Diarrhoea
February 17, 2022Crèche syndrome
March 17, 2022As a result of playing, children can better understand themselves, the world, and others. It is just as important as any other form of development in your child’s life and is a vital teaching tool. Children learn to communicate with others and build essential life skills through play. Playing is a fun and natural way for children to stay active, healthy, and happy. From birth to adolescence, they require a variety of unstructured play opportunities to learn life skills and to maintain good physical and mental health.
The Six Benefits of play
- Physical Play
Physical play, or any play that gets them moving, is crucial to children. It’s part of how babies learn to utilise their bodies and helps to strengthen brain connections. Physical play helps develop coordination, balance, gross-motor skills, and fine-motor skills. - Emotional Play
Children learn to cope with their emotions through play by acting out fear, frustration, rage, and aggressiveness in a controlled environment. This form of play also allows children to practice empathy and understanding. Play is a natural stress reliever and an outlet for children to work through their fears and anxieties. Emotional play also helps in the enhancement of happiness and self-esteem. - Social Play
Cooperative play allows children to hone their social skills while dealing with group dynamics. By learning these skills, children learn how to cooperate, compromise, respond to others’ feelings, share, show affection, resolve conflicts, and follow the rules. Listening, paying attention, and sharing play experiences with a child helps them explore feelings, develop self-discipline, learn how to express themselves, and resolve emotional issues. - Cognitive Play
Playing with your child as they explore objects and spaces and learn to interpret sights and sounds is one of the most acceptable ways to encourage brain growth. Unstructured play is where children control their play without the interruption of an adult. Unstructured play affects how a child learns, solves issues, and absorb their surroundings. Cognitive play also grows attention spans and planning skills. - Creative Play
Children’s imaginations are stretched during play. Children create their own games or lose themselves in make-believe worlds. Building their confidence, they act out various scenarios. Creating rules they have to follow, or change are valuable skills in navigating life and forming relationships. An active imagination will benefit children for the rest of their life. - Communication Play
Children learn how to communicate by playing with others. They learn to read body language and facial expressions. They learn how to start and maintain discussions and how to express their feelings and desires through communication play.