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Social and emotional development means how children start to understand who they are, what they are feeling and what to expect when interacting with others.

It is the development of being able to: Form and sustain positive relationships. Experience, manage and express emotions. The first six years of life are critical years of human life since the rate of development in these years is more rapid than at any other stage of development. Global brain research also informs us about the significance of early years for brain development. Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) makes a positive contribution to children’s long term development and learning by facilitating an enabling and stimulating environment in these foundation stages of lifelong learning.
Children learn through play: Play is central to the child’s well being and development. Children’s spontaneous play provides opportunities for exploration, experimentation, manipulation and problem solving that are essential for constructing knowledge. Play contributes to the development of representational as well as abstract thought. Children engage in various kinds of play, such as physical play, language play, object play, pretend or dramatic play, constructive play, and games with rules. This further influences their motivation, disposition and approaches to learning. Developing positive approaches to learning goes a long way to determine later academic success in life. Adults must provide opportunities for children to explore play and apply.
Social and emotional development through play
The development of social and emotional health of a child is essential to his appropriate behavior, understanding of life and transition to adulthood. Social and emotional development helps shape a child into what he will become later in life by teaching proper reactions to emotional matters. Social skills are all about a child’s ability to co-operate and play with others, paying attention to adults and teachers, and making reasonable transitions from activity to activity. Emotional development is the process of learning how to understand and control emotions.
Healthy social and emotional skills developed allows children to develop relationships, master the ability to initiate, discover play and learn, develop persistence and attention, self-regulate their behavior and development entails the ability to form satisfying, trusting relationships with others, play, communicate, learn, face challenges, and experience and handle a full range of emotions. It is through relationships that young children develop these skills and attributes. Starting from birth, babies are learning who they are by how they are treated. They teach young children how to form relationships, communicate emotions, and to deal with challenges.
Play is an excellent vehicle for helping children with their emotional development (Johnson Christie & Yawkey, 1999). Children can master emotional issues such as anxiety, frustration, normal developmental conflicts, traumatic situations, unfamiliar concepts, and overwhelming experiences in their play. That is, play helps children find new ways of dealing with their emotions and their reality. As children play, they explore the properties of things and extract information about their environments. They imitate, re-create, and rehearse roles that help them understand and solve problems related to everyday living. They form relationships, share, cooperate, master their feelings, extend the range of their experience, test ideas, and form associations between things, events, and concepts. Another major emotional benefit of play is that it gives children numerous opportunities to feel good about them.
So with this background, a need was felt to study the effect of play based activities on social and emotional development of the preschool children in the present locality, the following objectives framed for the study:

1. To analyze play based activities for social and emotional development used in ECCE centers in rural and urban areas.
2. To assess the social and emotional development of rural and urban preschool children.
3.  To know the influence of gender on social and emotional development of preschool children in rural and urban areas.

materialS and methods

The study aimed to determine the social and emotional development of children attending different ECCE centers in rural areas of Dharwad taluk. The qualitative approach involved naturalistic observation method to document, analyze and study the impact of play-based activities on social and emotional development. Naturalistic observation was made during children involved in free play through video recording which was complemented with participant observation which included by taking field notes.
In quantitative research method, differential design was employed to know the social and emotional development of children attending different ECCE centers in rural and urban areas.
POPULATION AND SAMPLE:
Population: Children attending ECCE centers in rural areas of Dharwad taluk
Selection of ECCE centers: 

1. Total eight anganwadis and 2 preschools in rural areas of Dharwad taluk and six anganwadis and six preschools in urban areas were visited to list out the social and emotional activities followed in the ECCE centers. Later self structured checklist was prepared to select the ECCE centres in which similar play based activities followed ECCE centres were selected for the study. 
2. Based on the social and emotional development activities followed total eight ECCE centres were selected, four (two anganwadis and two preschools) from rural area and urban area. Social and emotional development activities (table1).

TOOL DESCRIPTION
The Transdisciplinary Play-Based Assessment-2 (TPBA-2) developed by Linder (2008). It measures social and emotional development of children between (0-6) years in different domains such as.

