During my practical training I have seen what after-school offers children. Large groups of children and little staff, often results in that the children had to play freely until they go home. Few activities are offered to the children and the staff is busy looking after the children and ensures that they are not fighting.The purpose of this study is to find out how children feel about their leisure activities and if they think they are being offered a meaningful leisure. The main research questions were:How do children experience their leisure-time?Do after-school offers children a meaningful leisure and is it the children's interests and needs that govern the activities and the environment?How do the number of children in the leisure group affect the leisure time?The methods to collect data in the study are observations and interviews.

The aim of this study is to observe Swedish preschool children in their natural habitat and without any intervention. Four different observations are made and thereafter analyzed. Throughout the whole study the subject of interest is the children's communication in their play. Children can communicate with each other in various ways, for instance with speech and without speech, i.e. with their physical language, aesthetic and multi language.

The aim of this study is to examine educationalists experiences of play as an educational toolin the work to promote the social development in children with autism.The relevant issue, for this study, is: In what way does an educationalist work with play withchildren with autism? What are the results of using play in the educational work? What arethe possibilities and what are the obstacles in using play in educational work?This study has been carried out as a study of literature in the field and qualitative interviewswith five educationalists that are working in a mid Swedish county.The result of the study shows that educationalists have a positive view of using play in theirwork and are using play in varying ways in their everyday work. Using play as a method intheir work always happens according to the ability and condition of the child. They (theeducationalists) think that play has great opportunity and advance as a method and gives thechildren joy, increase their sense of ability, the base for the social participation in play, andthe development of social skills.There is a certain hesitation among educationalists when it comes to using play as a methodfor children with autism , but the most of the educationalists consider play as promoting thesocial development although the development always will happen at the pace(rate)of thechild..

Free play is a term that often common in educational activities. The definition of the term is difficult, but it is about the children themselves decides the scope, content and process in their play. On an after-school, this may mean that it is the children are given the opportunity to freely choose their own activity in the leisure constraints. Free play can be an alternative to other, more controlled activities where adults control framework. The purpose of this study is to investigate the variations in how some children perceive and experience the phenomenon of free play in the after-school and how the children perceive the teacher´s role in the free game.

This study shows how boys and girls play has changed during the 20th century. The purpose is to make people aware of the change that has happened. In the background I show what the literature says about gender and play, before and now.To get a result I?ve interviewed two older persons and four children. These interviews has been compared to see similarities and differences.I discovered that today?s play revolves mostly around toys.

The purpose of the study is to contribute to the field of social access in children's free play in the pre-school class, by looking at how children are included and excluded and how power structures arises in the free time. In order to capture the events that occur among the children, observations were chosen as research method.The results show that the children wanted to play with each other, and that the most common way to facilitate play was to ask "Can I join?". There were also other strategies being practiced regularly. It was also common to exclude other children from playing, and this was especially when the children wanted to protect their ongoing game, or that someone was not allowed to join because he or she ruined it for the others.

Invoxicated is an interactive play sculpture where children can explore the wonderful and playful opportunities of sound. Talk into one end of the sculpture, and the sound will travel through the sculpture and come out in the other end. On its way, the sound gets distorted by a number of sound effects. By bending the sculpture?s body, and pressing the sculpture?s buttons, the sound effects gets altered in real time.

The aim in this project was to spread play in the city and acrossgenerations. My way of approaching this challenge was to explore theborderland between playground equipment and street furniture. Thisopened up many possibilities to afford play in places where playgroundequipment often is excluded.The goal was to create one, or more, furniture with play value. The targetgroup was all vivasious people spending time in the public outdoorspace. Through user studies, a lot of serious playing and a lot of testing,the project resulted in a bench called Rollin´.

During my practical training I have seen what after-school offers children. Large groups of children and little staff, often results in that the children had to play freely until they go home. Few activities are offered to the children and the staff is busy looking after the children and ensures that they are not fighting.The purpose of this study is to find out how children feel about their leisure activities and if they think they are being offered a meaningful leisure. The main research questions were:How do children experience their leisure-time?Do after-school offers children a meaningful leisure and is it the children's interests and needs that govern the activities and the environment?How do the number of children in the leisure group affect the leisure time?The methods to collect data in the study are observations and interviews.

In my degree project I have chosen to write about the social interactions in children?s play. Iwanted to study their free play and the time when their teachers tell them what to play to seewhat their social interactions look like. The purpose with my research is to study whathappens in the social interactions in their different playing situations.I performed three observations of the free play and three observations of the guided play at apreschool to study what social interactions that takes place in the different playing situations.What happens and what patterns can I find in their play.In my research I had some questions that this project rests upon:What happens in the social interactions in the different playing situations?How do the children?s different social interactions look?The children that I have observed showed me that when they are interacting they especiallyuse their cognitive abilities, because an interaction needs a certain mental development.

This study started with my interest in drama pedagogy practices. The aim is to investigate the teacher's conceptions of children's play and learning activities in drama pedagogy practices. Basically drama pedagogy means children and teachers creating play worlds together, usually based on various literary works, where they portray and play. Previous research shows that drama pedagogy as a method can enrich and develop children's play. Also, drama can be important for children's linguistic, social and aesthetic development.In this study, overall three interviews and two observations at different occasions was carried out.

The purpose to this survey is to map out the affordances available in the outdoor environment of one preschool. This has been executed through three episodes of observing children at that preschool during their outdoor play. All visible affordances has been written down and later on summarized in different themes where the most interesting meeting places in the outdoor environment at the pre-school have been described. The result of the study shows what the children at this preschool do in their outdoor environment. It also shows the importance of the arrangement of material and environment in order to be able to support childrens play.

During my practical training I have seen what after-school offers children. Large groups of children and little staff, often results in that the children had to play freely until they go home. Few activities are offered to the children and the staff is busy looking after the children and ensures that they are not fighting.The purpose of this study is to find out how children feel about their leisure activities and if they think they are being offered a meaningful leisure. The main research questions were:How do children experience their leisure-time?Do after-school offers children a meaningful leisure and is it the children's interests and needs that govern the activities and the environment?How do the number of children in the leisure group affect the leisure time?The methods to collect data in the study are observations and interviews.

This study aims was to examine if working recreation instructors and the technical literature have the same or different outlook on when the grown ups should attend in children?s play, and what it is that separate them. The work method has been qualitative interviews. The number of interviewed recreation instructors is four. The study shows that the working recreation instructors that I have interviewed consider that it´s important to protect children´s freedom in there play without the grown up´s interference.

The outdoor environment is the first thing you notices when you come to a pre-school and it also plays an important part in the development of children, their play and meeting their large motor needs. It is important that the outdoor playground is stimulating and inviting.My goal is to examine if the outdoor environment plays any role in the development of children and their interest in nature. What kind of thoughts do teachers and parents have about outdoor play, and is there a developmental goal for the children as well as what role do the teachers play in reaching these goals. In my work I want to show how an outdoor environment should be formed to help educationally as well as be safe and not least of all fun to be in..