Play and Development

Playing with your child may just seem like a normal, everyday activity that is a natural part of your life.  It is also a great way of bonding with your child and getting to know each other.  What you may not necessarily realise is that playing is a very effective way of educating your child and helping them to develop a wide range of skills that will be beneficial to them both at their current stage of development in in their development. 

Children learn many of their skills from observing others.  These skills may include social skills, language skills, behaviour and body language.  The people that children spend most of their time with are usually their parents.  Therefore it makes sense that a child sees their parents as their number one role model. 

Whilst playing with your child, you will no doubt be speaking to them and listening to them.  If you use new words that they are unfamiliar with, you are expanding their vocabulary.  You will also be teaching them about sentence construction without even realising that you are doing it.  Taking turns in the conversation through questions and responses will also help to develop your child’s conversational and social skills. 

If you were to play a role play game with your child, then your child will develop skills in relating to other people, body language, behaviour, speaking and listening.

Many games that you can play with your child can help to develop their academic skills.  Games such as board games and matching pair’s games can aid their literacy and numeracy development.  Word cards and dice are common features of such games and your child will learn word and number recognition and reading and counting skills.

Most games or activities will involve some form of turn taking or sharing which are important social skills that your child will gradually be developing.  It will also give them the opportunity to develop the concept of losing, which although can be a hard lesson in life, it is something that they will have to learn to accept in their lives. 

Any physical activities or games that you play with your child will help to develop their gross motor skills.  These include skills such as running, jumping and ball skills, amongst others.

So, next time your playing with your child, think not only of the fun that you are both having, but of the important skills that you are helping them to develop, and use this as a perfect excuse to spend more time playing together.