Play is one of the main ways in which children learn and develop. It helps to build self worth by giving a child a sense of his or her own abilities and to feel good about themselves. Because it’s fun, children often become very absorbed in what they are doing.
Key points:
Learning through play is important and can help young children be ready for school, encourage their imagination and help them with literacy and numeracy skills
Role play games can help your child make sense of the world, aid in their emotional and physical development
Outdoor play and nature is beneficial to your child as they learn about the world around them and helps their sensory needs too
Hang up these simple rules to remind adults how to give their undivided attention when playing with children
Play is very important to a child's development, it is an integral part of a child's Early Years Foundation Stage and supports their learning journey too. Young children can develop many skills through the power of play. They may develop their language skills, emotions, creativity and social skills. Play helps to nurture imagination and give a child a sense of adventure. Through this, they can learn essential skills such as problem solving, working with others, sharing and much more.
In turn, this helps them develop the ability to concentrate. Providing children with a range of playthings will help them learn in a number of ways:
Sand and water play can be an early introduction to science and maths, eg learning that water is fluid, not solid, and that it can be measured in different sized containers.
Playing with dough or clay, drawing and painting pictures, dressing up, playing with dolls can encourage creativity, imagination and expression of feelings.
Building blocks, jigsaws and shape sorters can help with recognizing different shapes and sizes, putting things in order and developing logic.
Playing ball games, dancing, running, climbing all help to develop body movement, strength, flexibility and co-ordination skills.
Games help with turn taking, sharing and mixing with others.
Singing, playing simple music instruments help to develop rhythm, listening and hearing.
It's important that learning is fun at this age. It needs to be about doing things with them that they like. They might find unusual ways of doing things - for a little one, building blocks aren't just for making towers, and paint can be used without a brush! Show them how things work, but if they want to experiment, let them.
Children learn through all their senses through taste, touch, vision, hearing and smelling. They will watch those around them and copy language and behavior. Look at the pictures together; this will help younger children make sense of the words.
It's also good to talk to them a lot, about everyday things while you are cooking or cleaning. This will give you a chance to teach them how things work and they will be able to ask you questions. Get ready for lots of “why’s?”
THE LEGO FOUNDATION HAS WRITTEN A MORE THOUROUGH PHAMPLET
Anyone who spends any amount of time with young children understands that providing them with opportunities for play provides so much more than a few minutes or hours of ‘fun’. Play also allows children to relax, let off steam, develop social skills such as concentration and co-operation, encourages the development of the imagination, develops motor skills and teaches self expression.
Sarah Owen, founder of ‘Pyjama Drama’ – drama, music, movement and play for pre-school children says, ‘Many children seem to be born with a natural ability to play, but some children find it more difficult and need to ‘learn’ how to play well and this is where parents can make a big difference. Whilst it is very important that children play with their peers and are given opportunities for unstructured play, children who also play with a loved adult can benefit greatly – the benefits of having fun together cannot be underestimated!’
Adults have a role within the play by making time and space available with the relevant resources. Think about creating play ideas that help support and extend learning and development.
Dramatic play aka role play
Dramatic play is essential to a child’s social (or emotional) development and can play a large part in their physical development too. Children make sense of the world in which they live by acting out situations before they happen and by copying what they see around them. Pretend (or dramatic) play contributes to a child’s emotional development as they learn to see life from a different viewpoint and allows them to ‘trial’ situations before they happen.
Most children are naturally imaginative and will happily talk away to someone on their toy phone or drive the sofa to the shops, and this creativity should be actively encouraged! This type of play also develops children’s imaginations which are closely linked to intellectual development.
Outdoor play and exploration
Encouraging your young child to explore outdoor play is extremely beneficial and necessary for their development. Outdoor play helps them to learn lots about the everchanging environment and gives them the opportunity to use their whole body and develop their gross motor skills. It can meet their multi-sensory needs and can give them a love for the outdoors. Whether it is messy play, creative or role play, it is an essential part of learning.
