“Game activity as a means of increasing the speech activity of children of primary preschool age”

Speech development in children's play activities

Speech development in children's play activities

Research by scientists has proven that only through speech does development occur: memory, attention, imagination and logical abilities. The fundamental basis for successful learning at school is properly developed speech.

Preschool age is a fertile time for speech development. To become highly educated, a person must master all the riches of his native language. And for us educators this is the main and initial task.

The main activity of preschool children is play. During the game, children study not only the world around them, but also themselves, their place in the world. Play is not only entertainment, but also a child’s creative work; this is where he begins his life. Therefore, the role of play in the development of speech in preschool children occupies a leading place.

In our work, we use games to develop children's speech. Thanks to their use, the learning process takes place in a playful form that is accessible and attractive to preschool children. Through play, we develop children’s speech: we replenish and activate their vocabulary, form correct sound pronunciation, develop coherent speech, and the ability to correctly express their thoughts. In addition, playing GCD and during restricted periods helps reduce mental and physical stress.

The main goal of our work is to develop all components of children's oral speech through play. After all, preschool age is the age of active speech development. Non-interference in this process may result in a delay in the child’s development.

Each game also solves educational problems. Children develop a culture of verbal communication in the broad sense of this concept, moral feelings and qualities, and ethical ideas are formed.

In our work we use various games: role-playing, didactic, theatrical, moving, finger games.

We assign a special role to didactic games, which are divided into: verbal, with toys and objects, and board-printed.

We select such game options to arouse children's interest in word games. In all educational activities and routine moments we include didactic speech games and entertaining exercises: phonetic, lexical, grammatical, games with words and movement. In order for children to show interest in a game again, we pay attention to how to finish the game. We give away forfeits, honor the winners, announce a new version of a familiar game, etc.

Experience shows that it is necessary to devote enough time to the sound perception of words, to form the child’s phonetic and speech hearing. To develop the phonetic-phonemic side of speech, we conduct the following games:

for example, like
“Let's play a fairy tale”, “Broken telephone”, “Traffic light”, “Repeat”
, where you need to find a picture and clearly pronounce the sound combination, correctly convey the sound of the word to your neighbor, choose a word that is not similar in sound composition to the other three and etc.

Main conclusions

By the end of preschool age, children should master the skills of coherent speech. The development of all aspects of coherent speech should be stimulated by various methods, using role-playing games, theatrical activities, speech sets of cards, didactic games for the development of logic, consistency and expressiveness, and mnemonics.

With regular use of these techniques, the child’s speech during the examination before entering first grade will be at a high level. Speech develops most quickly in play, the leading activity of preschool children.

Preschool age is a period of active acquisition by a child of spoken language, the formation and development of all aspects of speech.

The work touches upon the problem of children's speech development in play activities, since in preschool age this type of activity is the leading one.

The reason for the urgent need to develop children's speech is the need for a person to communicate with the people around him, and in order for speech to be intelligible, understandable and interesting to others, it is necessary to conduct a variety of games, develop methods of playing games, so that children are interested in gaming activities.

Preschool age is a unique and decisive period in the development of a child, when the foundations of personality emerge, will and voluntary behavior are formed, imagination, creativity, and general initiative actively develop. However, all these most important qualities are formed not in educational activities, but in the leading and main activity of a preschooler - in play.

The most significant change, which is noted not only by psychologists, but also by the majority of experienced preschool teachers, is that children in kindergartens began to play less and worse, especially role-playing games decreased (both in number and duration).

Preschoolers practically do not know traditional children's games and do not know how to play. Lack of time to play is usually cited as the main reason. Indeed, in most kindergartens the daily routine is overloaded with various activities and there is less than an hour left for free play.

However, even during this hour, according to the observations of teachers, children cannot play meaningfully and calmly - they fidget, fight, push - therefore, educators strive to fill the children’s free time with quiet activities or resort to disciplinary measures. At the same time, they state that preschoolers do not know how and do not want to play.

This is true. The game does not arise by itself, but is passed on from one generation of children to another - from older to younger. At present, this connection between children's generations has been interrupted (children's communities of different ages - in the family, in the yard, in the apartment - are found only as an exception). Children grow up among adults, but adults have no time to play, and they don’t know how to do it and don’t consider it important. If they deal with children, then they teach them. As a result, the game disappears from the lives of preschoolers, and with it childhood itself disappears.

The curtailment of play in preschool age has a very sad effect on the general mental and personal development of children. As you know, it is in play that a child’s thinking, emotions, communication, imagination, and consciousness develop most intensively.

