Interrelationship of pre-kindergarten writing and an early childhood play environment

Abstract

The purpose of this qualitative study is to understand the interrelationship of students' writing and developmentally appropriate play environments in a public prekindergarten class in Oklahoma. As standards impose literacy requirements on young children, there is an increased need to preserve the early childhood years as a critical time in early development. There is of providing developmentally appropriate experiences that enrich linguistic evidence of the importance of early writing and evidence of play as developmentally appropriate practice. Play that includes writing provides a developmentally appropriate vehicle to deliver writing experiences to children. The theoretical propositions driving this case study are (1) The importance development and literacy based on the guiding principles of developmentally appropriate practice, (2) The notion that young children experiment with and produce writing before they learn to read, which contributes to the child's individual understandings and development relating to writing and to the relationship between thought and words, and (3) The commonly shared constructivist approach to early childhood education which promotes facilitating a child's active engagement, through play, with people and objects in the world to encourage knowledge construction and the ever advancing development of mental structures that are built upon the child's prior knowledge and experiences.

Using an exploratory case study methodology and a constructivist lens, nineteen children were observed in a randomly selected pre-kindergarten class for twelve weeks. The findings indicate that early experiences with writing in the dramatic play environment engage children in writing exploration and conventional writing through writing play that resulted in name writing, alphabet exploration, invented spellings, and writing about family and personal experiences. The study evidences the value of developmentally appropriate play for writing and the importance of play as a constructivist approach to providing pre-kindergarten children writing opportunities that advance the construction of writing knowledge.