All forms of play are important to children, since they help them to become more healthy and active in life. For that reason, both parents and educators should always view play as an essential requirement for early life development of every child. Play is all about having fun by doing what we enjoy most. Therefore, children would be trying to follow their spirit in life through play. This makes them feel comfortable and relaxed, especially after they have participated in something which they really enjoy.
Play is a worthwhile central factor in children’s health and development. Play has also proved to be a much reliable aspect that can be used in boosting social skills in young children, who are undergoing rapid development of the mind. Unlike what many people would tend to think, play does not only improve a child’s life socially, but also psychologically.
There are various studies that have emphasized the significance of play as an integral part of early understanding and learning in children.
Children are able to interact and understand each other well through effective playing processes. (Feeney et al., 2010). More importantly, children can learn a lot through such experiences and that is enough evidence that there is real-life learning in play. Fun activities do play a significant role in the learning abilities of young children, and this intuition can be justified in a number of ways.
For instance, various studies have shown that children are most likely to concentrate deeply in academic matters after they have spend sometime in play, especially in grounds where there are rarely supervised by the adults. This perception can be proved through the example of Japanese and Chinese students who are given short hourly breaks between their lessons. No wonder, the two groups are among the best achievers in life today in both innovative and inventive matters.
Another important benefit of play is that it helps in the development of creative problem solving and language skills in children. In most cases, the freedom given to children in social activities such as play is likely to promote their ability to reason, thus enabling them to solve divergent problems with much ease (Ginsburg, 2007).
As it would be observed, there has been a direct link between play and the development of language skills in children. This intuition has been adopted from study whereby some forms of play are observed to lead to improved approaches in cognitive-linguistic approaches.
Anything that surrounds a child’s life is likely to spur their imagination in a great way. Children would tend to view the things around their world as objects of play, and would use them as important symbols of life aspects. Children would eventually come to learn many things these symbols, including the fact that objects can be used to represent other things in life. Using this newly-acquired knowledge and ability, children can transform various objects into shapes or forms that represent real life objects such as cars and houses.
This way, kids are capable of developing a brilliant sense of imagination through play and interaction with other children. Both parents and educators should try to maintain a reasonable balance between structured activities for their children and the free time they usually allocate to them, considering the many benefits associated with play and other social activities.
References
Feeney, S.,Moravcik, E.,Nolte, S., & Christensen, D. (2010). Who Am I in the Lives of Children? An Introduction to Early Childhood Education. 8th edition. New York: Pearson.
Ginsburg, K. (2007). The importance of play in promoting healthy child development and maintaining strong parent-child bonds. Pediatrics, 119(1), 182-191.