Technology and Play

Children need to engage their imaginations to construct or create through play. But meaningful play is not possible without adult guidance and carefully chosen materials, objects, or props. Adult involvement should be much more than playing with and observing children. Teacher and parent roles should provide real-world experiences to set up the motivation, scaffold the play with objects or new ideas, and carefully selected play props that will support meaningful and mature play (Johnson, Sevimli-Celik, & Al-Mansour, 2013).

Children may play with only their imaginations or may extend their imaginations through the uses of natural, found objects such as sticks or human-made objects such as toys, balls, cards, board games, and increasingly in recent years, interactive media devices, such as cell phones and tablet computers. The ...