2024 Volume 56 Issue 1 Pages 281-288
The purpose of this study was to observe the spontaneous play and expressive acts of young children in relation to specific materials, and to examine the trends of those acts at each age. We observed the youngest (aged 3–4 years), median (aged 4–5 years), and oldest (aged 5–6 years) children in each class for about 30 minutes while they engaged with milk carton pieces they had never played with before. As a result, the younger children continuously demonstrated spatial play, whereas more than half of the older children shifted from material play to manipulative play and modeling expression. Imitation play and structured play were only prominent in the older children. We confirmed that the young children’s actions tended to change from acts in which they engaged with the materials with their whole bodies to plastic expressions that reflected their own images, based on their maturity with age and experiential learning. It was also considered that as the children aged, they determined their play and expressive acts through reciprocal acts with others that were imbued with social meaning.
