For professional writers and programmers.The most important thing you can do to encourage play, is encourage play! Give your child plenty of time for both structured and unstructured play, and remember that during the early years his best friend is YOU.
TYPE TO LEARN 4 PLAY HOW TO
How to Encourage Playīy now the internet is abuzz with what child development experts have long been emphasizing: Play is central to every aspect of development – including motor skills, language, problem solving, emotional intelligence, and social interaction. Agreeing on, following, and adjusting rules is central to social-emotional development, and teaches children to use logic, fairness, and problem solving in order to interact successfully. Not only do they act out increasingly complex and abstract pretend stories, the appearance of cooperative play (around age 4) leads to co-creating imaginative scenarios with peers.Ĭooperative play also leads to another level of play: Games with rules. What’s Next?Īs toddlers enter preschool and elementary school, symbolic play continues to evolve. The next phase involves more abstract play: Holding a block to his ear and pretending it’s a phone.īecause symbolic play is such an important developmental leap, we gave it its own article, so head over there to learn more. This evolves into creating a story: Going back and forth between talking on the toy phone and handing it to a parent to take a turn talking. Symbolic play starts with a toddler pretending in a concrete way: Holding a toy phone to his ear and pretending to talk. It’s the beginning of witnessing toddlers’ imaginations come to life. Even in infancy, babies “play” by intently observing their surroundings.Īlso known as symbolic or pretend play, this emerges alongside a big cognitive shift: Understanding that objects, actions, or ideas can represent other objects, actions, or ideas. Exploratory play helps children learn cognitive and language concepts such as shape, size, color, function, and spatial awareness.
Our toddler gets a new set of blocks, for example, and studies one of them by looking at it from all angles while slowly turning it in his hands. This play promotes creativity and problem solving, and gives children a sense of accomplishment.ĭuring exploratory play, a child examines something closely in order to learn more about it. Remember those two blocks our toddler was banging together? Now he is stacking one on top of the other, constructing a tower. The onset of constructive play shows that little ones are developing the ability to plan. Unlike functional play, constructive play is goal-oriented. Functional play helps little ones learn about the world through their senses, supports social-emotional development, and strengthens motor skills.Īs the name suggests, this play involves constructing something (building, drawing, crafting, etc.). A toddler’s functional play could be climbing on a play structure, or banging two blocks together to hear the sound. Infants engage in functional play when they trade smiles with a caregiver, or squeeze a soft toy over and over. It supports creativity, language development, and social-emotional skills.įunctional play is playing simply to enjoy the experience.