Benefits of Learning Through Play

Play is a very important part of a child’s development, and can affect their development in a number of ways, there is a collection of principles that were formed to look at the value of play in nurturing a child’s development, this is called the ‘play Cycle’. It consists of the following stages .

• Metalude-This is when a child chooses the activity or toy that the want to play with.

• Play Cue-This is an expression or a physical action which a child might do to show other children that they would like them to come over and be involved. For example, a child may have a toy car and pretend to mimic a crash sound to the other child which would then tempt them to involve themselves in the car game.

• Play return– This is when a child or adult has accepted the request to play and then makes the decision to whether they want to involve themselves or not.

• Play Flow-this is when a child gets very involved in a task or activity, this usually starts from the play cue.

• Annihilation-This Is where a child makes the decision to stop what activity or play they are doing, reasons being boredom from repetition or if the game has ended.

Play can affect all aspects of a child s development, below I have listed the different areas.

• Physical development– Physical development through play for young children involves play which enhance gross and fine motor skills, for example threading string through small holes requires concentration and fine motor skills. Activities involving running, jumping, riding a bike requires gross motor skills. These are really beneficial for a child and need to be encouraged from a young age as they will be needed for them to take part in activities such as sports day. Children should also be encouraged to realise the importance of healthy eating alongside physical exercise.

• Emotional development-Play which involves emotional development is extremely important for young children and needs to be incorporated during school activities. This type of play is beneficial to all children of all ages but also helps encourage children who find it hard to express there emotions, a way in which this can be used for example children can use dolls or teddies to play out a situation, dress up and role play can be used also. This is good to build self esteem and self confidence to then assist in other incidents in school.

• Intellectual development- This type of play doesn’t necessarily mean that a child has to put pen to paper, many play activities can be creative and fun that will benefit a child intellectually, for example a group of children could be doing junk modelling and they would then discuss which materials would suit each part of the model and what colour paints to use to then match up to the rest of the groups designs.

• Social development-Play is vital to make sure that children develop good social skills with there class friends, teachers and other adults. This is a life skill that needs to be encouraged from an early age to then get them ready for life in a school environment. Activities that can help build up child’s social skills can involve for example a group of year 2 children having a classroom discussion about who is in there family, the other children can then discuss differences and similaritys, for example child A may say “I have a brother” child B may respond “I don’t have a brother I have two sisters” obviously this type of discussion needs to be approached in a sensitive manner as some children have different family set-ups for example child a may not have a dad like child b which could then spark off a different conversation.