2. Gathered in Play:Play as the Common Space during the Covid-19 Lockdown in Serbia

With the desire to nurture a sense of togetherness in the ethical and pedagogical relation of joint research and mutual care, the teachers from the Department of Preschool Pedagogy and the students taking the undergraduate course ‘Child’s Play and Creativity’ developed a resource entitled The Treasury for Common Play between Children and Adults. The Treasury is an illustrated publication with suggestions about different playful situations and activities that children and parents could undertake while isolating at home. The Treasury was also meant to serve preschool teachers in communicating suggestions to families and creating new treasuries together with them. In the digital version, the Treasury was posted on the Let’s Connect, Let’s Empower in the Covid-19 Crisis website as well as on the official websites of various professional associations and organizations for parents.

How We Gathered in Play

Research Context

In a post-developmental paradigm shift, which we promote through our faculty courses with students, the transformative and creative potential of play has been positioned as central to its importance. Play drives the capacity for flexibility to act in changed conditions, to look for alternatives and, following them, to act autonomously and competently. Dealing with the experiences and the environment through the acts of play opens up possibilities for the child to twist the boundaries of everyday events, to reinterpret their own and others’ deeds, and to create different spacetimes that have the potential to alter previously established meanings (Marjanović-Shane and White 2014).

The opportunity for children and adults to jointly create the collection of playful situations and activities in times of crisis provided students with an experiential task, based on active and bold involvement, research and negotiation, critical and ethical thinking, joint endeavour, and mutual trust (Mitranić and Purešević 2021). We instructed students on how to search for and develop different ideas based on the theories of play which we had discussed in the course.

The main principles we established for creating suggestions were: a) to respect play for its own sake (as opposed to subordinating play to a dialectic purpose), b) to encourage togetherness and mutual care through play (as opposed to competition), and c) to respect different family conditions when proposing the space and materials for play. Students worked in small groups and posted their suggestions on Padlet, a collaborative online platform. Groups discussed and adjusted suggestions among themselves. We as teachers also commented, posted our suggestions and ideas, and drew attention to the previously established principles.

After two weeks of collaborative work, we combined a collection of forty proposals and created an illustrated publication called The Treasury for Common Play between Children and Adults (Figures 2.1 and 2.2). This publication was sent to the MOESTD and relevant professional associations of preschool education. The Treasury was posted on the MOESTD website Let’s Connect, Let’s Empower in the Covid-19 Crisis as well as on the official websites of professional associations, but it soon went viral and was shared via social media, blogs and websites for parents (Figure 2.3).

Research Findings

1) Feelings Related to Play

The theme of expressing feelings related to play emphasizes the satisfaction and fulfilment in play as opposed to the dominant feelings of helplessness, fear, and confusion that we have all faced during the Covid-19 lockdown. Parents described play as a way to experience delight and self-satisfaction both for them and their children.

I’ve noticed that we are all excitedly waiting for a new proposal. (N1)

In their notes, the parents presented play as an amusement that filled the whole family with pleasure:

It is creative and interesting to us, we were all happy, playing still goes on! (N7)

This activity, ‘Strange Balloons’, brought us great pleasure! (N23)

Parents associated play with a feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment, and as a way to spend quality family time.

We hid things around the house and mapped places on the plan of the apartment: ‘Pirate Alexander (One-eyed Aca) is getting ready to go in search of buried treasure with his map!’ The whole family played, and we had such a great and imaginative time! (N8)

This is how we told our story, and many things came out of it! We started to tell the story ‘While travelling, I love to…’ and we added objects, toys, drew a little, and it turned out to be very fun and imaginative. Mila was thrilled, her brother is sure to join her, and time has flown by for us in the family. (N13)

Parents described pleasure and fulfillment as their main feelings while playing:

The proposals are very interesting. It often happens that we adults play and children watch—play is constant, only the audience changes! (N2)

The parents also presented a feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment in play as a way to distance themselves from reality:

Such fun at home and such gloom all around us. (N12)

Thanks for the great ideas; play helps us forget a little about these difficult days. (N22)

2) Resources and Environments

We generated the theme of opportunities for playful research from several topics that emerged in the analysis of the notes: an exploration of different materials and objects in the house that families used for play, discovery of the potential of different spaces in the house through play, experimentation with different variations of the suggested proposals, and examination of one’s identities and roles as well as power in play.

Parents mentioned the materials and the household items they had used in play which had not been used as a means for play in their house before:

‘The Magic Line’—We really liked this activity. Dunja makes her path using various decorative ribbons found in the house and even toilet paper. (N2)

The different spaces in the house that parents mentioned in their notes show that families discovered the potential for play in different places as places, which they had not used in that manner before.

‘Spider Web’—I don’t know how it works for you, but we made a web out of kitchen towels. The whole corridor is networked. (N15)

‘Hopscotch’—Here, my friends, see how the entire apartment can be turned into a big hopscotch! (N24)

Almost every day, parents sent new notes about the variations they introduced into the proposals with their children, which opened up new opportunities for experimentation for them:

‘The Miraculous Glasses’—We played by pouring water from glass to glass with straws, and then we tried with a perforated ladle. Peter says: ‘I pour a little water and then it leaks into this, then into that, then into this, each goes into a different glass! Wow, great!’ (N9)

The parents presented their experiences of play as an opportunity to test their physical skills and vitality.