1. Emotional expression
2. Emotional/style/adaptability
3. Regulation of emotions & arousal states
4. Behavioral regulation
5. Sense of self
6. Emotional themes in play
7. Social interactions

Scoring pattern:
Each item of emotional and social development of the children is observed during free play activity. Play activity observations are recorded through videotaped and also are noted in the observation note column which is further used for analysis. Based on the play activities performed between the children is analyzed through the levels of the child abilities which is scored between 1-9 score of social and emotional skill. Based on the obtained scores children were categorized as above average, typical, watch and concern.

Score	Category
7-20	Concern
21-34	Watch
35-48	Typical
49-63	Above average

 

Descriptive and inferential statistics such as chi-square, t-test, one-way ANOVA were employed to know the association and difference between children attending different ECCE centers.

RESULTS

Distribution of children attending different ECCE centre of rural and urban areas of Dharwad taluk by child characteristics.
Results related to distribution of children according to child characteristics such as gender, socio-economic status are presented in table 1. With regard to age 38.46 percent of children in rural area of anganwadi were belonged to 36-48 months, 32.69 per cent of children belonged to 49-60 months and 28.85 per cent of children belong to 61-72 months. In case of preschool 34.62 per cent of children belonged to 36-48 months, 32.69 per cent of children belong to 49-60 months and 32.69 per cent of children belong to 61-72 months.
In urban locality, among anganwadi 34.62 per cent of children belong to 36-48 month and 49-60 months and 30.76 per cent of children belong to 60-72 month. In case of preschool 40.38 per cent of children belong to 36-48 month, 32.69 per cent of children belong to 49-60 month and 26.93 per cent of children belong to 61-72 month of age.
With regard to gender, in rural anganwadis 53.84 percent of children were girls and 46.16 per cent of children were boys. In case of rural preschools 55.76 per cent of children were boys and 44.24 per cent of children were girls. In urban locality, majority (59.62 %) of children in anganwadis were girls and 40.38 percent of children were boys. In preschools 51.92 percent of children were boys and (48.08 %) of children were girls.
With regard to socio-economic status, majority (53.84 %) of children in rural anganwadis belongs to poor socio-economic status and 46.16 per cent of the children belong to lower middle category of socio-economic status. In case of preschools (61.54 %) of children belongs to upper middle and 38.46 per cent of children belong to lower middle. In urban locality, majority (67.30 %) of children in anganwadis belonged to lower middle and 32.70 per cent of children belong to poor category of socio-economic status. In case of preschools 69.23 per cent of children belong to upper middle category and 30.77 per cent of children belong to lower middle category of socio-economic status.
Comparison of social and emotional development of children attending anganwadi and preschool in rural and urban areas
Results from the table 2 highlights that, comparison of children who were attending anganwadis in rural and urban area and children who were attending preschools in rural and urban area with social and emotional development and its domains.  The findings revealed that, children attending anganwadis in both rural and urban areas scored same on social and emotional development domains where the significant difference was not found between rural and urban anganwadi children. In case of rural and preschool children also the significant difference was not evidenced in the mean scores of social and emotional development and its domains. 
Social and emotional development of anganwadi and preschool children in rural and urban areas
The findings from Table 3 highlighted the results of association of type of school and social and emotional development of children in rural and urban areas. It was found that in rural areas the type of school and levels of social and emotional development of children was significantly associated with each other (c² = 60.48) at 1 per cent level of significance. It was observed that among children in rural area, most of the children in anganwadis fell under watch (65.38 %) category of social and emotional development, 34.62 per cent fell under concern level of social and emotional development and none of the children from anganwadis belonged to typical level of social and emotional development.
Among children with attending preschools, majority (69.23%) of them belonged to typical level of social and emotional development and 30.76 per cent of children belonged to watch level of social and emotional development.
Considering urban area type of school and levels of social and emotional development of children was significantly associated with each other (c² = 32.39) at 1 per cent level of significance. It was observed that among children in urban area, most of the children in anganwadis fell under watch (59.62 %) category of social and emotional development, followed by 26.92 per cent fell under concern and 13.46 per cent of children fell under typical level of social and emotional development.
Among children attending preschools, majority (61.53%) of children belonged to typical level of social and emotional development and 38.47 per cent of children belonged to watch level of social and emotional development.
