Play

The way that children best learn is when they feel that they’re secure and when they’re motivated, especially when they play.

Play is important for children as there is no failure. Play allows children to create their own scenarios, rules and goals. It’s very important to help their self esteem and confidence to grow. As well as this play helps children to make connections of things that they know and understand and according to Bruce play co-ordinates learning (Bruce, 1996). Different types of games such as performance, social, mathematical and sports can all help children to understand how to follow rules made by others; they also help children to be aware that following rules is important, which is crucial when preparing them for later on in their education and in their communities.

When children participate in play it contributes to their social development as it helps them to learn how to share with others, it builds their relationships with their peers and also to make them aware of social boundaries. Play also contributes to children’s cognitive development as they engage in problem solving activities; they must communicate with others to understand rules and instructions, which also develop their language skills. Children’s physical development is also helped by play as it develops children’s fine and gross motor skills, co-ordination, balance and special awareness. Finally play contributes to the child’s cultural development as some of the games that they play have been handed down from parents or older siblings and cultural tools such as nursery rhymes are often used during play. There needs to be a balance between the amount of structured and unstructured play that a child participates in as people have argued that too much structured play doesn't leave enough time for child centred free play which is said to be more beneficial for development within creativity and imagination.

I found this video clip which explains the importance of play.

Importance of play. (The Importance of Play, 2013)

This video clip clearly outlines the benefits of play for children and the role that play has within each child’s learning development. Juliet Clark from the video clip defines play as something that’s innate in children. This is an interesting point because children do have a desire to play from a very young age and so I think to say that play is innate in children is an accurate way of describing the important role that play has in each child’s development. There were different types of play that were mentioned in the video clip, these included active play, exploratory play, representational play and imaginative pretend play. Representational and imaginative pretend play particularly interested me as Piaget argued that imaginative play is a function of how the young child is capable of thinking (Fink, 1976).  Imaginative play involves children imitating adults or siblings when playing things like ‘house’, ‘school’ or ‘shop’. Attempting to behave like someone else helps the child to understand more clearly the ways other people behave (Minett, 1985).