The advantage of play over any other children's activity is that in it the child himself, voluntarily obeys certain rules, and it is the implementation of the rules that gives maximum pleasure. This makes the child’s behavior meaningful and conscious, transforms it from spontaneous to strong-willed. Therefore, play is practically the only area where a preschooler can show his initiative and creative activity.

And at the same time, it is in play that children learn to control and evaluate themselves, understand what they are doing, and (probably this is the main thing) want to act correctly. The attitude of modern preschoolers to play (and therefore the play activity itself) has changed significantly. Despite the preservation and popularity of some game plots (hide and seek, tag, daughters and mothers), children in most cases do not know the rules of the game and do not consider it obligatory to follow them. They cease to correlate their behavior and their desires with the image of an ideal adult or the image of correct behavior.

But it is precisely this independent regulation of his actions that turns the child into a conscious subject of his life, makes his behavior conscious and voluntary. Of course, this does not mean that modern children do not master the rules of behavior - everyday, educational, communication, traffic, etc. However, these rules come from the outside, from adults, and the child is forced to accept them and adapt to them.

The main advantage of the game rules is that they are voluntarily and responsibly accepted (or generated) by the children themselves, so in them the idea of ​​​​what and how to do is fused with desires and emotions. In a developed form of play, children themselves want to act correctly. The departure of such rules from the game may indicate that for modern children the game ceases to be a “school of voluntary behavior”, but no other activity for a 3-6 year old child can fulfill this function.

But voluntariness is not only about acting according to the rules, it is about awareness, independence, responsibility, self-control, and inner freedom. Deprived of play, children do not gain all this. As a result, their behavior remains situational, involuntary, and dependent on the adults around them.

Observations show that modern preschoolers do not know how to organize their activities themselves, to fill them with meaning: they wander around, push, sort out toys, etc. Most of them do not have a developed imagination, lack creative initiative and independent thinking. And since preschool age is the optimal period for the formation of these most important qualities, it is difficult to harbor the illusion that all these abilities will arise by themselves later, at a more mature age. Meanwhile, parents, as a rule, are little concerned about these problems.

The main indicator of the effectiveness of the kindergarten and the well-being of the child is the degree of readiness for school, which is expressed in the ability to count, read, write and follow adult instructions. Such “readiness” not only does not contribute, but also hinders normal schooling: having become fed up with forced educational activities in kindergarten, children often do not want to go to school, or lose interest in studying already in the lower grades.

The benefits of early learning are felt only in the first 2-3 months of school life - such “ready” children no longer need to be taught to read and count. But as soon as they need to show independence, curiosity, the ability to decide and think, these children give in and wait for instructions from an adult. Needless to say, such passivity, lack of interests and independence, internal emptiness will have very sad results not only at school.

Game is one of those types of children's activities that are used by adults to educate preschoolers, teach them various actions with objects, methods and means of communication.

Theoretical ideas about the essence of children's play, developed in Russian psychology, basically boil down to the following:

· play takes its place among other reproductive activities, being the leading one in preschool age. It is in the process of play as a leading activity that the main mental new formations of a given age arise; · the game is a special activity, social in origin, content and structure; · the development of play does not occur spontaneously, but depends on the conditions of the child’s upbringing, i.e., social phenomena.

The community in a child’s life is the group of children in which he lives and develops. His main activity is playing.

A child gains significant experience through play. From his play experience, the child draws ideas that he associates with the word. Play and work are the strongest incentives for the manifestation of children's initiative in the field of language; they should be primarily used in the interests of children's speech development. The child comes into frequent repeated contact with the objects presented in the game, as a result of which they are easily perceived and imprinted in memory. Each object has its own name, each action has its own verb.

The word is part of reality for the child. From this it follows how important it is, in the interests of stimulating the activity of children and the development of their language, to thoughtfully organize their play environment, provide them with an appropriate selection of objects and toys that will nourish this activity and, on the basis of the enriched stock of specific ideas that it enriches, develop their language.

We know what a big role adults play in children's language development. The teacher’s participation in children’s free play cannot be limited to organizing the environment and selecting play materials. She should show interest in the process of play itself, give children new words and expressions associated with new situations; talking to them about the essence of their games, influence the enrichment of their language. Guiding the observations of children when familiarizing them with the environment, the teacher must help ensure that the life observed by children stimulates them to reproduce in play, and therefore in language, their positive, best sides. Thus, pedagogical measures in organizing free play for children come down to the following:

1. Organize a place for play that is appropriate for the age and number of children playing on it. 2. Consider the selection of toys, materials, manuals and constantly monitor their updating in accordance with the needs of the developing game process and the general development of children. 3. Guiding the observations of children, promote the display in the game of the positive aspects of social and work life. 4. Encourage grouping of children in the game (by age, development, speech skills) to promote the growth and development of the language of the weaker and lagging behind. We highly recommend including older children in the game. 5. Show interest in children’s games through conversations based on their content, guide the game and, in the process of such guidance, exercise the children’s language.

