Do you limit your kids from playing ever since when they were young? Well, you should encourage them doing more instead but set a boundary for them. Why is play time so important at the early stage of your little ones’ childhood?
Playing can be of outdoors or indoors. There are plenty of games and toys for you to use to educate your child with and it’s not all bad for them. Playing is supposed to be active but sometimes, if you really have no choice to make it passive, the television could be a helper but don’t misuse it. The television is indeed a bad choice of entertainment for them but you can’t control your little ones from watching it. That’s why you should set a time limit and controls the channels they watch by sitting next to them while explaining what they watch as a form of interaction to make it active.
While being indoors, create a play room for them and it doesn’t necessary has to consist of soft toys or mechanical toys. A musical instrument or a canvas for them to draw or play dough and board games is also known as playing for them. While being in the outdoors, as parents it’s crucial for you watch them closely as there are dangers everywhere. Usually outdoors games are much more challenging and fun where they are using not only their mental strength but also most of their physical strength.
Now in both indoors and outdoors, there are always these five types of play. There would be the onlooker behavior which playing becomes passive through observing and conversing with other kids who are engaged in play activities. The solitary independent play is having them playing alone. As for parallel playing, children are still maintaining their independence but are playing each others toys. Associative playing will involved sharing materials and communicating with each other but they don’t coordinate their objectives or interests. As for cooperative play, children will organize themselves into roles with specific goals in mind!
Playing is part of their development of cognitive thinking, social-emotions as well as physical behaviors. Children learn faster and better in an environment where they are allowed to explore, discover and play. Play means light, brisk or changing movements which helps them to have fun while acting/imitating a person’s character or employing a piece of equipment or exercising with activities for amusement/recreation/action games.
During a playtime, children will enhance their language development too during interaction while boosting their confidence in social competence. Their imagination and creativity would also grow to boost their thinking skills indirectly. If a child is prevented from playing, then he will turn out to be a dull and assertive person who tends to be lonely most of the time because of very little interactions and limited confidence in them.
It is fine for your kids to play most of the time but don’t let them go overboard. That’s why parent’s role is to supervise your kids during play time and control them while having fun with them together as well!