Abstract

Background. The article deals with the dialectical structure of play activity of preschool children. The dialectic structure is built with the help of structure-dialectic method which is based on the opposites, defined in the course of content analysis. The paper shows that the dialectical structure of play is leveled. The analysis of play activity allows us to speak about the ability of preschool children to represent the dialectical structure of play. The paper reveals substantial features of each level and gives the explanation of the transition from one level to another. 

Objective. The paper aims to justify the possibility to develop diagnostic system for preschool children’s play activity development on the basis of the proposed structure. It can be designed upon the dialectical structure of play and the preschool children’s play matrix. 

Results. A model of the dialectical structure of a preschooler’s role-playing game, enabling to take into account the important structural components of the game, is proposed. The phenomenon of the semantic field expressed in the merge (overlap) of the visible (perceptual) field and the representative (imaginary) field is considered. The difference between the semantic field and an imaginary situation is shown. In the first case the child is focused on the behavior of others, while in the second case he is focused on his own actions. The possibility to apply dialectical structure to the analysis of play activity in preschool children in order to build play practice is demonstrated. 

Conclusion. It seems advisable to develop diagnostic tools to assess the development of games for preschool children taking into account the dialectical structure of games.