Resources

In-Class Activities

Children’s Television: Play

Author: Sara Lindey, Ph.D.

Related Videos:
Jerome Singer:  Pretend Play (PDF Transcript)
Mister Rogers: Recycling
Mister Rogers: Imagination
Mister Rogers: The Trolley as a Transition
Joan Ganz Cooney: Reality and Fantasy (PDF Transcript)

Show this video clip, “Jerome Singer: Pretend Play,” from the Fred Rogers Oral History Project interview of Jerome Singer, faculty at Yale University in the Yale Child Study Center, who conducted foundational research studying the role of imagination in children’s television programming, including Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.  In this video clip he discusses his own childhood experiences with imaginative play while relating the importance of imagination to children’s social and emotional development.

Show the clips “Mister Rogers: Recycling” and “Mister Rogers: Imagination” to demonstrate imaginative play.

To discuss how play can help a child make sense of his or her own experiences, show the clip “Mister Rogers: the Trolley as a Transition” where Mister Rogers uses the trolley to transition into the World of Make Believe and discuss what themes are being explored and how children might begin to better understand them.

To add context, show the following clip, “Joan Ganz Cooney: Reality and Fantasy,” from the Fred Rogers Oral History Project interviews.  Here, Joan Ganz Cooney, whose eponymous center was founded by the Sesame Workshop to study the role of digital technologies in childhood literacy, explains the differences between Fred Rogers’ approach to the separation between make-believe and real and the approach taken in Sesame Street.

Chart the pros and cons among philosophies of make believe?

No Comments

Return to the In-Class Activities page.