Article “Game is the leading activity of a preschool child”

Article “Game is the leading activity of a preschool child”

Play is the leading activity of a preschooler. It is through play that a child learns about the world and prepares for adult life. At the same time, the game is the basis for the child’s creative development, the development of the ability to correlate creative skills in real life. The game acts as a kind of bridge from the world of children to the world of adults, where everything is intertwined and interconnected: the world of adults influences the world of children (and vice versa); games often involve children “performing” certain social roles of adults. Adults often use games in order to understand the world even better (business games), increase the level of the “inner self” (sports games), develop the level of intelligence (role-playing games), etc. The game is based on the perception of the presented rules, thereby orienting child to comply with certain rules of adult life. Play, due to its characteristics, is the best way to achieve the development of a child’s creative abilities without using coercive methods. From all of the above, it is clear what role play should play in the modern educational process and how important it is to strive to intensify the play activity of preschoolers. Hence the constant importance and relevance of considering the theory of the use of games in the upbringing and development of a child, the development of his creative abilities.

Play occupies a significant part in a child's life. A.S. Makarenko, the most famous teacher in our country, said that “play for a child has the same meaning in life that activity, work, service have for an adult.” It has a multifaceted influence on his mental development. In the process of play activities, children acquire new skills, knowledge and abilities, moral and volitional qualities are formed, many processes occurring in the child, his life situations are revealed, and most importantly, only in the game do they master the rules of human communication. The game helps the child learn how to treat other people correctly in real life.

For a child, play is not always sweet fun; for him, play is work in which he overcomes himself. The game is life itself, it is a huge world.

Preschool age is a period of learning about the world of human relations, various types of activities and social functions of people. The child feels a desire to join adult life and actively participate in it, which is not yet available to him. During preschool childhood, the child strives no less strongly for independence. From this contradiction a role-playing game is born - an independent activity of preschool children that simulates the life of adults.

Preschool age is a period of intensive formation of the psyche based on the prerequisites established in early childhood. Along all lines of mental development, new formations of varying degrees of severity arise, characterized by new properties and structural features. They occur due to many factors: speech and communication with adults and peers, various forms of cognition and inclusion in various types of activities (play, productive, everyday). In the age period we are considering, those mental functions that developed in early childhood (sensory, perception, imaginative memory, attention, practical thinking, motor skills) are intensively developing and which at the same time are basic for the construction of new formations in the cognitive sphere and in the formation of voluntary behavior .

In preschool age, mental development occurs in two main ways. On the one hand, the development of natural forms of the psyche continues, emerging in early ontogenesis; on the other hand, social forms of the psyche appear and are intensively formed during the child’s direct interaction with objects, when knowledge of the surrounding world is mediated by communication with adults. Various complex types of activities (games, productive activities) have a stimulating effect on the development of both natural and social forms of the psyche, where there is the possibility of simultaneous inclusion and active functioning of many mental formations.

Preschool childhood is the age most favorable for memory development. Memory becomes the dominant function and goes a long way in the process of its formation. In younger preschoolers, memory is involuntary. The child does not set a goal to remember something and does not know how to remember. Events, actions, and images that are interesting to him are easily imprinted, and verbal material is also involuntarily remembered if it evokes an emotional response. The child quickly remembers poems, fairy tales, and dialogues from films when the child empathizes with their characters.

In middle preschool age (between 4 and 5 years), voluntary memory begins to form. Conscious, purposeful memorization and recall appear only sporadically. Usually they are included in other types of activities, since they are needed both in play, and when running errands for adults, and during classes - preparing children for school. The child can reproduce the most difficult material to remember while playing. For example, taking on the role of a salesman, he is able to remember and recall at the right time a long list of products and other goods. If you give him a similar list of words outside of a game situation, he will not be able to cope with this task.

The preschool period is characterized by gender identification. Children acquire ideas about appropriate styles of behavior, which is clearly manifested in games. By the end of preschool, boys and girls do not play all games together. They have specific games - only for boys and only for girls.

Game activity, according to D.B. Elkonina “not only absorbs children’s knowledge about the social reality around them, but raises them to a higher level, gives them a more conscious and generalized character. Through play, a world of social relationships, much more complex than those available to the child in his non-play activities, is brought into the child’s life and raises it to a much higher level.”

Children repeat in games what they pay full attention to, what they can observe and what they can understand. For this reason alone, play is a type of developmental, social activity, a form of mastering social experience, one of the complex abilities of a person.