A child playing talks continuously; he speaks even if he plays alone, manipulates objects that do not stimulate conversation.

But there are toys whose value as stimuli for children’s speech is exceptional. These are toys depicting animate objects: animals, people. The horse that a child plays with is a living creature for him. He speaks to her as the owner who serves him or works with his living horse speaks to him.

The educational role of the doll is especially significant. Anyone who has observed properly organized doll games understands this.

There is not a single game that provides as many reasons for the manifestation of children's speech as playing with dolls. A doll is a person, a member of a team of little people living their own lives and reflecting this life - a play on words. But this life requires pedagogical guidance.

Games with dolls, provided they are properly organized and pedagogically guided, offer ample opportunities for orienting children in various forms and settings of social and work life. By playing with dolls and serving them, children acquire a number of skills related to everyday everyday life, work life, which are closest and most understandable to them, skills to which we lead them in the first place, which they consolidate in play and each of which requires the cooperation of language . We pay insufficient attention to the free, but under pedagogical control, games of children that take shape. In the children's day, a certain time should be allocated for such games, corresponding to their significance. Teachers must master the methods of organizing such games, primarily in the interests of children’s language development. The so-called outdoor games require special attention. These games are determined by certain rules, which are difficult for small 3-4 year old children to follow.

Intelligent, thorough, repeated explanation of the rules of the game to children, joint discussion with them of the conditions for its implementation is already the path to the development of their language. It is good to encourage older children to clearly explain the rules of this or that game to their comrades who are still unfamiliar with it. Occasionally, you should invite the entire group of children to talk together about how we conduct this or that game. We attach great importance to such statements.

Of particular importance for the development of language are games that include a literary text, a poem that prescribes one or another game action (“Owl”, “Horses”, “Shaggy Dog”, etc.). First, when offering a new game, the teacher herself clearly and expressively reads the poem related to it. During the game, poems are read several times, and children’s favorite games are generally repeated many times. It is not surprising that children quickly remember the text of the verse; then they can read it themselves during the game. Poems of this kind, as well as the counting rhymes featured in the game, are subject to the same requirements as poetry in general.

We have already talked about the huge role an adult plays in using words to familiarize a child with the world of things. He is an intermediary between the object and the child, he contributes to the consistent selection of individual objects by the child’s consciousness from the surrounding complex environment; he introduces the names of objects. This happens in the process of life itself, in communication with the things presented in it.

To develop the speech of children in kindergarten, various games are played both in classes and in children’s free activities. Here are a few examples of games specially organized by the teacher.

Shopping at the store

Purpose: To train children in choosing the right subject by eliminating the signs named by the teacher; develop observation skills; learn to use complex sentences in speech.

Game material: A typesetting canvas with three or four strips, into which object pictures with images of three or four identical toys are inserted, differing from each other in some ways (size, color, details).

Subject pictures:

pyramids of different sizes with caps of different colors (3 pictures); bear cubs: one is black, 2 are brown, one has a bow on his neck, one is in striped pants, one is in overalls (3 pictures); cars: truck, van, dump truck (3 pictures); tumblers: one in a green dress, the second has small buttons and a bow on the dress, the third has a belt with a buckle on the dress (3 pictures).

Progress of the game exercise in class

The teacher hangs a typesetting canvas in front of the children, into which pictures of pyramids, bears, cars, tumblers are inserted and says: “Imagine that you went to the store with your little sister to buy her a toy, whatever she asks for.

Misha, your sister asked to buy a pyramid. She said this: “Buy me a pyramid, not with a blue cap and not small.” Which of the pyramids do you think your sister liked? Why do you think it's the big one with the red cap?

Katya, your little sister wanted to have a tumbler. She said: “I don’t need a tumbler in a green dress, I don’t need one with buttons, I need another one without a bow.” And your brother, Kostya, asked to buy a car: “Not a dump truck, not a van, and not with a blue body.” Your brother, Masha, liked the bear. He asked: “Buy me a bear, but not black, not with striped pants and without a bow.”

Next, you can offer the children another bear and one tumbler to guess. For example: “I need a bear that is not in a green shirt, not in pants with straps, and not the one that sits.” Or: “I liked the tumbler, not with black eyes, not in a lilac dress, and not in a dress with a belt.”

If the child guesses correctly and explains why he will buy that particular toy for his brother or sister, the teacher hands him the picture.