What’s a childhood without play? I remembered reading from somewhere with this phrase: “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” That’s so true, isn’t it?
Play is just play! What do you really learn? What exactly is play?
Play is recreation, amusement, fun, enjoyment. You tend to relax yourself when you are immerse in play. Most of us learn so much from play especially children. Play teaches sharing, self discipline and tolerance towards others. Play enhances and induces creativity. Play allows one to learn and develops as individuals especially for children as it assists in their emotional and intellectual development which are core building blocks during their transition years.
Children love to play! Children can use their imagination to develop games and interact with each other. It is also encouraged to have unstructured play or loosely supervised play as much as possible as over scheduled or programmed activities can spoil their creativity and imagination. There is no “right way” or “wrong way” of playing.
How do children learn from play?
Children learn by doing it because play allows children to have hands on experiences. Children loves to follow what their elder siblings are doing and what we do.
On top of toys or educational materials that my children play. They also helped out in my household chores. To me is a chore, to them is play. They are fascinated by what grown ups do and that is what I’ve always been doing at home. I’ve been exposing them to I always do and get them to help out too. It does not only train them to be more responsible on what they do but also having higher self esteem.
What can the children do?
A lot!! Landry, washing of dishes, folding of clothes, even packing of toys, etc… The list goes on! Every morning, as my girl (mei mei) goes to school at a later time, she gets to help me with preparation for lunch. She washes the vegetables. It has become a routine for her. She will automatically take out my vegetables from the fridge and I’ll prepare a small bucket for her to do the washing. You can see she hasn’t even changed out of her pj.
Sometimes they take turn to do different tasks if both of them are home. They love cutting (extreme close supervision is required here!).
Mei mei insisting on cutting onion and happily doing it until….
then she realised she can’t do it any longer with the tears in her eyes.
Recently, mei mei loves pretend play. This is not household chores but still a play which she can learn too. This week her role is a mummy taking care of her baby. Look at how good she is with her baby. She bathes the baby.
She towel dries her baby.
She feeds her baby.
She pats the baby to sleep.
Through joyful, healthy play, children begin a love of learning and prepare for life itself. Go on, let your child learn through play because it’s a child’s job! 😉
