Child Development Play
Play Kid Games

The more children play kid games, the more they are exposed to various learning opportunities.

Play Kid Games to Help Your Child Learn and Grow

While playing, children are in fact learning how to:

Social Skills

• Share
• Communicate and, therefore, develop and expand their language abilities
• Observe, watch, and learn from others while broadening their horizons
• Resolve conflicts with their peers
• Play cooperatively
• Build social skills needed to play kid games and make friends
• Dress up and try on different personalities with different clothing
• Become more independent
  

Math Skills

• Count
• Figure out patterns
•  Compare, contrast, sort and classify
• Put puzzles together

Reading Skills

• Look at books
• Explore the alphabet
• Listen to stories

Arts and Crafts

• Explore creativity through arts and crafts
  
• Practice using fine motor skills such as cutting, drawing, painting and molding
• Build with various materials
  

Child Development Play in Early Child Education

Our roles as adults is to give our children a safe and inviting environment where they can explore and learn.

Too often I see parents and teachers "roving" over the children while they are playing. When two children in my class disagree and come to me, I encourage them to work it out on their own. We need to guide our children and give them the right tools that will help them solve their problems.

Remember when you played outside with your friends? Did your mom ever came out and say: "Sorry, you are five children playing at the slide and this is only for three children so two of you need to go play somewhere else." That would simply be ridiculous. We can not be sergeants who rule over the children. We need to trust them to be able to make their own decisions.

Your time is up! Another classic situation is when children are playing nicely, enjoying themselves, when a parent or a teacher simply comes and says: "Noam, you were in creative center for a long time. You need to switch to something else." When you are busy and engaged, does anyone tell you to stop what you are doing? We need to let children play for as long as they want and join in whenever we can. By playing with our children we can get an insight to their thoughts, feelings and well being.

I understand that there are times when children need to stop playing and eat supper or prepare for bed time. In such cases, I like to give children warnings that it is soon time to end this activity. I find that it helps ease the transition time. It is easier for children to let go of what they are doing if you are excited about what is coming up. When Eytan has a difficult time getting out of the bath at night, I start talking about the books we will be reading before bed time. He is out in no time.

Preschool Activities Home > Importance of Play