman hands out the tickets, and the conductor leads the train. The second game - the mice catch the cat. Children of 3 years old, the first game - it is impossible to take the child out of the role, tr. the role is merged for the child with the objects, with the cats he acts, therefore the change of objects is a change of the role. At the next level, it is different. The child takes on the new functions of a counselor, calling himself a conductor, but, having begun to act as a counselor, enters the role and names himself in unity with the sp-bom of his actions. At the last level (the oldest preschoolers), children laughingly accept the expert's proposal, m / do not act in accordance with the role and call themselves not in accordance with the content of their play actions.

The question of stability in obedience to the rule. They put me in a situation like a cat. for the sake of fulfilling the role, the child d / give up an object that is attractive to himself or refuse to perform an action. 4 stages in obedience to the rule in the role-playing game:

no rules, tk. in fact there is no role, the immediate impulse wins

clearly the rule does not yet emerge, but in cases of conflict it already overcomes the direct desire to act with the object.

the rule clearly plays a role, but has not yet fully determined the behavior and is violated when a desire arises to make others attract. action. If there are indications of a violation, the error in the performance of the role is immediately corrected

lead-e determined by the roles taken, inside the cat. the rule of conduct clearly stands out, in the struggle between rule and desire, the rule wins

Role-playing symbolism. Let's lie. the child lives not only in the world of objects, through the cat. satisfied with his consumption. but also in the world of images and even signs (pictures in books, etc.). The process of turning an object into a toy is the process of differentiation of the signified and signified object of the birth of a symbol. Having studied the different. forms are symbolic. functions (drawing, designing, playing, using signs), Getzer concluded that already at the age of 3, children m / master the arbitrary combination of sign and meaning - m / start learning to read earlier than they usually do.

Lukov: A technique for renaming items twice in the game. The number of objects that could fulfill the roles of adults or children necessary during the game and replace objects was specially limited in order to force children to use objects selected by the expert for substitution (N., first a horse is a child in kindergarten, then a cook ). At 3 years old, children easily change, following the expert, the purpose of things in the game and their names, but rarely keep it new for a long time. game use and name, constantly returning to the origins. pre-game sp-boo actions with the subject and to the previous name. At the age of 5, children themselves are actively looking for among the proposed toys that are necessary to replace characters or objects, and if they do not find, then they agree with the expert's suggestions, albeit with some. labor. Having changed the sp-b actions with the object and its name, the child firmly retains its new purpose for the object, even if it is not in direct correspondence with its original, pre-game use. The condition for one toy to replace another is not external resemblance, but the possibility of objectification. to act with this thing (the horse can be put, laid down like a child, but the ball cannot be). For older children, play sp-b actions in relation to substitutional subjects are also very good. stable. By own the initiative children never produce secondary. substitutions, so the expert's initial attempt to destroy the accepted game meaning of things runs into some. resistance, but after several such changes, children willingly go for further secondary renaming.

Bld. we see the separation of the sp-ba of the use of the object from the concrete. things for the cat. this sp-b was originally fixed, as well as the separation of the word from the subject.

Elkonin. The first series is a renaming game - the child has a number of objects in front of him, he d / calls objects by other names, renames them. The second series: given 4 objects and their game names, a number of actions must be performed with them (N., a pencil is a knife, a ball is an apple: "cut a piece of apple"). The third series is similar to the second, but N. was given a knife as a pencil and a pencil as a knife - the playful use of an object in a conflict situation, in the presence of a real object.

Res. First episode. Already for children 3 years old, simple renaming does not cause difficulties. But many children, calling objects by new names, make mistakes, calling the object either by its own name, or by another. Naib. the number of errors falls on the junior. age (3-4 years). Renaming of objects by children is limited to those objects that are real in their own right. St.-you are allowed to perform the actions required by the new name. Throughout preschool. age happens means. the expansion of the actions assigned to the word with the object and its sv-in, which creates the possibility of a freer, but still limited, game renaming.

2 series. Half of three-year-old children have difficulty in performing actions, feeding the dog with an apple (a cube - a ball). 4-year-olds are better at this task. 5-year-olds have no noticeable shift. The 6-year-olds all coped with the tasks of this series much more freely, there was not a single case of failure to perform an action.