Results in table 3a revealed that the comparison of social and emotional development of children by type of school in both rural and urban areas showed the significant difference (18.84) and (9.19) at 0.01 per cent level of significance. The difference value explained that children attending preschools had significantly higher scores on social and emotional development (36.13) as compared to children from anganwadis (22.04) in rural and (26.38) in urban area.
Results in the table 3b showed that comparison of domains of social and emotional development of children by type of school in both rural and urban area showed significant difference under domains of social and emotional development i.e emotional expression, emotional adaptability, regulation of emotions, and arousal states, behavioral regulation, sense of self, emotional themes in play and social interaction. The difference value explained that children attending preschools scored higher mean scores than children attending anganwadis under the domains of social and emotional development, i.e emotional expression (5.23), emotional adaptability (5.19), regulation of emotions and arousal states (5.15), behavioral regulation (5.19), sense of self (4.90), emotional themes in play (5.00) and social interaction (5.46).
In case of urban area the difference value showed that children attending preschools scored higher mean scores than children attending anganwadis under the domains of social and emotional development, i.e emotional expression (5.28), emotional adaptability (5.29), regulation of emotions and arousal states (5.25), behavioral regulation (5.31), sense of self (4.89), emotional themes in play (5.05) and social interaction (5.65).
Influence of child gender on social and emotional development of anganwadi and preschool children in rural and urban areas.
The result from the table 4 describes the significant association between gender and social and emotional development of rural anganwadi and preschool children. With regard to rural anganwadi children the significant association was found between boys and girls. Among boys more than half (54.17 %) children belonged to concern category and 45.83 per cent of children belonged to watch category. Among girls majority (82.14 %) of them belonged to watch category and 17.86 per cent of them belonged to concern category. The significant association was found to significant at 0.01 per cent level of significance.
With regard to rural preschool children, significant association was found between boys and girls. Among boys 58.62 per cent of children belonged to typical category and 41.38 per cent of them belonged to watch category. Where as in case of girls majority (82.60 %) of them belonged to typical category and 17.40 per cent of them belonged to watch category of social and emotional development.
The outcome of comparison of social and emotional development by gender is illustrated in the table 4a. The findings of ANOVA showed significant difference between gender on social and emotional development. With regard to children on both rural anganwadi and preschool, girls scored significantly higher mean scores than boys in social and emotional development. The significant difference found between boys and girls.
Results from the table 4b with regard to gender, among rural anganwadi children, girls scored significantly higher mean scores under the domains of social and emotional development i.e. emotional expression (4.14) and social interaction (4.14). In case of rural preschool children, girls scored significantly higher scores under the domains of social and emotional development i.e emotional expression (5.39), regulations of emotions and arousal states (5.31), emotional themes in play (5.26) and social interaction (6.13).
The findings from the table 5 with regard to urban anganwadi children the significant association was found between boys and girls. Among boys (57.14 %) children belonged to watch category and 42.86 per cent of children belonged to concern category. Among girls majority (83.87 %) of them belonged to watch category and 16.12 per cent of them belonged to concern category. The significant association was found to significant at 0.01 per cent level of significance.
With regard to urban preschool children, significant association was found between boys and girls. Among boys more than half (51.86 %) of children belonged to watch category and 48.14 per cent of them belonged to watch category. Where as in case of girls majority (76.00 %) of them belonged to typical category and 24.00 per cent of them belonged to watch category of social and emotional development.
The findings of ANOVA (table 5a) showed significant difference between gender on social and emotional development. With regard to children on both urban anganwadi and preschool, girls scored significantly higher mean scores (27.14) anganwadi and (38.52) preschool than boys in social and emotional development. The difference found to be significant.
Results from the table 5b with regard to gender, among urban anganwadi children, girls scored significantly higher mean scores under the domains of social and emotional development i.e. emotional adaptability (3.90), regulation of emotions (3.96) and social interaction (4.14). In case of urban preschool children, girls scored significantly higher scores under the domains of social and emotional development i.e emotional expression (5.56), emotional adaptability (5.40) regulations of emotions and arousal states (5.40), emotional themes in play (5.32) and social interaction (6.61).

