PLAY LEADERSHIP TRAINING AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Understand and apply a knowledge of Children’s play to help children’s physical and intellectual development.

This course will ensure you develop an understanding of the importance of play and childhood interactions. It gives practical methodologies for productive  activities for children.

The content is challenging touching on aspects of psychology and management – a real learning experience.

Course Structure & Content:

There are ten lessons in this course, plus one special project, covering:

Understanding Play

• Play leadership defined
• Levels of childhood development
• Nature or nurture
• Isolating hereditary characteristics
• Continuity versus discontinuity
• Cross sectional and longitudinal studies
• Reliability of verbal reports
• Ethics and experiments
• Play deprivation and juvenile violence
• Free play
• Compiling an activities file (a project that extends across future lessons)

Leadership Skills

• Scope of skills
• Career path options
• Philosophy of play work
• Qualities of a good leader
• Leadership communication
• Leader responsibilities
• Types of activity
• What is a good back up plan
• Hints for leading activities
• Achievability of activities
• Challenging the child
• Community participation

Planning Play Programs

• Benefits of a structured program
• Factors to consider in planning choices
• Issues for effective programming – people, purpose, participation, relevance, flexibility, evaluation
• Program planning process
• Types of programs
• Dimensions of a program
• Participants goals
• Personal characteristics
• Ideas
• Socio-physical context
• Participants approach to achieving goals
• Participant behaviour
• Perceptions of consequences
• Ideas

Child Development through Play

• Levels of child development
• Theories of Learning in Infancy and Early Childhood
• What is learning
• Habituation
• Vicarious learning
• Classical conditioning
• Operant conditioning
• Cognitive development
• Jean Piaget’s theory
• Importance of play – Exploratory play, Constructive play, Symbolic play, Pretend play
• Assimilation and accommodation
• Socialisation

Play Safety

• Play versus safety
• Legal considerations
• Age and safety
• Safety in exercise
• Safety in aerobic activities
• First aid facilities
• Oxygen equipment
• Identifying hazards
• Basic safety audit for play spaces
• Pre-screening participants
• Legal liability
• When is liability a problem
• Contributory negligence
• Insurance
• Inspecting play equipment

Physical Play

• Manipulating and changing the environment
• Plant associations
• Playing with the environment – animals, plants, earth, manufactured things
• Trailing – sensory trails, cryptic puzzle trails
• Gardening, animals, collecting, crafts, sports
• Environmental activities – observing, collecting, aquaria, an atrium, asphalt activity, other examples
• Organised exercise classes for children
• Exercise programs for different age groups
• For intellectually and physically disabled
• Configurations or patterns of movement

Social Play

• Significance of social play
• Influences on social behaviours
• Benefits of social play
• Social facilitation
• Developing social skills
• Stimulation by social play
• Impediments to social play
• Strategies to facilitate social play
• Social play activities

Adventure Play

• What is an adventure playground
• Establishing an adventure playground
• Playleader duties in an adventure playground
• Site design
• Playground facilities for disabled
• All accessible playgrounds
• Dedicated playgrounds
• Liability

Play Apparatus

• Toys
• Playground equipment
• Big toy playgrounds
• Environmental features
• Equipment (consumables)
• Tools
• Naturally occurring materials for play
• Painting and paints

Play Activities

• Scope of activities
• Crafts – weaving, candle making, bark pictures, mosaics etc
• Growing crystals
• Camping

Special Project Planning an after-school play program

Aims

• Explain the purpose of play in the cognitive, physical and social development of a child.
• Determine the skills required to carry out a play leadership role in different situations
• Plan for a supervised children’s play program.
• To develop a basic understanding of the impact of play upon the psychological development of a child.
• To determine appropriate measures to take to protect a child’s safety when at play, while minimising any interference which might diminish the quality of the play experience.
• Explain options for physical play activities, including games and sports, in a supervised play program.
• Develop an understanding of options for social play activities, in a supervised play program.
• Plan, establish and manage a supervised adventure
• Evaluate a range of different play apparatus, including playground structures, toys, sports equipment, commenting on quality, safety features, appropriate applications and cost benefit.

To broaden your scope of opportunities that can be offered for children to play, appropriate to a wide range of different situations.

Learn to be an effective play leader – the children you work with will know you’re fun, being within your care is exciting for them; and of course, parents can relax as their children enjoy attending care and go home tired from carrying out a variety of activities you have designed.

This course will able you to work as either a volunteer or in employment as a professional in this challenging and rewarding field. You will need to have lots of energy and imagination! You will need to love children and genuinely want to work for their development needs.

Perfect for

• Practitioners and parents,
• Youth workers, leaders and supervisors,
  
• Early childcare, creche, pre-school, primary school staff, home-
• Care child-minders, babysitters and nannies
  
• Play assistant and program leaders,
  
• Outdoors play spaces and adventure park staff

Our staff have experience training play leaders for 4 decades and have devised this truly fantastic course which will challenge you and arm you with the skills you need to succeed in this vitally important industry.

Children deserve the best!

Youth leaders in community organisations or involved in community work

Coaches, trainers, and others involved in child health and fitness

Child carers, or people looking to transition into the early childhood industry

At the end of this course you will:

• Understand how to plan, establish and manage a supervised adventure
• Be able to explain the purpose of play in the cognitive, physical and social development of a child.
• Understand how to effectively use play resources and structures in your interactions with children