Importance of Play in Early Childhood

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. - Old English proverb

Playing is a much-needed activity in early childhood. You may have come across a child playing and you are sure he is having a fun time. However, there is more to the picture than meets the eye. The reason is that "play" is the building block of a child's intellectual and social skills. The parents should realize that through play, their child develops social skills, problem solving skills and also interpersonal skills.

Parents should ensure that their child plays with other children. This is important because it helps in the emotional and social development and also in learning skills such as negotiation. By playing with children of their own age group, a child learns important life-lessons like sharing, fair-play, interpersonal communication, getting along, etc. You could rightly say that play is an integral part of learning.

A child is born with an innate talent and an urge to learn new things through exploration and imitation. For instance, when a toddler attains walking age, he does not like to be carried around. He insists upon standing up and walking on his own tiny feet. As a child grows, the parents should instill new skills and also teach him/her new things through play. This is when play becomes an important activity in early childhood.

Importance of Play in Early Childhood

Play is important in early childhood because it helps prepare a child for school. Engaging in playful activities help to nurture social and language skills. When a child engages himself/herself in hands-on play activities at home, it helps to refine his listening and reasoning skills. There are many multi-sensory play activities that teach a child to understand and learn through touch, sight and sound.

Play is important in early childhood because it helps in the physical development of a child. Obesity is a common problem among children today. Engaging in outdoor games helps in preventing childhood obesity. Outdoor games also help to nurture and co-ordinate the sensory and motor skills development of a child.

Singing along with your child or engaging in play activities involving rhyming words enhances his/her linguistic and vocabulary development. Experts opine that it is necessary to nurture verbal language skills in the early years of childhood rather than teaching word-recognition and phonetics. As a parent, you need to understand that talking to your child would enable him/her to pick up the language quickly. Apart from engaging in talking, singing songs, reciting poems and story-telling would enhance language skills in a child.

Play helps to hone the numerical and mathematical skills of a child. Children are able to grasp the concepts of math easily if started with at an early stage. As a parent, it is your responsibility to develop this skill by engaging them in play activities such as counting the number of objects in a stack, teaching them relationships like short and long, big and small, more and less and and so on.

Through play, children not only learn many new skills, but also develop self-esteem. One thing worth mentioning is, parents must learn to respect the interests of their children and let them take the lead while playing. Play helps in developing a healthy and long-lasting relationship between a child and his/her parents. It also helps the parents gain an insight into the thought process of their child.