The brilliant researcher of the game D.B. Elkonin believes that the game is social in nature and immediate saturation and is projected to reflect the world of adults. Calling the game “arithmetic of social relations,” Elkonin interprets it as an activity that arises at a certain stage, as one of the leading forms of development of mental functions and ways for a child to learn about the world of adults.

The game reproduces the stable and innovative in life practice and, therefore, is an activity in which the stable is reflected precisely by the rules and conventions of the game - they contain stable traditions and norms, and the repetition of the rules of the game creates a training basis for the development of the child. Innovativeness comes from the setting of the game, which encourages the child to believe or not believe in everything that happens in the plot of the game. In many games, the “function of the real” is present either in the form of cutting conditions, or in the form of objects - accessories, or in the very intrigue of the game. A.N. Leontyev proved that a child masters a wider, directly inaccessible circle of reality only in play. While playing, the child finds himself and becomes aware of himself as an individual. For children, play is the sphere of their social creativity, social and creative self-expression. The game is extremely informative. Play is a child’s way of finding himself in a group of peers, access to social experience, culture of the past, present and future, repetition of social practices that are understandable.

Types of games

As the child grows, his games also change: from simple exchange of toys, to role-playing and intricate “construction”.

All types of games have their own characteristics and purpose, but there are no clearly defined boundaries between them - in each game situation they can overlap each other.

The following types of games are distinguished:

Sensory games. The goal of this type of play is to gain sensory experience for its own sake. Thanks to this game, children learn about their physical and sensory capabilities, about the properties of the things that surround them.

Motor games. This type of game involves a constant change in the sensations of movement. Motor play is one of the first opportunities for babies to interact with others.

The game is a mess. This type of game brings considerable benefits to children. It gives children the opportunity to exercise and release energy, but also teaches them to restrain their feelings, control impulsive desires and helps them get rid of negative habits; they learn to see the difference between the real and the depicted.

Language games. Children are interested in speech itself; they play with sounds, shapes and semantic shades. Playing with words gives the child the opportunity to practice grammar. Children also use language to control their steps and structure their play.

Role-playing games. One of the main types of games is to play out various roles and situations - this is a plot-role-playing game. In role-playing games, children test their social knowledge and develop the ability to symbolically replace specific objects and events with symbols. Role-playing also contributes to a better understanding of both other people and oneself. It is in this type of game that the child is given the opportunity to put himself in the place of another person.

There are also other types of games:

1. The game is didactic. This is a specially created game with a specific didactic task, hidden from the child in a game situation behind the game actions. Here the game itself directs the child to master knowledge and skills. This type of games is one of the methodological types of training.

2. Dramatization game. It is built based on the plot scheme of a literary work chosen by the children. Here the roles correspond to the characters in the work being played out.

3. Game-entertainment. Here the plot is completely absent and the goal is to amuse and entertain the participants of this game.

4. The game is procedural. This type of game is typical for young children. In the process of this game, the meanings of objects in the surrounding world are mastered through conditional actions with a toy character. With the help of realistic toys, the child reproduces the actions of adults that are familiar to him. In procedural play, children develop visual-figurative thinking, imagination, speech, and arbitrariness.

5. Director's acting. Type of individual game. Here the child comes up with the plot himself, plays for himself and for the toy, which is assigned a certain role. This type of game promotes the development of speech, thinking and imagination.

6. Playing with rules. As a rule, such a game is group or pairs. A special feature of this type of game is the presence of rules that are mandatory for all players. Historically established rules are passed down from older children to younger ones, but children themselves can formulate new rules for this particular game.

7. Business game. It is aimed at mastering and understanding the so-called instrumental tasks related to the construction of real activities and the achievement of specific goals. Children develop skills in goal setting and action planning, self-regulation in the process of achieving goals, and the ability to relate their activities to the activities of other people.

8. Role-playing game. This type of game is typical for preschool children. Role-playing game is an activity in which the child takes on the roles of adults and, in a generalized form, in specially created game conditions, reproduces their activities and the relationships between them. These conditions are characterized by the use of a variety of game objects that replace the actual objects of adult activity. It is in role-playing play that the child realizes his desire to live a common life with adults, a life that captures him entirely.

At the end of early childhood, play with a plot emerges from object-manipulative activities. Initially, the child was absorbed in the object and actions with it. When he mastered actions woven into joint activities with an adult, he began to realize that he was acting on his own and acting like an adult. Actually, he acted like an adult before, imitating him, but did not notice it. As D.B. writes Elkonin, he looked at the object through an adult, “like through glass.” In preschool age, affect is transferred from an object to a person, due to which the adult and his actions become a model for the child not only objectively, but also subjectively.

