Media as a portal to play
About this resource
This tip sheet explores how parents, carers, and educators can support children to transition from viewing media on screens to engaging in play opportunities based on their viewing interests.
Age range for this resource
For educators, parents, and carers of children aged 12 months to 5 years.
Goal of this resource
To engage young children in play and learning activities based on their media and popular culture interests.
To promote collaborative learning between young children, and between young children and their adults, based on their media and popular culture interests.
To encourage positive transitions for young children between screen-based activities and non-screen activities using their media and popular culture interests.
How might educators use this resource?
Share this tip sheet with colleagues. Use it as a conversation starter to brainstorm ideas for supporting children to transition away from viewing media on screens towards active imaginative play. For example, try co-viewing an episode of a popular television program (e.g., Bluey) with children. Then invite and support children to create an imaginative game inspired by their viewing.
How might families use this resource?
Use some of the ideas in this tip sheet to support your child to transition away from viewing media on screens. You can extend your child’s viewing interests into all sorts of imaginative play opportunities. For example, watch an episode of Bluey with your child and then create your own Bluey inspired game together.
How might organisations use this resource?
Provide a link to this tip sheet in your newsletter or communication to families. Highlight how Belonging, Being, and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia V2.0 (Australian Government Department of Education, 2022) encourages adults to engage children’s interests in popular culture and media. Prepare a short statement for sharing such as: ‘Use your child’s media and popular culture interests to facilitate effective transitions away from using screens towards active imaginative play.’
What learning might we see?
Educators, parents, and carers transitioning young children from screen-based activities to investigative and imaginative play activities based on their viewing interests.
Young children engaging in collaborative play activities with their peers and adults.
Practices
Integrating
Children and adults integrate digital technologies with non-digital media and/or experiences.
Area
Play and Pedagogy
Young children have opportunities for play and pedagogy in digital contexts. Play and pedagogy involve children using a range of digital devices for exploration, meaning-making, collaboration, and problem solving. Educators engage in active decision making about the use and non-use of digital technologies for learning.
Connection to relevant standards
Belonging, Being, and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia V2.0 (Australian Government Department of Education, 2022)
Outcome 1: Children have a strong sense of identity
Children feel safe, secure, and supported (e.g., Children explore aspects of identity through role play; Educators give children their full attention, showing interest, understanding, and attunement).
Children develop their emerging autonomy, inter-dependence, resilience, and agency (e.g., Educators encourage children to make choices and decisions).
Children develop knowledgeable, confident self-identities and a positive sense of self-worth (e.g., Educators build on the funds of knowledge, languages, and understandings that children bring; Educators provide rich and diverse resources that reflect children’s social and cultural worlds).
Children learn to interact in relation to others with care, empathy, and respect (e.g., Children engage in and contribute to shared play experiences).
Outcome 2: Children are connected with and contribute to their world
Children develop a sense of connectedness to groups and communities and an understanding of their reciprocal rights and responsibilities as active and informed citizens (e.g., Children broaden their understanding of the world in which they live).
Outcome 3: Children have a strong sense of wellbeing
Children become strong in their social, emotional, and mental wellbeing (e.g., Educators build upon and extend children’s ideas; Educators are playful and promote a sense of enjoyment).
Outcome 4: Children are confident and involved learners
Children develop a growth mindset and learning dispositions such as curiosity, cooperation, confidence, creativity, commitment, enthusiasm, persistence, imagination, and reflexivity (e.g., Children follow and extend their own interests with enthusiasm, energy, and concentration; Educators build on the funds of knowledge, languages, and understandings that children bring to their early childhood setting).
Children develop a range of learning and thinking skills and processes such as problem solving, inquiry, experimentation, hypothesising, researching, and investigating (e.g., Children use a range of media to express their ideas through the arts, e.g., clay, drawing, paint, digital technologies).
Children transfer and adapt what they have learned from one context to another (e.g., Children practice and imagine relationships and experiences in their daily lives through pretend or symbolic play; Educators scaffold children’s understandings of how skills and ideas can be transferred to other activities through conversation and questions).
Children resource their own learning through connecting with people, place, technologies, and natural and processed materials (e.g., Children experience the benefits and pleasures of shared learning explorations, investigations, and imaginary play scenarios).
Outcome 5: Children are effective communicators
Children engage with a range of texts and gain meaning from these texts (e.g., Children view and listen to printed, visual, and multimedia texts and respond with relevant gestures, actions, comments, and/or questions).
Children express ideas and make meaning using a range of media (e.g., Children experiment with ways of expressing ideas and meaning using a range of media).
Children use digital technologies and media to access information, investigate ideas, and represent their thinking (e.g., Educators acknowledge technologies are a feature of children’s lives and, as such, will be a feature of their imaginative and investigative play; Educators integrate technologies across the curriculum and into children’s multimodal play experiences and projects).
National Quality Standard (Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority, 2019)
Quality Area 1: Educational program and practice (e.g., Each child’s current knowledge, strengths, ideas, culture, abilities, and interests are the foundation of the program; Educators are deliberate, purposeful, and thoughtful in their decisions and actions; Educators respond to children’s ideas and play and extend children’s learning through open-ended questions, interactions, and feedback; Each child’s agency is promoted, enabling them to make choices and decisions that influence events and their world).
Quality Area 3: Physical Environment (e.g., Resources, materials, and equipment allow for multiple uses, are sufficient in number, and enable every child to engage in play-based learning).
Quality Area 5: Relationships with children (e.g., Responsive and meaningful interactions build trusting relationships which engage and support each child to feel secure, confident, and included; The dignity and rights of every child are maintained; Children are supported to collaborate, learn from, and help each other).
National Principles for Child Safe Organisations (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2018)
Principle 8: Physical and online environments promote safety and wellbeing while minimising the opportunity for children and young people to be harmed.
Explore More
If these ideas are new to you, explore these related resources:
This website provides a broad range of educational and entertaining television programs for parents, carers, and educators to co-view with young children.
Staying active in the digital playground
This article invites parents, carers, and educators to promote children’s participation in physical activities using the PLAYback strategy. PLAYback sees trusted adults video recording children participating in physical activity then co-viewing the footage with children to reinforce, support, and build skill development.
For more ideas, explore these related resources:
When the dinosaurs came to kindy
This video presentation explores how early childhood educators can connect with children’s interests using digital technologies.
Unpacking imagination in action with Bluey
This video presentation explores how educators, parents, and carers can use technologies (e.g., popular television programs) to support children’s participation in imaginative play.
If you would like to read some research, explore these related resources:
Edwards, S., Mantilla, A., Grieshaber, S., Nuttall, J., & Wood, E. (2020). Converged play characteristics for early childhood education: Multimodal, global-local, and traditional-digital. Oxford Review of Education, 46(5), 637–660. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13127
Grieshaber, S., Nuttall, J., & Edwards, S. (2021). Multimodal play: A threshold concept for early childhood curriculum? British Journal of Educational Technology, 52(6), 2118–2129. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13127