Pretend Play Dramatic Creativity
Why Pretend Play is Vital to their Development
Of course there are many forms of play and endless ways to engage in play with your child. Dramatic or Pretend Play is just one way that children benefit from immensely that will also give you a chance to positively enhance their learning experiences, their self-esteem but most importantly it can strengthen your relationship with them.
Here are some of the benefits derived from Dramatic / Pretend Play- Pretending: Just the act of pretending is a learning curve for a child. It grants them with an outlet to role play what they have seen in their world. This helps them learn about how the world works and practice how adults interact.
Social Play: Pretend play encourages negotiation, cooperation, and role playing different situations. Pretend story lines and characters, turn taking, sharing are all great skills to learn.
Social interaction: Not only does it help with social skills but it encourages a child to put themselves in someone else’s shoes and be empathetic and considerate of others. This gives them a chance to practice behavior, manners and language that is needed when they interact in real world situations, as well as what behavior is acceptable in public.
Language development: Dramatic Pretend play encourages expressive language that would not otherwise be used by the child. Often through pretend play withdrawn children can first start to express themselves by acting a certain role. Further, this gives the parent an opportunity to extend on language skills by paraphrasing what the child has said using more descriptive language and exchanging conversations using expressive language examples.
Imagination: Pretend Dramatic Play is a great for showing how imaginative children are. Imagination is an important building block for learning. It is not only important in childhood, imagination is crucial for life. Just imagine a world without it, we would not have scientists making new discoveries, artists making new artworks, Santa traditions, award winning stories like Avatar and we would not be able to cognitively process these possibilities or examples.
Self-esteem: By giving your child complete control in their pretend world and accepting them as a silly character like Captain Underpants you are enhancing their self-esteem. While they use their own initiative to develop story lines, their creative imagination to expand stories and their own personality to choose a character they enjoy, you are enhancing their self-esteem by allowing them complete power in the world & enjoying it with them.
Motor skills: Playing is very busy work. While pretending to be adults or role playing your child is also fine tuning their motor skills. Mixing, Pouring, scooping, cooking, squatting, lifting, serving, moving around & remaining active.
Practice: Practice makes perfect, while they are playing & pretending they are practicing all the skills they are going to need as they grow up into adults in the real world. From simple things like dressing, measuring, serving food, cooking skills, to handling money, grocery shopping, going to the doctor, answering the phone and not to mention practicing appropriate manners, behaviors and etiquette.
Use creative props to help set the stage. This was so helpful to me. I am imagination impaired.
Pretend Play: Eating out at a cafe
Try to Provide Some Dramatic Props If You Struggle Being a Playmate:
Tea sets, cooking utensils, play food etc.
Outdoor mud station: old cooking pots, (mud-is-good-for-you)-play kitchen and whatever you need...
By accepting your child in their make believe world you give them complete control not only over the game, but over the 'world' for that short time, this enhances their self-esteem and gives you a chance to engage in learning their interests and their blooming personality... Share in their enjoyments and it strengthens their trust in you and the world around them. Your bond will be undeniable: just like Hope's and Russ's was.
Sensory Play Building Brain Pathways
Sensory Play is my Favorite
As infants, this motivation is the foundation of movement and development. Babies naturally track objects across the room with their eyes, turn their heads toward their mother’s voice and become enamored with objects that make noise. Within a few months they start rolling and reaching and eventually crawling – and getting into absolutely EVERYTHING!
As your child develops through infancy, toddler hood and early childhood – it is vital that they are provided with sensory play opportunities.
From birth through to early childhood, children use their senses to explore and try to make sense of the world around them. Children and even adults learn best and retain the most information when they engage their senses. Many of our favorite memories are associated with one or more of our senses: for instance, the smell of a summer night campfire or a song you memorized the lyrics to with a childhood friend. Now, when your nostrils and eardrums are stimulated with those familiar smells and sounds respectively, your sensory memory triggers the brain to respond favorably because of the similarity to the original experience.
Providing opportunities for children to actively use their senses as they explore their world through ‘sensory play’ is crucial to brain development – it helps to build nerve connections in the brain’s pathways for the next time they have a similar experience.
