Many people think about play and learning as being two different things. The truth shown by research is that rich, varied play strongly boosts children’s learning. Children gain powerful knowledge and social skills through play. Here are 10 ideas about what children learn through play (adapted from the Journal of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, September 2007):
1. Play enhances dexterity and grace. Hand motions required for play include latching, lacing, twirling, tossing, filling, and dumping. Legs and feet engage in kicking, riding, and coordination.
2. Peer play promotes social skills. Children learn to take turns, share materials, ask for help, problem-solve, and work together.
3. Play sharpens cognitive and language skills. Play helps children learn that certain actions result in specific reactions, such as banging a stick on a drum. Furthermore, play involves lots of word listening and hearing of sounds. Play promotes language mastery as children learn to communicate with each other.
4. Preschoolers acquire concepts of numbers and time. A child learns that whether she stacks blocks on top of each other or in a row, the number of blocks does not change. Children also learn the concept of “before” and “after” as they stack blocks to create a stable structure.
5. Play areas promote children’s spatial understanding. Some play activities, like a crawling through a tunnel, allow children to learn about “forward” and “backward, ” “long” and “short,” and “first” and “last.”
6. Play promotes children’s reasoning of cause and effect. Toys help children learn about concepts of physics and chemistry – weight and balance, float versus sink, and gravity.
7. Sociodramatic play clarifies the world of “pretend” versus “real.” Imagination and pretend play are important steps in learning the difference between fantasy and the reality.
8. Play enriches children’s sensory and aesthetic appreciation. Exploring different music and art can arouse different feelings in children and their appreciation of beauty.
9. Play extends children’s attention span, persistence, and sense of mastery. Play helps children develop the ability to focus attention and persist at challenging activities – two tasks crucial to future academic success in school.
10. Play helps children release emotions and relieve separation anxiety. Play allows children to express and regulate emotions appropriately and can provide a valuable window for caregivers to tune into the worries, fears, angers, and happiness in a child’s life.
Molly Talbot-Metz, Mary Black Foundation
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1 comment:
...play matters.
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