We are spending a busy target-oriented hurried life. Most people don’t know the importance of playing with their loving children. Especially preschoolers. So play activities for preschoolers take vital importance.
Our recommendation is to get an opportunity each and every day with your children. The play safeguards the purity of childhood and develops imagination and creativity among your kids
It is difficult to characterize general opinion on the term” play”. It is a fun, voluntary, and spontaneous series of activities. It is the most joyful discovery among the children.
Play involves taking risks, testing boundaries, and expecting a safe nurturing environment. Play is an essential part of early learning and it is the lifeblood of the learning process.
It develops
- cognitive abilities
- Socio-emotional and physical skills
- promote healthy brain development.
Play activities of preschoolers take these maximum advantages because they contribute these advantages to academics and learning to process.
Play activities for pre-schoolers are an essential part of early learning.it develops imagination and creativity among our kids. In general, play is a fun, voluntary, and spontaneous series of activities.
Importance of Non-Screen Time
Average kid spend of 30 minutes a day outside.but they tend to spend more than seven hours inforont of eklectronics such as television,table,ts,computors and phones daily. Modern educational tools also designed to maximize he screen time for the kids at schools.
In the developing tech-forward world,It is a must for the kid to learn to digital literacy skills.But it is very essential for the kids to have screen free time and have more play time at the play grounds.
But it is very challenging for the parents to provide with their children more play opportunities in a e-learning environment.
By engagnig at physical activitiethe s away form digital world, a child canimprove the physical wellbeing and emotional well being together to make their lives a success.
Stages of play
Play allows children to learn a range of skills. Co-ordiotion skills, cognitive skills, social skills, and many more.
Researchers point, out that without play, children develop most of their life skills above at a severely stunted rate. Playing is vital for children such as eating and sleeping.
Also, play is very important for the kids to develop their necessary skills at a healthy pace. Humans and other mammals like apes, and dolphins need play to improve their well-being.
According to Mildred Parton’s stages of play theory, the child will develop play as developing group therapy. Finally, he/she interacts with other people and develops their social skills nicely.
They are developing into a developing hierarchical series of steps.
Unoccupied play
In this play stage, the child tends to observe playing but he is not engaging with play.
Solitary play
Here, the child watches others’ play and does not engage in it. He/she plays alone. Children under 3 years are mostly doing this and they are not interested in other’s activities.
Onlooker play
The child does not engage with others’ play. They only look at it. They are trying to talk about play activities but physically they are not joining it.
Parallel play
Children play separately alone and close to others. But they do not engage with others. This is the more complex social stage play. Age 2- 4 1/2 children are mostly doing this.
Associative play
The child is interested to play with others and interacting with playing groups. But that is not a more organized and coordinated activity.
Cooperative play
The child is interested in playing with people and the play activity is well organized & participants are assigned roles. This is the beginning of teamwork. Aged 4-6 children are doing this.
The most beneficial advantage of play-social development
Children start social play independently. Then they join parallel play with other children. Before they play with one another they learn more essential skills through play indications including
- taking turns
- Reading cues from others
- Teamwork
Within a community, children develop some emotional skills such as perseverance, learning to adapt, learning to accept defeat, building character and confidence, and developing empathy, etc.
Social play supports the development of brain and body combinations and provides necessary inputs. It improves muscular, endurance, and coordination.
Social play improves a child’s health with much activity.
Other aspects of social-emotional developing areas are
- Improve emotional intelligence
- Improve cooperation
- Improve learning confidence and negotiation
- Improve sharing and empathy
- Improve how to communicate effectively
Playground play
That will spark your children’s creativity and allow them to say new things. Provide an exclusive experience for children with special needs. Sophisticated playgrounds meet the children’s ability levels and provide really engaging components.
A great playground can make a difference among children. It drives the child’s excitement for play. Playground play promotes a child’s gross motor skills basically. Then they engage with the fine motor skills of the children as well.
Importance of play
Playing is a right of every child. United Nations of human rights also recognizes it as a human right. Play is very important for developing emotional, social, and creative thinking skills that children are essential when they are adults.
Play also allows them to engage with the surrounding environment and others in the community. This also enables them to explore their ideas and ways of behaving and testing their boundaries.
Play is defined as “any spontaneous or organized activity that provides enjoyment, entertainment, amusement or diversion.
Unstructured play is more crucial. It allows the children to be independent, to teach them the decision-making process on their own to achieve good results.
As an example think a little about your kid’s decision of going down a slide. It looks awfully steep. Also, it is a kind of scary activity.
But as soon as your child decides to go down, this decision enhances their self-esteem.
With the simple act of going down the slide, they are learning the basics of many critical skills, they will need in their adult life.
Directing your kid to free play activities
Overcoming barriers and support does not require expensive toys. Best of all the time spent together builds a better relationship with your child.
Simple and unsophisticated objects like building blocks, cubes, rods, sand, natural colors, art craft, papers, etc. can provide children with a wide range of imagination and thinking abilities towards the world.
With that skills the next step is creating a group then into society and making interactions are the other important aspect of socialization.
Free play provides a nice platform to help those skills within a child. Free play time impacts a child’s physical, emotional, and social well-being.
It nourishes the child’s body, mind, and senses. It teaches a lot of life skills.
There should be no adult guidance and only supervision is needed for this free play.
Some of the free-play ideas are as follows;
- Playing with toys, balls, and toy animals
- Role-playing (A school teacher teaches at school ).
- Playing with blocks and sand
- Make building blocks without instructions
- Colouring and painting blank sheets
Free play helps lavage development as well. When a child plays they are mastering skills. That skills navigate their lives.
So free play is a crucial aspect of all kinds of play. Language development starts through peer group modifications among children.
Peers need to communicate with each other. So they use to play as their communicative medium.
As adults, you have to understand the importance of free play. Then you may still be involved but do not try to direct the children.
This unstructured, voluntary,child-initiated activity provides lots of advantages to the kids’ life.
- Does not understand the consequences of their actions
If your child gets difficulties with play activities the following problems with social skills can be noticed.
- Poor attention and concentration on tasks
- Flights one activity from another difficulty in taking turns
- Difficulties in sharing things
- Has trouble expressing emotions
- Difficulty in making friendships
- Interrupts frequently
- Prefers to play alone
- Does not understand the consequences of their actions
- Get upset when loses a game
- Fails to read people’s feelings
- Difficulty to understand nonverbal communication
- Always require an adult to play with them
Conclusion
Play is key to child development. The good news is children are intrinsically interested in play and parents have to provide them with opportunities.
They should facilitate collaborative play opportunities in both indoor and outdoor playgrounds. Because playing in a playground is a fun job for preschoolers especially.
SIR KEN ROBBINSON once said when we designed play activities for preschoolers develops all kind of skills
MOST GREAT LEARNING HAPPENS IN THOSE PLAYGROUPS & COLLABORATION IS THE STUFF OF GROWTH.