In addition to the required level of development of objective actions, the emergence of role-playing games requires a radical change in the child’s relationships with adults. Play cannot develop without frequent, full-fledged communication with adults and without those varied impressions of the world around us, which the child also acquires thanks to adults. The child also needs various toys, including unformed objects that do not have a clear function, which he could easily use as substitutes for others. D.B. Elkonin emphasized: you cannot throw away bars, pieces of iron, and other unnecessary, from the mother’s point of view, garbage that children bring into the house. Then the child will have the opportunity to play more interestingly, developing his imagination.

Preschool children have an inherent desire to imitate all the complex forms of adult activity, his actions, and his relationships with other people. However, in reality the child is not yet able to fulfill his desire. This is what explains the flourishing of creative role-playing games during the preschool period, in which the child reproduces various situations from the lives of adults, takes on the role of an adult and, in an imaginary way, carries out his behavior and activities.

Creative role-playing becomes, according to L.S.'s definition. Vygotsky’s “leading activity of a preschooler,” in which many of his psychological characteristics are formed, among which the most important is the ability to be guided by ethical authorities. Role-playing game

- this is an activity in which children take on the roles of adults and, in a generalized form, in play conditions, reproduce the activities of adults and the relationships between them.
When playing a role, the child’s creativity takes on the character of transformation. Its success is directly related to the personal experience of the player, the degree of development of his feelings, imagination, and interests. Play with a plot first appears at the border between early and preschool childhood. This is a director's game
in which the objects used by the child are endowed with a playful meaning (a cube, carried along the table with a growl, turns into a machine in the child's eyes).
Director's games are characterized by the primitiveness of the plot and the monotony of the actions performed. imaginative role-playing game
appears , in which the child imagines himself to be anyone and anything and acts accordingly. But a prerequisite for the development of such a game is a vivid, intense experience: the child was struck by the picture he saw, and he himself, in his play actions, reproduces the image that evoked a strong emotional response in him. Examples of figurative role-playing games are described in the works of J. Piaget. His daughter, who observed the old village bell tower and heard the bell ringing, remains impressed by what she saw and heard for a long time. She approaches her father's desk and, standing motionless, makes a deafening noise. “You’re disturbing me, you see that I’m working.” - “Don’t talk to me, I’m the church.”

Directing and figurative role-playing become sources of plot-role-playing play

, which reaches its developed form by the middle of preschool age.
, games with rules
emerge from it In role-playing games, children reproduce their own human roles and relationships. Children play with each other or with a doll as an ideal partner, who is also given a role. In games with rules, the role fades into the background and the main thing is strict adherence to the rules of the game; Usually a competitive motive, personal or team gain appears here (in most outdoor, sports and printed games).

Each game has its own playing conditions

– children participating in it, toys, other items. Their selection and combination significantly changes play in early preschool age; play at this time mainly consists of monotonously repeating actions reminiscent of manipulating objects. For example, a three-year-old child “cooks dinner” and manipulates plates and cubes. If the game conditions include another person (a doll or a child) and thereby lead to the appearance of a corresponding image, the manipulations have a certain meaning. The child plays with preparing lunch, even if he forgets, then feed it to the doll sitting next to him. But if the child is left alone and the toys that suggest this plot are removed, he continues manipulations that have lost their original meaning. Rearranging objects, arranging them by size or shape, he explains that he plays “with cubes,” “so simple.” Lunch disappeared from the child’s imagination along with the change in playing conditions.

Plot

- that sphere of reality that is reflected in the game. At first, the child is limited to the family, so his games are connected mainly with family and everyday problems. As the child masters new areas of life, the child begins to use more complex plots - industrial, military, etc. The forms of games based on old stories (“mother-daughter”) are also becoming more diverse. Playing with the same plot becomes more stable and longer. If at 3-4 years old a child can devote only 10-15 minutes to it, and then he needs to switch to something else, then at 4-5 years old one game can already last 40-50 minutes. Older preschoolers are able to play the same thing for several hours in a row, and some games last for several days.

