play

lay benefits children's physical development as through practising skills such as running, jumping, climbing etc it helps develop balance and increases coordination. This type of development also assists the development and refinement of fine motor skills; creative and constructive play are both particularly beneficial in this area, also play helps children to refine their motor skills when making toy figurines stand up etc.

Play benefits children’s intellectual development as it helps then begin to understand important mathematical concepts such as number, matching, ordering, sorting, making and recognising pattern, adding and subtracting, and measuring. Role play helps children to explore aspects of their real life e.g a visit to the hairdresser. Constructive allows children to practice and develop reasoning and problem solving skills.

Play benefits children’s language development as all play involves communication weather its the child explaining the rules of the game to a new comer, talking about what they are doing or their plans for what will happen next. Children learn new vocabulary through socio-dramatic play eg ‘x-ray’ when playing doctors’. Also we as adults can promote language development by suggesting new vocabulary while children are playing and labelling areas of the play environment.

Play benefits children’s emotional development . Through play children learn to deal with their emotions in a healthy way, while at play children cannot be wrong so childrens efforts are always rewarding to them, therefore boosting self-esteem and helping children to develop a positive self image. Physical play gives children a safe outlet for negative emotions e.g anger and frustration. Role play and pretend play can give children the opportunity to act out scenes from their lives that may be bothering them therefore giving the adult an insight into how the child is thinking and feeling. Games that require rules and cooperation between children teach children the importance of controlling their emotions and to deal well with situations that are not going their way, e.g. if the rest of the groupe dont want to play a certain game then the child may have to accept the groupe decision even though they do not agree with it.