DISCUSSION

Results in the table 4, reveals that association between type of school and social and emotional development of anganwadi and preschool children in rural and urban areas found to be significant. Majority (65.38 %) of children in anganwadis belonged watch category and 34.62 per cent of children belonged to concern category and none of them belonged to typical category of social and emotional development.
This may be due to poor quality of ECCE environment, where anganwadis programs give less importance to learning activities. Though anganwadi teachers undergo trainings on teaching and learning materials and its development, they fail in implementation of the play-based learning in their classroom due to poor the teacher-child ratio, less space availability and teacher faces difficulty to handle children in a large group due to other corporate duties.
It was observed that, though the anganwadis are provided with stimulating play materials, they are rarely used by the children as the materials were not given by the teacher to play because in anganwadis the play materials are insufficient due to class size and teacher may not be able to give attention to each child during activities.
Observations recorded also show that when the children were provided with the play materials they rushed to get the materials, they even denied to share with their friends and started fighting among themselves. As these play materials were novel to them they were fascinated and wanted to play all alone, children love to play with the play materials, each child wanted to play all alone.  
Where as in preschool children majority (69.23 %) of the children belonged to typical category and none of the children belonged to concern category. This may due to the quality of the ECCE environment, which included play-based activities followed in the preschool like  dance, songs, storytelling, games, theme wise teaching, which  help the child in learning through play. It was clear from the observation that the children enjoyed learning through play and appeared to be interested in other activities also. The most significant point was appropriate teacher-child ratio, optimum space availability to conduct play based group activities. The significant difference was found between anganwadi and preschool children in social and emotional development.
Under the domains like emotional expression, emotional adaptability, emotional regulation, behavioral regulation, sense of self, emotional themes in play and social interaction, the difference was found, which may be due to the less activities given to the child.
The results of the present study are in line with the  Wangui (2013) who evidenced that the type of play materials, availability of play materials to the children and providing the play materials children has positive effect on social and emotional development of the preschool children. Murundu et al.(2014) also found that interaction of play in early childhood education curriculum by teachers promotes learning. Wathu (2016) revealed that there was a there was a strong positive correlation between availability of play materials and social skills development of children in pre-schools. There was a significant association between play time and children social emotional development and there was a strong positive correlation between presence of the teacher in children’s play and children’s social emotional skills development.
Yildirim and Akamca(2017) found out the outdoor activities improved cognitive, linguistic, social-emotional and motor skills of preschool children. The children’s linguistic skills significantly improved after the outdoor education programme. The children’s cognitive skills significantly enhanced after the 10-week outdoor education. The children had significantly better social-emotional skills after the outdoor education programme was implemented.
It was observed that during free play girls preferred to play with same gender, most of the time girls played in a small group like role play, dramatic play, make believe play, emotional themes in play etc. Girls showed co-operation in play, sharing toys with their playmates.
The qualitative observation also supports this where “One girl during play activities showed disinterest, she did not touched any play materials as she was disappointed on that day because her best friend was absent. She didn’t showed interest in playing and started crying”.
The reason may be in Indian setting girls from early age are taught to share, co-operate and be timid. Boys on the other hand were less co-operative during play, most of the time boys were involved in outdoor play activities, showed more aggressive behavior, bullied and fight for toys.   

Results are in line with the Hinkley et al. (2018) found that girls had significantly higher scores on the expressive and complaint subscales than boys. Another study Wang et al. (2018) showed that in all, pro-social behavior was four times more typical than problem behavior, and there were more initiating than responding behaviors. Unlike pro-social behaviors, which were often verbal, most problem behaviors were nonverbal. The children interacted more actively with their best friends and boys contributed more to problem behaviors than girls and girls showed more pro-social behavior than boys.