This leads to a child’s ability to complete more complex learning tasks building from previously processed information and supports cognitive growth, language development, gross motor skills, social interaction and problem solving skills.
Simply put, sensory play is play that involves a child using some or all of their senses (taste, touch, smell, sound, sight). This type of play uses a variety of media including colors, textures, tastes, smells, sounds, interesting environments (outside vs inside, home vs school) and movement.
Sensory play is at it’s core, fun. By incorporating multi sensory play into a lesson it will facilitate a deeper understanding of what is being experienced, as the child is naturally engaged in rich sensory activity.
Sensory play includes any activity that stimulates your young child’s senses: touch, smell, taste, movement, balance, sight and hearing. Sensory play activities don’t have to be complicated to be fun and, often, they only require a few items that you probably already have around the house.
While it can get messy from time to time, helping your child engage with their senses will give them the chance to learn and grow as they interact with the world around them!
Sensory activities facilitate exploration and naturally encourage children to a better understanding of how our world works while they play, create, investigate and explore. The sensory activities allow children to refine their thresholds for different sensory information helping their brain to create stronger connections to process and respond to sensory information.
Your child can describe how each item feels and smells. You can ask them how the objects are the same and different. You can work on their visual motor skills by asking for a certain item, such as a yellow leaf, and having them find it.
Think of all the wonderful things you could do with your child based this method of play. You could arouse their interest in something that you enjoy by designing experiences that will receive a favorable response. For instance Hope liked experiences that were sticky. However if they had a foul odor or loud sound associated with it she would push it away. She loved to play with school glue and mod-podge. She also liked to embellish her art work with anything shiny. So we avoided smelly glues and played soft music to buffer sudden and loud sounds in her classroom during art.
Fine Motor Development
Fine motor skills develop when your child uses the tiny muscles in their hands and fingers to manipulate, grasp, release, squeeze, pinch etc.
Sensory play is a fantastic way to strengthen all those little muscles to prepare your child for handwriting, cutting, and using utensils. You can use play dough, make your own slime, putty, shaving cream….the list goes on and on, my friend. If you really want to challenge your child, and they are old enough to not place small items in their mouth, you can hide beads inside of the play dough and have them find them and pull them out.
Social Skill Development
Because all children are naturally drawn to sensory play experiences, it is a great opportunity to work on social skills. As children gather around a water table or play in a sensory bin together, they are sharing, taking turns, resolving conflict, and problem solving. They are creating pretend scenarios and asking questions. They just build and grow from each and every experience.
Sensory based activities facilitate exploration and naturally encourage children to use their unique sensory processes while they play, create, investigate and explore. The sensory activities allow children to refine their thresholds for different sensory information helping their brain to create stronger connections to process and respond to sensory information.
For example, initially a child may find it difficult to play appropriately with a peer when there are other things going on in the environment with conflicting noise. However, through sensory play exploring sounds and tasks a child learns to adapt to being able to block out the noise which is not important and focus on the play which is occurring with their peer.
Another example is a child who is particularly fussy with eating foods with a wet texture such as spaghetti, the use of sensory play can assist the child in touching, smelling and playing with the texture in an environment with little expectation.
As the child develops trust and understanding of this texture it helps build positive pathways in the brain to say it is safe to engage with this food. Sensory play literally helps shape what children to believe to be positive and safe in the brain. Ultimately, shaping the choices children make and impacting behavior.
Art is full of sensory stimulation as well as responses. Hope was given a Christmas page to color in preschool. Her class had community supplies and obviously not enough red and green crayons. So she colored the whole page purple and wanted glitter. Her teacher was frustrated because she had plans to post all the pictures. When I saw it. I laughed hysterically. I said, "You thought of grandma didn't you?" She got a big grin and shook her head yes. I told the teacher that I wanted to hang Hope's picture at home anyways and she skipped all the way to the car. Her favorite part of Christmas spending it with my mom. She treasured all Christmas decorations that were purple. In fact they made purple paper garland for the tree together.
Further more: Why not make all happy things purple – the possibilities go to infinity and beyond!
