ACTA SZEKSZARDIENSIUM - Pécsi Tudományegyetem Illyés Gyula ...

developing personal and social competencies by games in kindergarten
teacher education
- „social sensitivity, sense of communal responsibility and the ability to take responsibility”;
- „cooperative skills for teamwork”. 4
The game as a potential tool for competency development
Competencies can be developed by several programmes and methods. One of the
possibilities is using games. Why is the game a suitable tool?
As games are interesting activities for us, we do them driven by intrinsic motivation.
We love doing them as we have the mood for these activities. That is why adopting
games in the development creates cheerful, motivated activities. The learning process
and development speed up, become easier and more enjoyable. Participants are more
active and volunteer to do the tasks. They take part in developing activities unprompted
without the pressure of external force.
Games are also popular because the tasks are adjusted to the participants’ state of
development, thus they can act at an optimal level. Thus, development is suited to the
individuals, in a differentiated way. The same practice was already used in the first
kindergarten when they chose different pieces of gymnastics equipment tailored to the
children. 5 The way of carrying out the tasks is also helped by games. They control and
regulate the participants’ behaviour. The rules of games and the roles determine the
conditions which have to be accepted so that children can take part in the activities they
like. 6
Extracts from the education and outcome requirements of the nursery school teachers’
BA degree (EOR)
There are Self-knowledge and Playing skills development trainings provided for
college students so that they can meet the requirements quoted from the EOR above
at Illyés Gyula Faculty of Education of the University of Pécs. I will not present the
whole educational training here, only its structure, interconnections and procession
highlighting the places and roles of some games in the development. 7
4. 1. Developing self-knowledge, self-acceptance and self-expression
We can create different sequences and syllabuses of games. One of the suitable forms
is the time. First we can play the “Walk-of-life map”, which runs from the past events
from our life to the present. It can be followed by the game “10 years later”, investigating
what the players’ lives will be like in ten years’ time according to their ideas. Some other
games are about the current period of time. The game “24 hours” explores our daily
time consumption. Some players may be surprised at calculating how much time they
moon away a day. The game “Names” reveals an important element of self-knowledge
and self-identity: acceptance of our names, problems with them or complete refusal. We
can hear several interesting stories in the conversations. They are also particularly edifying
to one another as some problems with not only first names but with surnames, even
nick names and also some oddities might be revealed. Comparing ourselves with others,
realising the similarities and differences can be helped by the game “What is common,
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