  Activities for social and emotional development

Table 1: Demographic characteristics of anganwadi and preschool children in rural and urban areas

Table 2: Mean Scores social and emotional development of anganwadi and preschool children in rural and urban areas
N=208

Table 3: Association between type of ECCE and social and emotional development in rural and urban areas
N=208

Table 3a: Comparison of mean scores of social and emotional development in rural and urban areas

Table 3b: Comparison of mean scores of domains of social and emotional development in rural and urban areas
N=208

Table 4: Association between gender and social and emotional development in rural area
N=104

 

Table 4a: Comparison of mean scores of social and emotional development by gender in rural area

Table 4b: Comparison of mean scores of domains social and emotional development by gender in rural area
N=104

Domains	Anganwadi			Preschool
	Boys (24) Mean ± S.D	Girls (28) Mean ± S.D	t-Value	Boys (29) Mean ± S.D	Girls (23) Mean ± S.D	t-Value
Emotional Expression	3.04 ± 0.99	4.14 ± 0.52	2.19*	4.10 ± 0.85	5.39 ± 0.89	2.98*
Emotional Style/Adaptability	2.75 ± 0.67	3.07 ± 0.53	1.92	5.03 ± 0.98	5.39 ± 0.94	1.32
Regulations Of  Emotions and Arousal States	3.04 ± 0.62	3.17 ± 0.61	1.54	4.95 ± 0.76	5.31 ± 1.13	2.97*
Behavioral Regulation	3.08 ± 0.65	3.02 ± 0.46	1.32	5.13 ± 0.87	5.26 ± 0.86	0.50
Sense Of Self	2.75 ± 0.60	3.21 ± 0.62	1.69	4.75 ± 0.68	5.08 ± 0.84	1.54
Emotional Themes In Play	2.87 ± 0.61	3.10 ± 0.49	1.50	4.79 ± 0.55	5.26 ± 0.68	2.70*
Social Interaction	3.20 ± 0.83	4.14 ± 1.00	3.60*	4.93 ± 0.75	6.13 ± 0.69	5.90*

Social and Emotional Development	Anganwadi			Preschool
	Boys	Girls	Modified c²	Boys	Girls	Modified c²
Typical	-	-	8.10*	13 (48.14)	06 (24.00)	4.25*
Watch	12 (57.14)	26 (83.87)		14 (51.86)	19 (76.00)
Concern	09 (42.86)	05 (16.13)		-	-
Total	21 (100)	31 (100)		27 (100)	25 (100)

Gender	Anganwadi		Preschool
	Mean ± S.D	t-Value	Mean ± S.D	t-Value
Boys	24.14 ± 5.79	2.14*	33.62 ± 6.48	3.05**
Girls	27.90 ± 6.46		38.52 ± 4.89

Domains	Anganwadi			Preschool
	Boys (21) Mean ± S.D	Girls (31) Mean ± S.D	t-value	Boys (27) Mean ± S.D	Girls (25) Mean ± S.D	t-value
Emotional expression	3.47 ± 1.03	4.96 ± 0.83	2.28*	4.70 ± 0.95	5.56 ± 0.96	3.22**
Emotional style/adaptability	3.19 ± 1.07	4.90 ± 1.01	2.42*	4.70 ± 1.17	5.40 ± 1.11	2.19**
Regulations of  emotions and arousal states	3.42 ±0.59	4.96 ± 0.91	2.38*	4.66 ± 1.07	5.40 ± 1.04	2.49**
Behavioral regulation	3.57 ± 0.87	3.96 ± 0.94	1.52	4.77 ± 1.12	5.44 ± 0.86	2.36**
Sense of self	3.42 ± 0.81	3.93 ± 1.09	1.81	4.74 ± 1.09	5.24 ± 0.87	1.80
Emotional themes in play	3.28 ± 1.10	3.74 ± 1.18	1.80	4.59 ± 1.27	5.32 ± 0.94	2.31**
Social interaction	3.76 ± 1.04	4.41 ± 1.33	2.19*	5.44 ± 1.08	6.61 ± 0.80	2.68**

Yildirim, G., & Akamca, G. O. (2017). The effect of outdoor learning activities on the development of preschool children. South African Journal of Education, 37(2), 1-10.