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The Advantages of Learning Through Play

Writer's picture: Standout DaycareStandout Daycare

It may surprise some to learn that children learn fastest through play since it is easier to learn life skills and improve development by communicating in complex ways and learning to solve problems.

Play can be fairly complex for children, teaching them how to resolve conflicts after getting into altercations with their fellow playmates and nurturing their creativity in a multitude of ways.

Let’s explore the advantages of learning through play and how that can be encouraged at daycares.

The Advantages of Learning Through Play

Although academic learning is highly useful, it is important to realize that children need to be stimulated in a variety of ways, such as through complex modes of interactions with peers and adults.

Play is an integral part of a child’s complete education, allowing them to grow holistically and engage in social patterns that build confidence and elicit the natural inquisition required to further social-emotional development.

Let’s explore the primary benefits of play.

Fun Activities Stimulate Development

Children need to have fun on a daily basis because it keeps them engaged and floods their brains with positive neurochemicals, such as endorphins and dopamine, allowing them to develop their imagination.

It is also no surprise that children can become more inquisitive and learn to think critically by roleplaying characters they’ve conjured up from the lands of their imagination, which is something that adds joy to their lives.

Social Interactions Are Encouraged

Although children should be encouraged to have fun by themselves, they should be put into social situations where they can develop their social skills, resulting in the development of their communication abilities.

Interacting with others in a playful environment creates a desire for teamwork, negotiation, and compromise, which are essential skills that lead to optimal growth and development.

Many challenges also need to be overcome during intense play, such as during sports, giving birth to frustrations and expressions that are difficult to resolve.

Allowing this process to occur naturally and doing your best to make the experience more digestible for the children, such as through the encouragement of thinking and self-reflection, allows them to learn useful skills.

Children may not understand why they can’t play on the swings first when they want to, why some activities are harder than others, and why it’s important to let others have a say in mutual activities.

However, through social interactions during play, children can learn various skills that further aid their development.

Play Is Very Engaging

Engaging in playful activities allows children to enter flow states where they are completely immersed in the experience and utilize their senses to the fullest, allowing them to explore new possibilities and encounter novel challenges.

Kids may also seek out new activities that highlight the feeling of being engaged, which is apparent to observers who notice them being completely involved in what they’re doing.

All these playful activities result in them making sense of the world, making it possible to mature cognitively and stretch their minds beyond their current development.

The Various Types of Play – How Kids Learn Through Practice

Play can be divided into several categories, such as physical, language, exploratory, constructive, fantasy, and social play, with each having certain advantages and life skills nested into them in various ways.

Let's explore some of these in detail.

Physical Play

This kind of play involves utilizing and developing useful motor skills related to bodily movements, involving aspects like balance, coordination, and moving through different planes.

Sports are useful in this regard because they provide challenges that push children to the brink of their physical limits, allowing them to emerge victorious or learn from failure while learning the complexities of movement.

Language Play

Language play is useful in helping kids learn to speak properly and acquire useful literacy skills from activities like solving riddles, playing rhyming games, and creating stories with interesting narratives.

Children can become fairly articulate by going down this road and developing the necessary writing skills from an early age, setting them up optimally for the future.

Exploratory Play

Exploring your environment and playing as part of a group can be highly useful in teaching children how to overcome their fears and explore the unknown, resulting in greater knowledge about their environment.

Under adult supervision, children can explore their senses and engage in various activities to stimulate their sense of adventure.

Final Verdict

Learning through play is compulsory for all children and may be as useful (if not more) than academic learning in the early years of development, allowing them to acquire a broad range of skills that are not limited to the classroom.

Daycares provide exceptionally stimulating environments for children when their parents are not around, allowing them to learn from various activities that nurture a sense of adventure and learning.

Standout Daycare offers parents a chance to leave their children in the hands of trained professionals who are determined to provide a nurturing environment where kids can learn and grow optimally. Click here for more information.

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