3 series. The number of children, the cat is increasing. do not accept game consumables. Particulars. differences between younger and older preschoolers bld. no. Only 3-year-olds give a significant number of refusals, and at other ages the number of children who accept play use is almost the same, but younger children have much more resistance than older ones. The introduction of a real object strengthens the connection between the object and actions and weakens the connection between words and actions, or even completely inhibits them.

There are 2 symbolizations in the development of the game:

transfer of action from one item to another, when renaming an item

the child takes on the role of an adult bang, while the generalization and reduction of actions act as a condition for modeling social services. relations between people in the course of their activities and thereby clarification of their human. meaning.

Development of the child's relationship to the rules in the game. Outdoor games with rules.

The younger the children, the more meaningful and direct the connection between the rules to which the child is to subordinate his actions and the role he takes on.

The relay race is the subordination of the immediate impulse to run to the experimenter to the rule to run on a signal. Only the youngest children disobey the rule. Children either run before the end of the team, or do not run after it; the immediate impulse to run either wins or is inhibited; there is still no struggle between the impulse to run and the rule. Already at the age of 4, it is different: out of 11 samples in 9 cases, obedience to the rule. Complication: a game of burners, bld. the team is longer, so the impulse to run is growing all the time, and it is more difficult to contain it. Children of 7 years, unlike 5-year-olds, are aware of their impulse and, =>, already consciously obey the rule. The introduction of the plot increases the ability of younger children to obey the rule (when playing with a steam locomotive, it is better than in a simple relay race). When the plot is introduced, there is, as it were, the alienation of their actions, their objectification, hence the possibility of comparing and evaluating them, =>, greater controllability. Already on Wednesdays. preschool. age, it becomes possible to obey a game rule that is not clothed in role content; in older preschool age, games with ready-made rules take a significant place; at school age, narrative role-playing games are relegated to the background.

Expert T is a guessing game. Reb-k, together with the teacher in the absence of the expert, thought about what action to take by the expert, the teacher agreed with the child that they would not say what to do, let the guesser guess himself. The expert played the role of a guesser, who supposedly did not know what action was intended. The child simultaneously has the rule to be silent and the impulse to prompt, they come into conflict. A child (4.5 years old) follows the line of desire, the presence of a teacher at this stage does not contribute to the implementation of the rule. At the second stage (5-6 years old), the behavior changes, the meaning of the game for the child is not to tell what was planned. The child is guided by the rule, but can hardly cope with the urge to prompt. Children do not give direct prompts, but they look directly at what they have planned, give leading directions, they are glad when the expert guesses. The presence of a teacher or other child at this stage helps to restrain desires. At the third stage (6.5 - 7 years old), the meaning of the game for children is not to tell what they have planned, the rule wins, the struggle is not so visible. The rule is respected even when the teacher is absent.

The development of the game proceeds from a detailed game situation and the rules hidden inside it to games with open rules and a minimized game situation.

The game "inventing the rules of the game" (give a playing field, soldiers, horsemen, commander, 2 balls, you need to come up with a game with them). Steps:

pre-game; there are no rules, there is no formalized plot, the actions of children are reduced to manipulating toys

elements of the plot and roles appeared, the commander was highlighted, the game was based on. comes down to building and marching, department. episodes of the game are not connected with each other, there are no clear rules

the plot appears, the war is played out, the rules are closely related to the plot, the rules are not generalized, but in the course of the game there is a division. rules are formed

the rules are singled out and formulated before the start of the game, there were also purely conditional rules, independent of the plot and game situation

Play and mental development.

Play and development of the motivational-need-sphere.

Vygotsky highlighted the problem of motives and expenses as central to understanding the very emergence of role-playing (rights), pointed out the contradictions between the emerging new desires and the tendency to their immediate realization, the cat. not m / w implemented.

Leontiev. Thing. the world perceived by the child expands, not with all objects the child is able to act. An abstract theoretical does not yet exist for the child. activity, awareness appears for him primarily in the form of action. The child seeks to enter into an effective relationship not only with the things available to him, he seeks to act like an adult.

