The role of play in supporting all children's learning and development 

Children's play supports all areas of play and development. A life without play can inhibit the holistic development of children. From an early years practitioner's view, play is a valuable way of supporting development, and that is one of the reasons why a range of play opportunities are provided.

So, what exactly are all these amazing skills that are developed through play? Let’s take a look at how play develops a child holistically. 

Play is necessary to development because it contributes to the cognitive, physical, social and emotional wellbeing of children. Play increases range of motion, agility, coordination, balance, flexibility and fine and gross motor skills.

1. Play promote impulse control and emotional regulation.

Play enhances children’s emotional development. Regular play can reduce anxiety, stress, and irritability for children while boosting joy and self-esteem. Play allows children to identify their express, and learn about their feelings. During play, children explore and release their emotions, aware of their own, and others’ feelings, and they able to manage feelings by expressing them. 

Play builds personality, self-confidence and positive self-image. During pretend play, symbolic play and dress-up play, children are able to deal with life situation by acting them out. In a New Zealand study, psychologists examined how children handled negative events during pretend plays. They found that children who had more pretend plays with their caregivers were better at regulating their emotions to continue playing​.

 2. Play helps grow social competence and empathy.

Play gives children a great sense of achievement. Children's social development is greatly greatly helped by play. Playing actively and unstructured with others, such as parents, siblings, and peers, is a valuable opportunity to develop social skills. Children's social skills are improved by pretending and trying to negotiate with their peers while they play. Through play, children learn to share and take turns. While playing they learn how to be a part of a group and recognize when others need help. Children also learn how to share, resolve conflicts, and make decisions. This helps children to develop their social skills.

Playtime with other children gives children the chance to interact and socialize with his or her peers. Through play, they learn a lot of social and interpersonal skills. By sharing toys, they learn the value of give and take. When they wait in line they learn patience and equality. Winning games helps them to value perseverance and hard work while losing will give them a lesson on resilience and they learn to appreciate others. Conflict and fights are unavoidable, but guiding children how to solve conflicts through peaceful and positive means will make them strong and empathetic. 

Researchers discovered that preschoolers' fantasy play volume and complexity significantly predicted their social abilities, popularity, and engaging in constructive social interaction.

3. Play helps in children’s cognitive development 

Play enables children to make sense of their world and gain information. Through play, they explore their environment and learn from it. Experiences with real objects help young children to understand concepts and to develop problem-solving. For e.g. building a sandcastle with wet sand, mathematical concepts involved understanding number, sequence, volume, and capacity.

Through play the child’s self-awareness deepens as he/she explores the world around him/her, children develop their self-esteem, a vision of the world and gain a sense of their place in it. When children play, they gain knowledge, they exercise their abilities to think and remember. In other words, they develop cognitively as they have the chance to test their beliefs about the world. Through playing sorting activities, puzzles and some games, children increase their cognitive skills. Children also increase their understanding of size, shape and texture through play. For example, they begin to understand relationships when they try to put a square object in a round opening or a large object in a small space.

4. Improve communication , vocabulary and language 

Children talk and communicate more while they are in the playground than when indoors playing games alone. Play allows children to express themselves and develop their language skills. Through play, children learn to make and practice new sounds. They try out new vocabulary, on their own or with friends, and exercise their imagination through storytelling. 

For example when children play on the swing outside they are constantly calling out to each other to push them or asking for a turn and communicating with each other whereas if they are playing with building blocks inside the classroom by themselves, communication is minimum.

Besides verbal communication, playing also helps develop cognitive skills, understanding, and better recognition of the non-verbal language. 

5. Play helps in children’s Physical development

Children love to be active. Physical exercise helps to promote physically fit and healthy children. Play encourages this activity, giving children the opportunities to sharpen reflexes, work on movement control, improve gross motor skills, and develop greater balance. As children enjoy play, stamina and other skills such as balance are developed. 

Play is essential to develop children’s fine and gross motor skills because while playing, children repeat certain body movements that will develop the body control. For example, a baby observes a soft toy then starts hitting it, then, will try to grasp and finally will be able to pick it up. 

Standing, running, climbing, jumping, throwing, rolling, catching, balancing, kicking, hopping, skipping, hanging, stepping, riding etc develop gross motor skills of child.

Building a tower, opening containers, tracing, holding a crayon, threading, cutting, completing a puzzle, dressing, brushing teeth, colouring, copying shapes, building with lego, drawing pictures, etc.

Final Thoughts on Play

These are just a few examples of what children learn through play. The list of benefits is endless and makes you wonder why it is often so undervalued. Play-based preschools may offer a better learning environment than other options since play is crucial to a child's development. To sum play gives the child the chance to interact and socialize with his or her peers so he/she learns many social and interpersonal skills. In addition, play promotes children’s physical and communicating skills, self-confidence as well as their emotional and cognitive development Play is an essential part of growing up, play is vital for the holistic development of the child including the physical, up and learning fundamental life skills, so be sure to make time for it in children every day.

      You can read more about early child development on our blog post.