Leisure activities in the teaching-learning process of students of higher education

Abstract

Play activities are a powerful ally for promoting meaningful learning. Play is a way of living the daily life, that is to feel pleasure and value what happens perceiving it as an act of physical, spiritual or mental satisfaction.Playful activity encourages the development of people’s skills, relationships and sense of humor and predisposes the child’s attention to motivation for learning. The leisure activities taken to the classroom become a strategic tool introducing the child to the scope of meaningful learning in pleasant environments in an attractive and natural way developing skills.In this sense, this research seeks to investigate how this type of activities promote meaningful learning in students of the PicoazáEducational Unit of the city of Portoviejo, Manabí, Ecuador. The aim is to learn how these actions strengthen the various abilities of children and give them greater willingness to work in the classroom, curious, creative in environments that foster and expand theirvocabulary and coexistence, captivating their family environment and thus parents' interest in school events.Playful expressions have not only benefited human beings in their history, although other species manifest playful behaviors, presumably since the beginning of prehistory human beings already played and sought to develop their creativity through play. While studies have shown that playfulness includes creative thinking, problem solving, skills to relieve tensions and anxieties, ability to acquire new understandings, appease behavioral problems, enriches self-esteem, ability to use tools and language development.Play is also a key activity for the formation of students in relation to others, with nature and with themselves to the extent that it provides an aesthetic and moral balance between their interiority and the environment with which they interact.