Those moments in the activities and relationships of adults that are reproduced by the child constitute the content

games. Younger preschoolers imitate objective activities - cutting bread, washing dishes. They are absorbed in the very process of performing actions and sometimes forget about the result - why they did it, the actions of different children do not agree with each other, duplication and sudden changes in roles during the game are not excluded. For middle preschoolers, relationships between people are important; they perform play actions not for the sake of the actions themselves, but for the sake of the relationships behind them. Therefore, a five-year-old child will never forget to place the “sliced” bread in front of the dolls and will never confuse the sequence of actions - first lunch, then washing the dishes, and not vice versa. Parallel roles are also excluded, for example, the same bear will not be examined by two doctors at the same time, two drivers will not drive the same train. Children included in the general system of relationships distribute roles among themselves before the game begins. For older preschoolers, it is important to obey the rules arising from the role, and the correctness of these rules is strictly controlled by them.

The plot and content of the game are embodied in roles. Development of game actions, roles and rules of the game

occurs throughout preschool childhood along the following lines: from games with an extensive system of actions and roles and rules hidden behind them - to games with a collapsed system of actions, with clearly defined roles, but hidden rules - and, finally, to games with open rules and hidden rules roles behind them. For older preschoolers, role-playing merges with games according to the rules.

Thus, the game changes and reaches a high level of development by the end of preschool age. There are two main phases or stages in the development of the game:

1. Children 3-5 years old. Reproducing the logic of real people's actions. The content of the game is objective actions;
2. Children 5-7 years old. Simulation of real relationships between people. The content of the game becomes social relationships, the social meaning of an adult’s activities.

Play is the leading activity in preschool age; it has a significant impact on the child’s development. to communicate fully through play.

together. Younger preschoolers do not yet know how to truly communicate with peers and, as D.B. Elkonina, younger preschoolers “play side by side, not together.”

Gradually, communication between children becomes more productive and intense. In middle and older preschool age, children, despite their inherent egocentrism, negotiate with each other, pre-distributing roles, as well as during the game itself. A meaningful discussion of issues related to roles and control over the implementation of the rules of the game becomes possible due to the inclusion of children in a common, emotionally rich activity for them. If for some serious reason the joint game breaks down, the communication process also breaks down. In an experiment by Kurt Lewin, a group of preschool children were brought into a room with “incomplete” toys (the telephone did not have enough handset, there was no swimming pool for the boat, etc.) despite these shortcomings, the children played with pleasure, communicating with each other. The second day was a day of frustration. When the children entered the same room, the door to the next room was open, where there were full sets of toys. The open door was covered with mesh. Having an attractive and unattainable goal before their eyes, the children scattered around the room, many angrily throwing away old, no longer needed toys. In a state of frustration, both play activities and children’s communication with each other collapsed.

The game contributes to the development of not only communication with peers, but also the child’s voluntary behavior

. The mechanism for controlling one’s behavior—obedience to the rules—develops precisely in the game, and then manifests itself in other types of activities. Arbitrariness presupposes the presence of a pattern of behavior that the child follows and control. In the game, the model is not moral standards or other requirements of adults, but the image of another person whose behavior the child copies. Self-control only appears towards the end of preschool age, so initially the child needs external control - from playmates. External control gradually falls out of the process of behavior management, and the image begins to regulate the child’s behavior directly. By the age of 7, the child begins to increasingly focus on the norms and rules governing his behavior; the patterns become more generalized (as opposed to the image of a specific character in the game). With the most favorable development options for children, by the time they enter school, they are able to manage their behavior as a whole, and not just individual actions.

The game develops the child’s motivational-need sphere

. New motives for activity and goals associated with them arise. But not only the range of motives is expanding. The emerging arbitrariness of behavior facilitates the transition from motives that have the form of affectively colored immediate desires to motives-intentions that stand on the verge of consciousness.

Developed role-playing provides a means for conveying feelings and resolving conflicts. “Toys equip the child with appropriate tools because they are the environment in which the child can express himself. In free play he can express what he wants to do. When he plays freely, he releases feelings and attitudes that have persistently sought to break free." Feelings and attitudes that a child may be afraid to express openly can be safely projected onto a toy chosen at their own discretion. “Instead of expressing thoughts and feelings in words, a child may bury or shoot a dragon in the sand, or spank a baby brother doll.” Most children face problems in life that seem insoluble. But by playing them the way he wants, the child can gradually learn to cope with them. He often does this, using symbols that he himself cannot always understand - this is how he reacts to processes occurring in the internal plane, the roots of which may go deep into the unconscious. The result may be a game that seems meaningless to us at the moment because we don't know what purpose it serves. “When there is no immediate danger, it is best to approve the child's play and not interfere, since he is completely absorbed in it. Attempts to help him in his efforts, although made with good intentions, may prevent him from seeking, and even finding, solutions that will be most convenient for him ... "

In a developed role-playing game with its plots and complex roles, creating a fairly wide scope for improvisation, children develop a creative imagination.

