At Childhood&Home we believe in nurturing children into self-autonomous people. We believe in kindness, and cleanliness, and responsibility. We believe in working hard and experiencing delayed gratification. It is because of all these things we believe in and strive to accomplish, that we believe in PLAY.
Play? What? Many adults feel inclined to question the power of play; “How can a child be learning when all they are doing is playing? If my child is just playing all day, how will they ever learn to be a math scholar? I want my child to learn what is like in the real-world. If I just let them play, they will never understand!” At Childhood&Home, we understand that given our own upbringings and societal norms, it is completely normal to have these thoughts and think your children should not ‘”just play.” We are here to tell you that playing is so much more than what you see on the surface. Play is how children learn, how they make sense of the world, how they make brain connections necessary to function within their community, and when they are working the hardest. Below you will find a few of the many reasons why (and how) we believe children should play all day.
- Purposeful play: Children should be engaged in ‘play all day’ on one condition- if it is purposeful. Purposeful play means having an objective, working towards a goal, and executing some kind of plan. This is important for active brain engagement. Think working on building a tower that is as tall as themselves versus dumping out their bins of toys one after another and running away. Having a plan or objective, even if that plan changes throughout, allows for critical thinking, hypothesizing, and recall after the fact. All great building blocks for learning.
- Making sense of the world: Play is how children process what they have absorbed and observed from the world and community around them. As caregivers, we hear children having pretend phone calls about ordering take out, see exchanges with their baby dolls where they say exactly what their mother says to them, and expressions of their feelings in their drawings. Play helps children make sense of it all, sort through their own emotions about it, and helps them learn the rules of society. What looks like playing with barbies to us, is a whole lot more to their brain processes.
- Engagement: Caregivers and parents need to understand that children learn much, much more when they are actively engaged in the process of what they are doing. This means, when your child decides to play with something, they are at their peak of engagement and it is up to us to help extract as much learning as possible from the situation. We can, for example, just play passively with dolls until it is time for lunch, or we can turn that into a meaningful and educational experience. Your child has the doll fall down and hurt her knee- How does that make the doll feel? (emotion). What can we do to help take care of the doll? (practical life skills, empathy). The doll needs a bandaid- let’s count how many are in the box before we give her one (math.) Children love to play and feel empowered when they begin on their chosen play journey. With a little help from a caregiver, a child can learn big things within those small moments.
Playing is how children learn focus, concentration, and can develop across all domains. It is up to the caregiver to be intuitive enough to know when not to interrupt the child in deep focus of their task, and when to participate with open-ended questions and targeted activities for development. We hope this can give you a little insight on the importance of play and why we encourage children to play to their heart’s content. Enjoy playing everyone!
Childhood&Home 