How free is children’s free play at kindergarten?

About children’s friendships and play at Danish child-care centres

Abstract

Danish childcare centres reflect Fröbel’s legacy as they prioritise children’s free play. The children may choose themselves what they wish to play and with whom they wish to play. The pedagogues’ role is mainly seen as that of helping children in conflicts and in need of comfort. However, is children’s play at childcare facilities actually that free? Or is freedom something adults imagine?
This article illuminates and discusses children’s free play and the opportunities for participating in play at childcare centres, based on the project “Children’s play and social relations” – a project involving ten childcare centres. The purpose was to understand how children’s play and social relations are constituted at childcare centres and to reveal how pedagogues can intervene to support and develop children’s play and social relations with a particular focus on including all the children.
The project results showed that in terms of children’s free play and development of social relations between the children, the children were left largely to themselves, although the participating childcare centres differed widely in this respect. It was also evident that the children’s play was not particularly free, but subject to a number of conditions, ideas and routines at the centres, which, in practice, limited the play and affected the children’s opportunities for forming peer relationships and friendships – for some children more than others. Finally, some of the centres had practices that helped to develop the children’s play and to include children in the social groups. The project also revealed that the pedagogues could experience difficulties when changing routines that limited the children’s play and friendships at the facilities.
In light of this, the article identifies and discusses the extent to which free play is possible in the context of child-care facilities, as well as how pedagogues can work on providing excellent playing conditions for children.