The main significance of role-playing games associated with the activity of imagination is that the child develops the need to transform the surrounding reality and the ability to create something new. It combines real and fictional phenomena in the game’s plot, endowing familiar objects with new properties and functions. Having taken on a role, a child does not simply try on the profession and characteristics of someone else’s personality: he enters into it, getting used to it, penetrating into her feelings and moods, thereby enriching and deepening his own personality.

From the disclosure of the concept of play by teachers and psychologists of various scientific schools, a number of general provisions can be identified:

1. The game is an independent type of developmental activity for preschool children.
2. Children's play is the freest form of their activity, in which they realize and study the world around them, opening up wide scope for personal creativity, the activity of self-knowledge, and self-expression.
3. Play is the first stage of a preschooler’s child’s activity, the initial school of his behavior, the normative and equal activity of primary schoolchildren, adolescents, and youth, who change their goals as students grow older.
4. Play is a practice of development. Children play because they develop, and they develop because they play.
5. Game is the freedom of self-discovery, self-development based on the subconscious, mind and creativity.

Play is the main sphere of communication for children; it solves problems of interpersonal relationships and gains experience in human relationships.

The modern humanistic school is aimed at individual and interpersonal approaches to each child. The game is an invaluable assistant in this. In the game, the child is the author and performer, and almost always a creator, experiencing feelings of admiration and pleasure that free him from disharmony. It is important to have individual, pair (duet), group, team and mass games, original and complex games.

In play, preschoolers learn patience and cooperation - those qualities that make a child and an adult partners, people capable of mutually opening each other's thoughts and feelings in the interests of a common cause, without fear of being misunderstood or devalued. Relationships with other adults are built according to impersonal rules, which involve maintaining a psychological distance, as if delineating the boundaries of the territory, the place occupied by each person. These are universal rules for organizing any interaction of leadership and subordination, rules for expressing one’s own point of view. In relation to a strange adult, these rules can be formulated as follows:

• determination of distance;
• distance designation;
• maintaining distance.

The definition of distance for a child is associated with the perception of the adult’s position (who is he for me?); the designation of the distance is the rules of influence (who can and cannot do what); maintaining distance – keeping the boundaries of one’s psychological space from the influence of another person. The child learns all this in group play with peers.

It is the mastery of this type of game, such as playing with peers, that is an important development task in the preschool period. Playing with peers, where errors in defining and maintaining distance are easily corrected by both parties, thereby accumulating useful mutual experience of experiencing resistance to the boundaries of someone else’s psychological space and one’s own. Any showdown between peers, even a fight, is a more honest and fair way to solve the problem of place in joint activities than compliance with those supported by external control (the presence of an adult). Children 5-7 years old vitally need such situations when an adult is next to them, but not together. Carrying out such games by children and with children requires an adult to be aware of his own readiness and ability to be tolerant and show a desire for cooperation.

Playing with peers for a preschooler is also a kind of group psychotherapy, where he can at least temporarily free himself from negative emotions. Children of this age willingly play “at war,” but if they are asked to play “at peace,” they simply do not know how. The point is partly that the game of war performs the function of compensating for the tension that one way or another exists in a child’s relationships with adults due to their demonstrated physical and psychological superiority over children.

Preschool childhood is a period of learning about the world of human relationships. The child models them in a role-playing game, which becomes his leading activity. While playing, a preschooler learns to communicate with peers.

Preschool childhood is a period in which there is an active development of higher mental functions and the entire personality as a whole. Speech develops rapidly, creative imagination and a special logic of thinking appear, subordinate to the dynamics of figurative representations. This is the time of the initial formation of personality. The emergence of emotional anticipation of the consequences of one’s behavior, self-esteem, the complication and awareness of experiences, the enrichment of new feelings and motives in the emotional-need sphere, and finally, the emergence of the first essential connections with the world and the foundations of the future structure of the life world - these are the main features of the personal development of a preschooler.

A game for preschool children is a source of global experiences of the dynamism of one’s own self, a test of the power of self-influence. The child masters his own psychological space and the possibility of living in it, which gives impetus to the development of the entire personality as a whole.

What children's games teach

It's not just about entertainment. Let us remember that at every age a person has a leading type of activity. This is an activity during which growth, learning, personality formation, and the development of all skills, knowledge and abilities occur. And for a child, such an activity is precisely play.

