How Does Play Encourage Development?

Play serves various roles in different community, cultural, and family settings, and enhances children’s intellectual, emotional, social, creative, and physical development. In early development, curiosity or exploratory play allow opportunities for young children to move freely about in a safe environment. As children become interested in novel experiences and situations, they must learn and master the skills that help them in exploring their surrounding world.

As children grow and better develop basic motor and thinking skills, the nature of play and its importance changes. For 4-year-olds, social play promotes increased mastery of language skills as they communicate needs and desires. For 6-year-olds, more complex language, motor, and intellectual skills grow through play that includes organized games, fantasy or symbolic games that use creative expression, and activities such as drawing or model building to develop fine motor skills.

These examples illustrate the importance of play to children’s learning. Through play with others, children learn to negotiate, solve problems, and communicate. Make-believe play, whether alone or with others, helps youngsters to imagine and create new games and ideas as well as to express thoughts and feelings that may be difficult or painful to verbalize to friends or adults. For example, through play children can act out situations that closely mimic real life situations. In these instances, children often have the chance to devise different endings, solutions, or plans for how to deal with a difficult situation.

Play that is creative, spontaneous, and self-initiated is critical. According to the Family Education Network, current popular toys of media figures or video game characters tend to overly structure children’s play. Battery-operated or electronic devices may be fun but often leave little possibility for creative expression and social interaction.

The Family Education Network suggests that parents will help their children by selecting toys that offer valuable development opportunities. For example, paints or art supplies, empty boxes, egg cartons, and puppets can become fun toys to stimulate a child’s imagination. This is not to say that children should only be allowed to play with these types of toys. A combination is best. This will give children more opportunities to imagine, create, and explore new ideas.

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