What is play?
Children learn about their world through play. Playing creates a stress-free environment where children can interact and practice their speech and language skills as well as building their vocabulary and creating wonderful opportunities for imitation and engagement. Play is also proven to improve socio-emotional, physical, language and cognitive development in children. Play is one of the core building blocks of language and that is why it is such an important part of a child’s development. The more types of play children are exposed to, the more language and ultimately learning they are exposed to. Children learn by doing. When children play and if language is modelled to them, this creates a link in their brain between the action they are doing and the word that goes with that action. The more they hear the word, they will begin to associate that word with the action, and eventually use it for themselves.
Play should be taught by adults modelling it, using a range of toys. A study by Barton et al (2020) concluded that there was evidence to show correlation between adults modelling different types of play and children’s language development.
The benefits of play
- Develop social skills including use of eye contact, turn taking and sharing
- Develop relationships including enjoyment of interactions with others and joint attention
- Develops attention and listening skills
- Develop speech and language skills
- Develop gross motor skills like kicking, running, jumping, throwing
- Develop fine motor skills such as small body movements
- Develop problem solving skills
- Develop imagination
How does play develop?
There are different stages of play that children will move through chronologically. For some children this happens naturally, for others they may require a little support to develop through the stages.
- 0-8 months – exploratory play (this is when a child does involuntary movements with no real purpose, and explores items by putting them in their mouth or banging them)
- 9 months – cause and effect play (pushing buttons to get a reaction from a toy)
- 12 months – functional play (using objects in the way they are intended, such as talking into a toy phone or brushing their hair with a comb)
- 18 months – pretend play (feeding a doll, pouring tea)
- 2 years – symbolic play (using one item as another, such as a cardboard box being an aeroplane)
- 3 years – imaginative play (acting out sequences and fantasy play)
As children grow, their play skills change, opening the door to even more learning and experiences.
How to play
Parents are a child’s best teacher. In the average week, parents will spend more time with their children than teachers or other professionals will, therefore they are the most influential person in their child’s life.
- Aim for 10-20 mins a day
- Avoid distractions to help them focus and concentrate, so turn the TV off
- Comment on what they are doing with the toys (“the farmer is in the tractor”)
- Model the language that goes with their actions (“the duck is swimming”)
- Be consistent with the play so the child picks up the language over time
- Play face to face with your child to encourage eye contact, engagement and to provide cues such as facial expressions while you chat.
- Have fun!
Playing together is not only fun, it shows your child that you are interested in them and in what they are doing. You can model so much language to them through play and really enjoy the interaction together. The earliest building blocks of language include eye contact, taking turns, pointing, using gestures and making vocalisations, all of which happen when we play!
Children’s minds are naturally very inquisitive. By opening up their minds to the world of play, the opportunities are absolutely endless and interactions become so powerful. They can explore the world around them through their senses, with adults modelling the language that is attached to their actions.
As I often tell my clients, it’s not about the toy itself – it’s about how you use it. A few basic essentials that are always in my play toolkit include, a toy farm to work on animal sounds, simple actions and following instructions; some blocks to spark imaginative building; cars on a track to work on back and forth interactions and language such as “ready, steady, go!”; pop-up pirate for turn taking and bubbles for working on exclamatory words such as “wow!”, building anticipation and engagement, and eye contact.
