5 Ways to Enhance Your Child's Thinking Through Play
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Have fun together as you create new learning opportunities for your kids.
For children, play is about much more than just having fun. It's also an effective way to learn. A report by the American Academy of Pediatrics confirms that open-ended play is critical to healthy brain development.
The Many Benefits of Play
According to the report, play ...
- Develops language skills.
- Encourages problem-solving.
- Improves the ability to focus.
- Promotes creativity.
- Develops judgment and reasoning.
Play also helps children build social and emotional skills such as cooperation, confidence, self-esteem and resilience.
To enhance learning, "there is no substitute for play," says Roberta Golinkoff, one of the coauthors of A Mandate for Playful Learning in Preschool (Oxford University Press, 2008) and a professor at the University of Delaware. "Problem-solving occurs in all realms during play as kids figure out how the world works."
Five Great Ways to Play
As your child grows, try these ways to enhance play and learning:
- Talk about what you're doing.
Describe to your child what you're doing and ask questions to build language skills. If you're playing with toy farm animals, ask, "Can you find the horse's mane? How does it feel? Coarse or smooth? Can you find the pig's tail? Is it straight or curly?"
- Count everyday items.
Ask your child, "How many blocks did you stack?" Or to improve language and number skills: "Which animal is bigger, the elephant or the penguin?" These playtime activities can help develop an aptitude for numbers, reasoning and problem-solving.
- Create a visual scavenger hunt.
Encourage spatial skills (the relationship of one object to another) by asking your child to visualize where certain objects are around the house. Suggest that he close his eyes and describe where he might find items such as a plate, a ball or a sweater. (And watch how he uses gestures even when his eyes are closed!)
- Dance around the room.
Ask your child to imagine that she's a dancer or a gymnast to help her develop coordination and balance. Sway, twirl and leap together to get your feet moving.
- Make up a silly song.
March around the house or on the street to a rousing song and watch your child develop a sense of rhythm, such as "We're trotting on home! We're trotting on home!" It's OK to take some artistic license here-make up new words to sing to simple songs you already know.
"Through play, children create new learning experiences that they might not encounter in any other way," says David Elkind, author of The Power of Play (Da Capo Press, 2007).