Play

Language

• Awareness that objects exist when not seen: finds toys hidden under scarf.
• Means-end behavior – crawls or walks to get what he wants: pulls string toys.
• Does not mouth or bang all toys – some used appropriately.

• No true language: may have performative words (words associated with actions or the total situation)
• Exhibits the following communicative functions:
  Request & Command

• Purposeful exploration of toys: discovers operation of toys through trial and error: uses variety if motoric schemas.
• Hands toys to adult if unable to operate.

• Context dependent single words, for example, child may use the word “car” when riding in a car, but not when he sees a car: words tend to come and go in child’s vocabulary.
• Exhibits the following communicative functions:
  Request, Command, Label, Personal, Protesting, Interactional, Greeting, Response

• Autosymbolic play, for example, child pretends to go to sleep or pretends to drink from cup or eat from spoon.
• Uses most common objects and toys appropriately.
• Tool-use (uses stick to reach toy).
• Finds toys invisibly hidden (when placed in box and box emptied under scarf).

• Beginning of true verbal communication. Words have the following functional and semantic relations: Recurrence, Existence, Agent, Object, Denial Non-Existence, Rejection, Location, Action or State, Object or Person associated with object or location.

• Symbolic play extends beyond the child’s self:

• Play with dolls: brushes doll’s hair, feeds doll a bottle, or covers doll with blanket.
• Child performs pretend activities on more than one person or object: for example, feeds self, a doll, mother, and another child.
• Combines two toys in pretend play, for example, puts spoon in pan or pours from pot into cup.

• Refers to objects and persons not present. Beginning of word combinations with the following semantic relations:
  Agent-Action, Action-Object, Agent-Object, Action-Location, Object-Location, Attributive, Dative, Possessive.

• Represents daily experiences: plays house – is the mommy, daddy, or baby: objects used are realistic and close to life size.
• Events short and isolated; no true sequences: some self-limiting sequences – puts food in pan, stirs and eats.
• Block play consists of stacking and knocking down.
• Sand and water play consists of filling, pouring and dumping.

• Uses earlier pragmatic functions and semantic relations in phrases and short sentences.
• The following morphological markers appear:
  Present progressive [ing] on verbs, Plurals, Possessives.

• Represents events less frequently experienced or observed, particularly impressive or traumatic events.
• Doctor-Nurse-Sick child
  Teacher-Child
  Store-Shopper
• Events still short and isolated. Realistic props still required. Roles shift quickly.

• Responds appropriately to the following WH questions in context:
  What, Who, Whose, Where, What.
• Asks WH questions – generally puts WH at beginning of sentence.
• Responses to why questions inappropriate except for well-known routines, such as, “Why is the doctor here?” … “Baby sick.”
• Asks why, but often inappropriate and does not attend to answer.

• Continues pretend activities of previous 2 stages, but now the play has sequence. Events are not isolated, for example, child mixes cake, bakes it, serves it, washes the dishes; or doctor checks patient, calls ambulance, takes patient to hospital and operates. Sequence evolves… not planned.
• Compensatory toy… re-enactment of experienced events with new outcomes.
• Associative play.

• Uses past tense, such as “I ate the cake.” … “I walked.”
• Uses future aspect [particularly “gonna”] forms, such as, “I’m gonna wash dishes.

• Carries out play activities of previous stages with a doll house and Fisher-Price toys (barn, garage, airport, village)
• Uses blocks and sandbox for imaginative play. Blocks used primarily as enclosures (fences, and houses, for animals and dolls).
• Play not totally stimulus bound. Child uses one object to represent another.
• Uses doll or puppet as participant in play.

• Descriptive vocabulary expands as child becomes more aware of perceptual attributes. Uses terms for the following concepts [not always correctly]:
  Shapes, Sizes, Colors, Texture, Spatial relationships.
• Gives dialogue to puppets and dolls.
• Meta-linguistic language use, such as, “He said…”
• Uses indirect requests, such as, “Mommy lets me have cookies for breakfast.”
• Changes speech depending on listener.

• Begins to problem-solve events not experienced. Plans ahead. Hypothesizes “what would happen if…”.
• Uses dolls and puppets to act out scenes.
• Builds 3-dimentional structures with blocks which are attempts at reproducing specific structures child has seen.

• Uses modals [can, may, might, will, would, could]
• Uses conjugations [and, but, if, so, because]

Note: Full cometence for these modals and conjugations does not develop until 10-12 years of age.

Begins to respond appropriately to why and how questions that require reasoning about perception.

• Plans a sequence of pretend events. Organizes what he needs – both objects and other children.
• Coordinates more than one event at a time.
• Highly imaginative. Sets the scene without realistic props.
• Full co-operative play.

• Uses relational terms [then, when, first, next, last, while, before, after].

Note: Full competence does not develop until 10-12 years of age.