The Results of Play Activities for Caregivers towards Early Childhood Development Promotion

Abstract

A play activity is one of the important things to promote early childhood development that helps children to think and learn better. The understanding of the process of play can help the caregiver to manage play activities which are suitable for each child in order to keep the children ready to learn mature adults. The objective of this study was to compare the caregiver's behaviors before and after participating in promotion activities of early childhood development promotion. The research design was Pretest-Posttest Design using random assignment to select the district, and then select the samples by purposive sampling. The participants were 30 caregivers who were responsible for the care of children aged 5 years and 11 months in Dusit District, Bangkok. The research findings reveal that after receiving the play activities, the mean score was higher than before participating with statistical significance (p < .05). When classify by each category, it was found that the promotion scores after participation were higher than before participation in all activities which were Availability of Learning Materials, Reading Preparation, Parental Involvement in Developmental Advance, and Parental Verbal Responsive Behaviors. Suggestion from this research was that the training activities should be organized to encourage caregivers to understand the importance of play in promoting early childhood development under caregivers in all sectors both in urban and rural areas. Moreover, it should have the long-term follow-up of caregivers to maximize the efficiency of activities and meet the needs of children.