The Importance of Play
Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning. We often think “wouldn’t it be nice to play all day”, but when was the last time you let your imagination run free, just like our young ones do so well? As we grow older, the action of “play” starts to fade and sometimes our lives and work get so busy we don’t leave any time for it. Play is so essential in development because it contributes to the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being of children and youth. Play also offers an ideal opportunity for parents to engage fully with their children. So, let’s take a lesson out of our children’s “play” book!
In Early Start we know how important play helps in our children’s brain development. These years are the most crucial for positive and healthy stimulated growth through play-based learning. Allowing all of our children to play freely allows them to strengthen and expand their creative imagination. It also helps improve their overall intelligence, self-confidence, and most importantly their mental health.
In the earlier years children may play alongside their peers, we call this parallel play. With guidance and interaction with their peers, children begin to develop the skills of sharing, working together, communication and cooperation.
These skill sets continue to expand and develop as the child continues to grow in age. You’ll see more role play, more depth and context within each child’s play time, more blank canvas “springboard” based exercises (like house, grocery store, princess parties, etc), more “off the page” activities (like building 3 dimensional structures) together and individually.
At CGS we believe that play is very beneficial for our students! We see them incorporating what they learn in class while playing with their peers or during solitary play.
As you can see our students have a strong grasp of using their creativity, with a “the sky’s the limit” mentality!