When moving from subject. games for role-playing directly in the subject environment of children, significant change m / and will not happen. The child washes the doll in the same way, puts it to bed. But all these items and actions with them are now included in the new. system of the child's relation to reality, in new. affectively attractive activity, thanks to this they objectively acquired a new meaning. The transformation of a child into a mother and a doll into a child leads to the transformation of bathing, feeding, cooking into childcare. These actions now express the attitude of the mother to the child - her love and affection, and perhaps vice versa; it depends on the specific. conv-th life of the child, those concrete. relation, the cat is surrounded by it. The generalization and abbreviation of play actions is a symptom of what a human being is. relation occurs and that this evolved meaning is emotionally experienced.

The meaning of the game is not limited to the fact that the child will have new motives of activity and the tasks associated with them. It is essential that a new one appears in the game. psychological form of motives. Hypothetically, m / imagine that it is in play that there is a transition from motives in the form of preconscious affectively colored direct desires to motives in the form of generalized intentions on the verge of consciousness.

Play and overcoming "cognitive egocentrism." Piaget characterizes the main. quality of thinking of preschool children. age, Ott cat. all the rest depend, like cognitive egocentrism - insufficient delimitation of one's point of view from other possible ones, and hence its actual dominance. Role play leads to a change in the position of the child - from his own individual and specifically childish - to a new position of an adult. The game is an activity, in Oct. happening. main processes associated with overcoming cognition. egocentrism.

Vina's problem about three brothers. In indicating correctly how many brothers he has, the child does not m / correctly indicate how many brothers he has. from his brothers, i.e. take their point of view. Expert Nedospasova: the problem from three brothers was proposed not in relation to their own family, but in relation to someone else's or conditional family, bld. egocentric. the position did not manifest itself at all or was manifested to a much lesser extent. That. under experimental conditions. the game managed to overcome the cognitive phenomenon. egocentrism.

Play and development of mental actions. Halperin established DOS. stages of the formation of mental actions. If you exclude the pre-stage. orientation in the task, then the formation of skills. actions and concepts with predetermined saint-you, the trail naturally passes. stages:

stage of formation of actions on the material. objects or their material substitute models

stage of formation of the same action in terms of loud speech

stage of the formation of the actual mental action (sometimes there are also intermediate stages, N. the formation of action in terms of expanded speech, but about oneself, etc.)

In play, the child already acts with the meanings of objects, but still relies on their material substitutes - toys. The reliance on substitute objects and actions with them is increasingly diminishing. Thus, play actions have an intermediate character, gradually acquiring the character of mental actions with the meanings of objects, which are performed in terms of loud speech and are still slightly based on externals. action, but already acquired the character of a generalized gesture-direction. In the game, the prerequisites for the transfer of skills were formed. actions at the stage of skills. actions based on speech.

J. Bruner: the role is preceded. manipulations with material (elements of tools) for the subsequent decision of the intellectual. tasks. He highly appreciates the value of games for an intellectual. development, because in the course of the game m / such combinations of material and such an orientation in its properties arise, which m / lead to the subsequent use of this material as a tool for solving problems.

Play and development of free behavior. In play, every minute the child rejects fleeting desires in favor of fulfilling the role he has assumed. In play, a significant restructuring of the child's behavior takes place - it becomes arbitrary, i.e. carried out in accordance with the sample and controlled by comparison with this sample as a standard.

In all age groups, the duration of the preservation of the posture of immobility (N., hour) in the situation of performing the role exceeds the indices of preservation of the same posture in the conditions of a direct task. Great value to them. motivation of activity. The performance of the role, being emotionally attractive, stimulates the performance of actions, in which the role is embodied. In the presence of a group, the pose of immobility was performed longer and more strictly than in a situation of loneliness. The presence of others seemed to increase control over their behavior. The child performs 2 functions in play: fulfills his role and controls his behavior, i.e. there is reflection, therefore the game can be considered a school of voluntary behavior.

D.B. Elkonin created the theory of periodization of the mental development of children.

