Exploratory Play Analysis

Janet Moyles created the 'play spiral' Framework which encourages children to explore and learn new skills through structured and unstructured play. The spiral starts with practitioners letting the children explore the environment and resources through 'free play' and unstructured play, this gives them the opportunity to play and create their own rules and develop their own experiences. This is beneficial to practitioners as it allows them to observe the children and plan effectively in order to enhance play. The next part of the spiral is 'Mastery Play', this enables the children to rehearse and develop their play. They begin to enhance their play by using their imagination and beginning to understand how they think they should be using the
environment or resources. The children may begin to develop rules and instructions for the activity and may begin to imitate their own and other children's actions as they master their own play. This part of the spiral allows the practitioner to continue to observe and plan for a stimulating, child-led environment.
The next part of the spiral is 'Directed Play', this is when adult intervention is used in order for the children to enhance and enrich their experiences and explore the area using the resources to get the best play and learning out of them. This enables the practitioner to plan based on their previous observations to ensure that each individual child is engaged in the play and their confidence, self-esteem knowledge and understanding is supported by the practitioner and the planning processes. The final stage in the play spiral is 'Exploratory play enriched and enhanced', this is the end of the spiral however it is the beginning of a new spiral as the children will then explore a different part of the environment or activity. At this stage of the spiral, the children will re-visit the activity, using the enrichment and enhanced play from the directed play and will be continuously developing and exploring new skills. At this stage, this allows the practitioner to observe how the children are using the area after the adult intervention, and can then reflect on their own practice and develop further plans and
opportunities.
From my own experiences, I placed Spaghetti in the Tuff Spot and put several scissors next to it. I allowed the children to explore the area without any adult intervention in order for them to explore and use their imagination in order to develop their skills, play and learning. The children ignored the scissors and began to play with the Spaghetti and make shapes with it. Once the children had explored the area for the morning session, I sat with them for the afternoon session and showed them how to cut the Spaghetti into different sized strings. I then watched the children cutting the Spaghetti in order to make different shapes and to enhance their cutting and fine motor skills. Once they had done this, I left the resources there for the children to use when 'Free Playing; to enhance their learning and skills further. By doing this, this engaged the children in their own learning and increased their self esteem and exploratory skills.
Although Moyles' Learning Sprial Framework displays structured and unstructured play and encourages child-led activities and less adult intervention. The theory does not take into consideration the aspect and importance of some adult-led activities. This is because a child may require extra support and guidance during a certain task or activity however, there is
There are many strengths to Janet Moyles Play Spiral Framework, firstly, by displaying structured and unstructured play within the setting, this is beneficial to all children and practitioners. Some may agree with this because, structured play