Play is vital to a child and young person’s development because it enables them to enjoy learning and promotes their development and also helps with their speech, language and communication skills, their physical, emotional, social and intellectual development.
Parents and practitioners need to understand how play supports children to learn and communicate with others, as it supports their speech language and listening skills.
There are numerous games you can play with a child, young person in almost any environment and at any time, such as…
• When traveling in a car, plane or train.
• Playing in the park, visiting the zoo or other centres.
• Going to the supermarket or within the local community.
• In the home, garden or at a setting they attend.
When we provide positive interactions, facilities and visit, attend or live in enabling environments we are encouraging and supporting the right atmosphere for children and young people they can learn and develop their speech language and communication skills.
As children develop good communication skills, the children will also need to be able to share and discuss their learning with their carers and their peers to help them to develop relationships.
We can encourage children by helping them with their own concentration skills how they use their own observations, by listening and interacting with others this will help them to develop knowledge and their intellectual skills, their concentration and attention development.
We need to provide a diverse range of resources to enable them to play, learn and develop their communication skills such as-
• Books -are a great way of developing their speech and literacy skills, you could focus on books with symbolic sounds for early speech, story books to develop language, or looking at pictures and commenting on what you see, and listening to what the child