Dinosaurs! Self-Regulation Part 3

This post is the third in a series around self-regulation. I started off by talking about the importance of long, uninterrupted play time in kindergarten that gets our minds and our bodies ready to sit and listen (for a developmentally appropriate amount of time, btw). Then I wrote on how the environment we create as adults (calm, serene, low-stress) adds to the way our students can self-regulate. Now I want to speak on a specific type of play- dramatic play. In this post I will be focusing on dinosaurs, because that's where we are in my class. 

My observation is around dinosaurs and the type of play that is involved when we pretend we are large, carnivorous creatures. I hesitate to say "violent" because I don't think that's the attitude I want to cultivate in reading this. Perhaps aggressive is a better word; aggressive in a controlled way. I have a particular student (although he is not alone) whose first instinct when upset is to lash out and hit. All through September-December we worked on this, looking for ways we could react that didn't involve hurting others, and it was getting better. But, then we had two weeks off, and some behaviours returned. 

Before our winter break I noticed that some of us were interested in dinosaurs, so over the holidays I went out and bought some toy dinosaurs and set them out, along with some books I have. I didn't want to dictate what we would do with them, I didn't want a "unit" or a "study", I just wanted to give them another dimension of dramatic play. What I noticed was this: the more we interacted with each other as dinosaurs, both carnivores and herbivores, the less our aggression came through in other aspects of the day. Giving my students a place to put that type of aggression helps them self-regulate their own feelings of powerlessness (because I believe that's why we start off by hitting in the first place- we feel powerless in a situation and the only thing we can do is lash out). It allows them to feel that power, it allows them to "fight it out" in a safe environment. The more they have been able to use these dinosaurs, the less aggressive their play has become as a whole, and the more complex their play has become- from sorting and stacking, to building structures for the dinosaurs to climb on. And the aggressive behaviour outside of this play also continues to decline. 

Does this demonstrate the power of play in our lives? It most certainly does! Play isn't just a break, it isn't something an adult can manipulate in order to get an outcome they want. Play is what a human mammal needs to make sense of the world around them. Play is what we need to develop certain neural pathways in our brains. It is through play that we put into reality what our brain knows. As the teacher I have certain responsibilities to my students and their parents, but I can't make them learn. I believe it is my job to set up the environment in such a way that through their play they are able to master the skills they will need in life. Every day my students amaze me with what they can do. It is never easy to quantify this, to use it for comments on a report card- but it is always exactly what they need in order to be where they are and move forward. 

This is the stuff that makes teaching kindergarten so important. This is the stuff that matters.