‘Spider Web’—Playing for the third day in a row, we are more active than ever! (N15) (Figure 2.4)

According to the parents’ notes, play allowed them to explore different cultural identities and roles with their children:

‘Hidden Treasure’—Today, we were thinking about how the pirates dressed and why they needed all those things. Here is how we dressed like pirates, setting off in a treasure hunt! (N4)

‘Game of Shadows’—Yes, this is a real theatre. It’s not difficult; we made various characters, heroes, animals, and some basic shapes which we can turn into a ship or whatever we want. We cut everything out of cardboard trays. And look, the entire stories of shadows! The whole family is having fun! (N20) (Figure 2.5)

Reproduced with permission of the family, 2023, all rights reserved

3) Shared Experiences

In the parents’ notes, we noticed their need to share the experience of play. Considering the number of notes, photographs, and videos that parents sent to preschool teachers, we tend to conclude that this need goes beyond the domain of ‘obligation’. A multitude of collected notes indicates that play functioned as an inspiring and safe space in which to share family experiences and connect different actors of the kindergarten group as a community during the lockdown. Also, as mentioned above in the discussion of the first main theme, parents recognized play as a way for a family to connect, to share, and to spend quality time together:

This is our treehouse; only Miki can climb there—that’s because he practised, but we made it all together. The ideas are great! (N21)

The shadows are phenomenal—you try to draw a large drawing using a shadow. We line up the animals and draw shadows on the paper on the wall. Then we move the animals away to see how much they have grown! We can’t stop playing. (N20)

According to the parents’ notes, the proposals suggested by the preschool teachers contributed to the siblings playing together more than ever before:

Every day, Marko looks forward to your ideas. His brother is keen on joining him and playing with him. (N10)

‘My Hidden Space’—Using our curtains, we’ve separated one part of the room and made our ‘universe’ in it. The ‘universe’ is very interesting. Now David and Luka are playing together so nicely, which was not common before. (N14)

According to the parents’ notes, the exchange of experiences and proposals with the preschool teacher helped the children to maintain a sense of belonging and connection with the teacher and other children from the kindergarten group:

My child kisses the photos of his friends while we’re watching the photos and recordings shared on the Viber group. (N 17)

Mine too. (N1; N23)

Our child became interested in your suggestions only when she saw the photos of her friends playing. (N6)

Not only did the parents send their notes about play to the preschool teacher, but they almost always exchanged them with other parents via the Viber group. When the teachers suggested ‘Fantastic Story’ and ‘Story from the Family Album’, twenty families joined them. Parents filmed the children and themselves as they told stories together, and then the educators made a joint collection of stories and passed them on to each family:

Now, friends, this is our story. […] (video while the child tells the story) (N19)

Let’s see how Stefan’s magic sword defeated the monster! (video) (N11)

Sharing the experiences of play, especially situations based on storytelling, encouraged parents to remember their favourite stories from childhood and not only tell them to their children, but also to record themselves while telling a story and to share the video with the other children and parents:

Friends, my favourite story is ‘Ugly Duckling’. I don’t know why it was called ugly because it was not ugly at all; it was just different. One day […] (N11) (Figure 2.6)

Figure 2.6 Family photographs of the whole family engaged in storytelling, May 2020

Reproduced with permission of the family, 2023, all rights reserved

Playing and sharing experiences with the other children and families encouraged children and parents to engage in other activities outside of play and to make toys together:

We played the ‘Magic World of Sculpture’. We played with the dough and then we decided to knead and make doughnuts. We used various moulds and made figures. At the end, we ate everything. Here are the photos… We can’t wait for new suggestions! (N14)

We made an hourglass out of cornflour and two plastic water bottles. Lule never puts the hourglass down and measures our time in everything we do. (N4)

4) Parent Initiatives

In the parents’ notes, expressions of the initiative to continue playing could be referred to as the initiative to use new materials and objects for play and to find websites with new proposals for playful situations and activities:

The ideas have never been better! But try it like this, we enjoyed it—spread a net across the middle of the yard or an old table, you can use rackets and balls, but you can also drag below it, throw above it, be as imaginative as we were. (N5)

We suggest that you take two or three glasses and tie them with straws. […] (photo). Try it; it’s a lot of fun… and it requires concentration. (N8)

A large number of suggestions which the parents devised with their children and proposed to other children and families can be seen in the parents’ notes.

Discussion

Recommendations for Practice

Based on the significance of play, which we discovered in researching the quality of families’ experiences of play during the lockdown, as well as our experience as university teachers teaching the course ‘Child’s Play and Creativity’ during the Covid-19 pandemic, we can offer two recommendations for education:

Works Cited

Boyd Webb, Nancy (ed.) 2015. Play Therapy with Children and Adolescents in Crisis (New York: Guilford)