Sunday, March 15, 2015

Just Play?

     Play is essential for the expansion of learning and the developmental growth for your child. Is it commonly misunderstood that when a child plays, he or she is not gaining anything beneficial from it. What people are not informed about is the importance of play throughout a child's life and all of the domains it targets. It enables children to make sense of their world, develops social and cultural understandings, allows children to express their thoughts and feelings, fosters flexible and divergent thinking, provides opportunities to meet and solve real problems and develops language and literacy skills and concepts. There are many developmental domains included in play which are, fine and gross motor skills, self- help and adaptive skills, spiritual and moral, social and emotional domains and language and cognitive developmental domains. When a child is engaged in play they are constantly developing these domains and skills.

 
    
Gross Motor development involves the larger, stronger muscle groups of the body. In early childhood, it is the development of these muscles that enable the baby to hold his/her head up, sit, crawl and eventually walk, run and skip. - See more at: http://www.kamloopschildrenstherapy.org/gross-motor-skills-milestones-toddler#sthash.dZGBWJj8.dpuf
     Gross Motor development involves the larger muscles in a child's body as well as larger movements a child makes with his arms, legs, feet, or his entire body. So crawling, running and jumping are gross motor. Gross Motor skills are also important for major body movement such as walking, maintaining balance, coordination, jumping, and reaching. Fine motor skills are smaller actions and focus on using the smaller muscles in the body. When a child picks things up, or wriggles his toes in the sand, he's using his fine motor skills. When a baby uses his lips and tongue to taste and feel objects he's using fine motor skills, too


     Motor skills usually develop together since many activities depend on the coordination of gross and fine motor skills. Gross motor skills develop over a relatively short period of time also promoting the development of gross motor abilities is considerably less complicated than developing fine motor skills. Helping a child succeed in gross motor tasks requires patience and opportunities for a child to practice desired skills. Parents need to understand the child's level of development before helping that child master gross motor or fine motor skills.

     As for cognitive development through play, a child practices understanding "cause-and-effect", reasoning, as well as early-math skills.  An example would be a baby who continually drops a spoon from his high-chair is exercising his cognitive ability. This is fun for him due to the noise it makes and the impact he experiences when he sees it hitting the floor but he also learns that when he drops it, you will pick it up (cause-and-effect). Counting and patterning are also included in this domain for preschoolers.



     
     Self- Help skills are easily learned through play  and activities in this domain include learning to dress oneself, feed oneself, using the toilet, brushing teeth, bathing, trying shoes on etc. Everything that a child needs to know to start being more independent could be included in this domain and as a parent or caregiver this factor in their developmental growth is easier to nurture. It requires simplicity in doing every day actions and routines and practicing them during the day or through activities targeting them in the same way.

                                                           
      Regarding the spiritual and moral factor of  a child's development, recognizing the difference between right and wrong will fall in place if you are simultaneously teaching and modeling love. Through play they are learning to respectfully balance playing and understanding their peers while enjoying themselves and seeing that by behaving a certain way towards people the repercussions are very rewarding for everyone. In my opinion, this is the area that is most lacking in our culture today. And if parents and caregivers don’t teach it by modeling it, who will? If we neglect educating the children about being compassionate and caring, we are not giving them all they really need to fulfill their potential and receiving a sense of joy in their young lives.
 

Playful experiences are learning experiences
     Playful experiences are learning experiences! Each of these domains are also interrelated.  When your baby starts crawling which is a gross motor milestone, he will also be enhancing his cognitive abilities by learning about the world around him.  Learning new words will encourage him to participate more in social situations. Over the years its been tested, observed and defined that children reach developmental milestones at different rates and by taking that into consideration developmental growth becomes less of a task for the child and more of a learning experience.

Image Links:
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