The power of play.
Play today.
Thrive tomorrow.
About 123 Play
123Play is an innovative inclusive program of pretend play that builds foundational social and emotional skills to improve wellbeing in our children. We will harness the power of play to equip children, parents and educators with lifelong skills.
123Play is a multi-disciplinary approach that brings together expertise in young people’s wellbeing with creative and playful pedagogy. We have coalesced two leading research centres at The University of Sydney to drive this work: the Matilda Centre and the CREATE Centre.
What are the benefits?
Pretend play is a natural form of creativity and children play to make meaning, and express emotions, it helps children with their social and emotional skills.
Children will need 3 skills to thrive in the future: creativity, building relationships and managing unpredictability.
Improved play ability at age 3 predicts significantly lower risk for mental health concerns at age 7
Our research team
We’d love to hear from you!
If you’re curious to learn more, we’d love to connect with you! Feel free to reach out, ask questions, and discover all the exciting ways you can get involved and be a part of our program.
FAQs
123Play is a child-centred inclusive approach focussing on pretend play abilities. A tool kit of different supportive play strategies include modelling (playing along and demonstrating play actions and interactions), prompting (using verbal and non-verbal prompts to initiate interactions or pretend use of objects), following child’s interest (following children’s play ideas) and verbalisation (use of open-ended questioning and language modelling techniques). An inclusive pretend-play programme may aid social and emotional skills by offering children a ‘safe’ space for children to take on different roles and experiment with their and others’ behaviour by symbolising highly emotional events.
Pretend play can help children identify, express and cope with all their different emotions to then help support good mental health throughout life.
123Play is different because it is an inclusive tool kit for early educators to use when facilitating different pretend play experiences. It allows early educators to apply the early years learning framework planning cycle when implementing pretend play experiences.
123Play is an approach which centres the child in a system of relationships affected by multiple levels of the surrounding environment. 123Play involves both parents and early educators taking part. Early educators will learn new strategies with pretend play. Parents will learn more about pretend play and how it helps their child’s wellbeing.
You can get in touch with us by clicking here to learn about the different ways to become involved.
Yes. 123Play is a collaboration between two research centres at the University of Sydney: The Matilda Centre (Faculty of Medicine) and The Create Centre (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences).
Yes. 123Play is a group inclusive toolkit which is flexible and agile allowing early educators to apply the early years learning planning framework cycle when facilitating pretend play experiences.
Yes. 123Play is a toolkit that has been developed in consultation with long-day care and community pre-school settings.
Stay connected to the players
Thanks for your interest in the project. If you have any questions about your eligibility to participate, or need some help, please register your details below and the 123 Play team will get back to you.