The Importance of Play

Why do children need to play?

The preschool years are a time of significant growth for a child, and much of this growth happens during play. Play is one of the most common ways that children learn about the world. The act of playing with others (peers or adults) fosters social skills, problem solving, creativity, motor skills and communication development. Language is one of the most important areas that can be developed through play.

Over the years, schools in the early grades have increased their emphasis on measuring academic skills, while many families have booked their child's schedule with formal lessons and structured activities. As a result of these busy family schedules, some have observed that there has been less time for children to play. These structured activities do have many benefits, such as socialization, following directions, learning concepts (sorting, categorizing), and broadening experiences. The author Gill Connell (A Moving Child Is a Learning Child: How the Body Teaches the Brain to Think (Birth to Age 7) suggests that "play does all of these things better." His reasons include qualities of play not found in structured, adult designed and directed activities. Play is child-directed, gives immediate feedback, allows the child to make his or her own choices, and follows their own path of imagination. The child can "set, change and achieve his own goals without judgment". Because it is difficult to measure the benefits of play with formal data collection, he suggests that we "count the giggles.... count the quiet moments... count how many stories he tells" using imagination and a broadening vocabulary.

How do children play?

Play looks different as a child grows and changes. As their language becomes more complex, their play becomes more imaginative and starts to move from independent play, to parallel play to cooperative play with peers.

As infants and babies, children are experimenting . They bang objects together, put things in their mouth, drop and throw items., and examine things. This is their way of learning how different objects feel and taste.

As toddlers, children start to build with blocks, blow bubbles, and play with cars and trains. They learn a wide variety of vocabulary words during this time, and it's important that parents and families model these words. These include the words of objects (nouns) but also what these objects can do (verbs) and descriptive words (adjectives).

As preschoolers, children expand to more imaginative, dramatic play. They pretend to feed a doll, talk on a toy phone to grandma and drive a pretend car. They are learning to take turns, which also builds social language and problem solving skills.

What can I do to support my child's language while they play?

You are very important in your child's language and play development! You don't need a lot of expensive toys to play with your child. Pots and pans, a blanket for “peek-a-boo”, and a basin with water or rice are wonderful tools for play. As we might remember from our own childhood, a simple large cardboard box can provide hours of playtime enjoyment. Parents are the best toys, and children will learn a lot of language when they share play activities with their parents. You can incorporate playtime into your daily routines. For example, when you are getting your child dressed, cooking in the kitchen or giving your child a bath, think about what words you can model, or what games you can play (sorting items, hide and seek with common objects, using prepositions 'in', 'on', 'under'.)

In addition to teaching your child new vocabulary during play, modeling language also helps children learn to expand their sentences and use correct grammar while speaking. This can include commenting about what you are doing, adding a word or phrase to the child’s short phrases, exposing your child to synonyms, or by modeling the correct sentence structure. This will depend on the stage of language development of the child.

Examples include the following:

Child: “car” Parent: “Yes, a big car”

Child: “car” . Parent: “Go, car, go!”

Child: “He goed fast.” Parent: “Yes, he went fast.”

Child: “Mom, that’s a huge truck!” Parent: “You’re right. It’s enormous!”

If you incorporate play into your child's everyday schedule, it will benefit their overall language, social and cognitive development. And it might even make your day a bit more fun!

Click here for lots of ideas to help expand your child's play!

The Importance of PLAY for Speech and Language Development {With Tips} - Playing With Words 365“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.” Fred Rogers As quoted above play is the work of childhood. Even when your child is playing silently, they are learning important information that they will carry with …

References:

https://www.tyketalk.com/language-and-play

https://www.atlantaspeechschool.org