What does the game give to children of different ages?

The youngest children tend to manipulate objects. They study the material world. They can look at objects, perform incomprehensible actions with them, taste them, smell them. They are interested in how the stone falls, so they will throw it many times and watch it fall. They are fascinated by the process of pouring sand. Grain of sand to grain of sand. He falls, hits the table and bounces again. Well, why not magic!

The most important thing is that all these actions are performed by the child himself. He can influence objects and move them. It is he who creates the sound of falling stones and running water. Oh, how great he feels at this time, how he wants to share his achievements with you! And how many interesting things there are around!

In addition to the physical meaning of throwing objects, which consists in studying its properties, the sound when falling, the ability to influence the environment, there is also a psychological meaning.

Oh, how great he feels at this time, how he wants to share his achievements with you! And how many interesting things there are around!

The child scatters pencils - the mother collects them and returns them. Pencils are coming back. They go away for a while, walk, but then return home. The mother accepts the child and the abandoned pencils and returns them. If something goes away, it will come back. The mother who left the room will return, the baby who went for a walk will return. After departure comes return, there is a cycle. This is how one becomes aware of the basic patterns, what children’s games teach, among other things.

At the level of objective play, the child is still of little interest in peers and communication. All their attention is focused on themselves, surrounding objects, their physical properties and studying their ability to influence these objects.

Gradually, the child begins not only to throw objects and try them out, but also to study their generally accepted properties and pay attention to their functions. You can eat with a spoon, the car rolls, and you can build a tower out of cubes. And finally, around the age of three, plots appear in a child’s games.

The kid comes up with fantastic stories and builds new worlds. He becomes a warrior or a cook, a mother or father, a teacher or a doctor. The child tries out various social roles, tries them on himself, he rehearses for adult life.

You can live thousands of lives in a day, experience a wide variety of images, and experience the most unpredictable situations.

The child tries out various social roles, tries them on himself, he rehearses for adult life.

Games contribute to the development of a child’s imagination, fantasy, and creative potential. The baby learns to experience a variety of feelings. Today he is an angry wolf, and tomorrow he is a cowardly hare or a brave lion. He learns, helps himself to understand what it’s like to be angry, to be afraid, to fight.

In the game, the child learns to communicate, looks for his place in society, in life. It’s like he’s rehearsing life itself! And for this he was given his entire childhood.

Stages of the role-playing game:

• The main content of the game for younger preschoolers ( 3–4 years old ) is to perform certain actions with toys. They repeat the same actions over and over again: “slicing bread,” “giving an injection,” “writing an email on the keyboard,” etc. At the same time, the result of the action is not used by children - no one eats sliced ​​bread, no one reads the letter. Typically, children do not call themselves by the names of the persons whose roles they perform. The role is determined by the object itself: if a child has a saucepan in his hands (or an object that replaces it in the child’s imagination) - he is the “mother” preparing dinner; if there is a spoon, he is “mother’s child” who eats lunch. Moreover, the logic of the actions performed may fade into the background (one car can be driven by two “drivers”).
• In the middle of preschool childhood ( 4–5 years old ), the main content is relationships between people and social hierarchy, the roles of which children take on. Roles are clearly defined and highlighted. Children often divide roles among themselves before the game begins. This is the role relationship between seller and buyer, driver and passenger, doctor and patient - who should do what, and in what form he should do it. For example, a doctor must listen to the patient and give an injection. The actions performed by the child are not repeated and are replaced one after another. Actions are no longer performed for the sake of the actions themselves (the game of “slicing bread”), but to implement certain relationships with another player, in accordance with the role assumed.
• The content of the game for older preschoolers ( 6–7 years old ) is the fulfillment of the rules arising from the role taken on. Children begin to be extremely picky about following rules. When performing a particular role, they carefully monitor how consistent their actions, and the actions of their partners, are with generally accepted rules of behavior. It happens or it doesn’t happen - “The doctor must first listen and only then give an injection!”

The game reflects the character and living conditions of the child in the family and society. The same game (for example, family) can have completely different content: one “mother” will scold her “children”, another will put on makeup in front of the mirror and rush to visit, a third will read books to children, teach them, etc. All these options reflect what surrounds the child in life. The child has a desire to do the same things that adults do, but... he does not have the physical ability to do this, then the plot-role-playing game becomes a solution to this problem. A child can repeat the actions of an adult, in a form accessible to him, and partially join the adult world.