He proceeded from the fact that age and age characteristics are relative concepts, and only the most general age characteristics can be distinguished.

The scientist considered the age-related development of the child as a general change in personality, accompanied by a change in life position and the principle of relationships with others, the formation at each stage of new values ​​and motives of behavior.

The mental development of the child is uneven: there are evolutionary periods and, or critical periods.

During the evolutionary period, changes in the psyche accumulate gradually, then a leap occurs, during which the child moves to a new stage of age-related development.

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Stages of development of the game.

Play is the leading activity of a preschool child. Children's play is a historically developing type of activity, which consists in the reproduction by children of the actions of adults and the relations between them in a special conditional form. Play, according to A. I. Leontyev's definition, is the leading activity of a preschool child, that is, an activity in connection with the development of which major changes occur in the child's psyche and within which mental processes develop, preparing the child's transition to a new stage of his development.

The central issue in the theory of children's play is the question of its historical origin. D. B. Elkonin in his research showed that play, and above all role play, arises in the course of the historical development of society as a result of a change in the place of the child in the system of social relations. The emergence of play occurs as a result of the emergence of complex forms of the division of labor and is a consequence of the impossibility of including the child in productive labor. With the emergence of role play, a new, preschool period in the development of the child begins. In domestic science, the theory of play in the aspect of clarifying its social nature, internal structure and significance for the development of the child Play is the most important source of the development of the child's consciousness, the arbitrariness of his behavior, a special form of modeling the relationship between adults, fixed in the rules of certain roles. Having assumed the fulfillment of a particular role, the child is guided by its rules, subordinates his impulsive behavior to the fulfillment of these rules. The motivation for the game lies in the very process of performing this activity. The main unit of the game is the role. In addition to the role, the structure of the game includes play action (action to fulfill the role), play use of objects (substitution), and relationships between children. The game also highlights the plot and content. The plot is the sphere of activity that the child reproduces in the game. The content is the relationship between adults reproduced by the child in play. The game is usually a group game. The group of children at play acts in relation to each individual participant as an organizing principle, authorizing and supporting the fulfillment of the role taken by the child.

Development of the self-concept in preschool age

The feeling of adulthood becomes the central neoplasm of younger adolescence, and by the end of the period, at about 15 years old, the adolescent takes another step in the development of his self-awareness. After searching for himself, personal instability, he develops an "I-concept" - a system of internally coordinated ideas about oneself (the theory of one's own "I"), images of "I". Moreover, it may not coincide with the real "I". It is necessary to remember how the child's self-awareness developed. By the age of 3, a purely emotional, overestimated self-esteem appeared. Later, in preschool age, rational components of self-esteem appear, an awareness of some of their qualities and behavior, consistent with the requirements of adults. Despite this, preschoolers judge themselves superficially and optimistically. When asked to describe themselves, they will do so mainly from an external point of view, noting features such as hair color, height, favorite activities. In younger schoolchildren, self-esteem becomes more adequate and differentiated. They distinguish between their physical and spiritual qualities, assess their abilities, compare themselves with others: “I ride a bike better than my brother”, “It costs me nothing to do at five. And this one will do only for a deuce, or even for a count. She is a "wiggler"

By the end of primary school age, children, characterizing themselves, increasingly describe their typical behavior, refer to their thoughts and feelings. Here is what a 4th grade student tells about himself: “My character is weak, when I was little, even when I went to the garden and to the first grade, others beat me, but I didn’t give them back, I just cried and didn’t even complain to the teacher ... Then I learned to defend myself. My dad taught me how to play boxing. Now they don't beat me, but I'm a bad athlete. I need to be tempered, to become strong. But I don’t do exercises. I'm going to keep going and will not start in any way. " Since the transition from childhood to maturity occurs in adolescence, its study, on the one hand, makes it possible to trace the typical features of a person who transcends childhood, and on the other hand, to retrospectively examine the course of one's own childhood. In other words, the knowledge of the sources, conditions, mechanisms of development in adolescence provides the key to disclosing the patterns of ontogenetic development as a whole. It is no coincidence that a whole complex of problems of different levels, nature and content is associated with the study of adolescence.