My Child Just Plays All Day: 5 Reasons Why Play is so Important
As parents, there are days we walk into our child’s daycare look around and say to ourselves, “Man, I wish I could just sit around and play all day like they do.” For our children though, it isn’t just playing. Play and learning go hand in hand.
They spend their days at daycare/preschool working just as you do, but their work involves building and creating connections within their brain.
Play is crucial in the development in the cognitive, physical, and social-emotional skills. Children are not just born with an innate ability to use their fingers, roll over on their own, or walk around. Every experience with children from the day they are born is a learned skilled.
- Play build confidence. Children who are willing to take chances give themselves more opportunities to succeed.
- Playful interactions help create bonds and ensures that children feel loved, happy and safe.
- Playing develops social skills, language and communication. Have you every listened to their conversations while they’re playing? A teacher’s role is to expand these conversations or simply add vocabulary.
- Playful interactions also enable them to learn about caring for others and the environment. The basic concept of sharing and tiding up may start at this age.
- Play develops physical skills. For example, while your child is doing tummy time on their play mat they are developing their neck, back, and core muscles that will later allow them to roll over, sit, and later crawl.
Research has gone to show that humans learn more in the first three years of life than we do at any other point, so let’s work together and use every moment as a teaching moment with our little ones!