The Importance of Play
Animal babies learn the skills they need as adults through playing. If you see video clips of most mammals, they will naturally play. Very young children do not need to be taught to want to play, although they may need help in realising the possibilities for play. Think of when you watch a group of older children play – they are engrossed and rarely want to stop. Young children need more support in their play – they are physically more dependent; they have fewer experiences on which to base their play; socially they need support to play together. However, play is essential for everyone as it develops many life skills such as the ability to solve problems, self-regulation, autonomy, communication.
Play is a child’s work
Children do not make a distinction between ‘play’ and ‘work’ and neither should we. Play is how children learn and should not be relegated to something unimportant or fun after you have done your work.
However despite this being known for many years, play is still not understood or valued. So we need to really understand what do we learn though play!
Emotionally fulfilling
Play is relevant and meaningful to children, so they are more engaged and enthusiastic. We know that if one is more enthusiastic, the educational outcomes are better. During play, children will challenge themselves and try harder as it is enjoyable, they are in control and have less fear of failure. As well as this, the control that young children have over their play gives them confidence and builds their self-esteem. It is the only time when they are not the adults are in control. Through making an activity fun and playful a child can be persuaded to learn much more.
Brain development and reinforcing learning
Play enables children to plan, experiment, reflect and embed their learning. As they play, they are establishing and reinforcing the synaptic connections in the brain that they will need for later learning. Children need to use movement, – they need to develop and practice their physical skills. They need to use all five senses and play opportunities need to give children a wide range of chances to use their five senses – to stimulate their sense of touch, smell, sight, hearing and taste which reinforces their brain development and understanding. In play a child will be demonstrating their learning to you.
Social skills
Play also helps to promote the development of social skills. Children who play with their parents and peers, learn how relationships work through their play experiences. As play becomes more important in a child’s life, an increase in the number and quality of friendships is generally been seen.
Communication
Play allows children the opportunity to develop speech and language skills, as well listening skills. Children talk and listen while they play. The more vocabulary a child is exposed to on a day-to-day basis, the greater the variety of words a child will incorporate into play.
Pretend play
Children rehearse the future in their play. Playing helps them remember what happens to them as they imitate adults. At birth, the baby can copy the face of the adult – but this is not a conscious act. Later imitations which are conscious acts are the real beginnings of pretend play. This usually begins with a simple action, that is a copy of something that happens to the child like giving a teddy a drink or kissing a doll. This develops into a sequence of actions, usually a sequence that is familiar to the child.
Helps develop language
Pretend play is sometimes called symbolic play. A symbol is something that is used to represent something else. For example, a road sign of a red circle, crossed by a white rectangle, means no entry. The ability to use one thing to stand for another – symbolism – is an important human trait.
Language itself is symbolic – we use an arbitrary collection of sounds to represent an object, an idea, a feeling, an action. Reading and writing are secondary symbolism as we use a collection of marks on a page to represent the sounds which we use to represent the object, idea, feeling etc. Pretend play encourages children to become symbol users in the way that one thing represents another.
So as you can see, play comes in many forms and is essential, natural and non-negotiable but unfortunately children seem to be having less and less time to ‘play’.
The dangers of lack of play
Jiang Xueqin, a prominent Chinese educator wrote in The Wall Street Journal “The failings of a rote-memorization system are well known lack of social and practical skills, absence of self-discipline and imagination, loss of curiosity and passion for learning” (December 2010).
Play deprivation can be very bad for children. Among other things, it promotes poor mental health, less empathy and self-control and loss of creativity as well as these long-term capabilities related to problem solving, social skills and academic areas (e.g. literacy, math and science) could be lessened.
It is obvious that children and adults need to engage in playful activities to thrive. So how can parents support this?
Helping at home
*Give children time to play
*Show interest in what they are doing
*Encourage their interests
*Play with them and extend language
*Invent games with them
*Add open-ended materials
*Ask wondering questions not closed questions
*Value their play as it is their work
When choosing a school, look for schools that support learning through enquiry and activity (all types of play). Look for a curriculum that encourages the right type of learning and allows your child to enjoy their studies. These are the schools that will encourage real deep learning not short-term recall of facts. Children need to repeat, reinforce and practice learning in many different ways to truly embed the learning. Memorizing facts is not real learning. Play allows the application of new learning which will in turn will mean this is long term real learning. It of course does much, much more than this!