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The Importance of Playtime for Children

Primary schools
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Evidence strongly suggests that when children are playing they are actually learning a range of different skills and abilities. Through play children are developing their language, improving motor function, and gaining social skills. Even if they are playing alone, children will be improving their sociability, giving real characters and personalities to their toys, anthropomorphising their teddy bears or action figures as they talk to and confide in them. Competitive sports games will engender a child`s ambitious spirit, while board games such as chess will encourage them to think in a strategic manner.

The Montessori teaching method strongly encourages `learning through play,` stressing how it helps develop a child`s imagination, and teaches them to be constructive. My favourite toy when I was a child was Lego - I can say this without equivocation. If I could have retained just a single toy, it would have been my Lego blocks. To this day I can still recall the excitement of rushing to my big box of assorted pieces, and can hear even now the rumbling crash as I poured the entire contents over the floor! There were numerous manuals that instructed how one could build certain objects - police stations, battleships, cars with working suspensions and gear boxes, the step by step guides drawn out in beautiful orthographic projection. I was never interested in making any of these models though - it seemed so boring to me, being told which piece goes where, dutifully locating the next block, and placing it in the exact spot as instructed by the booklet. I found it far more interesting to make whatever I wanted, using only my imagination as a guide. Of course the finished results were never as impressive looking as the three storey police station, the battleship with its gun turrets, or the car with suspension and gear box, but they were my creations.

In a certain sense no one really knows why children play. To say they do so because it`s fun doesn`t really help - certainly play is fun, but it`s also dramatic and at times perhaps even frightening. I remember watching my three children playing a certain game, which involved two of them rescuing a princess doll from a crocodile toy, operated by the third, who held the kidnapped monarch in a cave surrounded by water. Of course all this took place in my living room, with some cushions and a blanket effectively creating a scene of hallucinatory clarity, to their little eyes at least, all mine saw was a mess! The game was certainly very fun, but I could see that it was also deadly serious, with the two `rescuers` fearful that if they didn`t rescue the princess soon `she will get eated!` This kind of play almost seems like theatre, only that is so convincing the actors themselves believe it to be real. Some child psychologists speculate that by playing in this way, children are making sense of the world, creating imaginary situations that they can inhabit and make sense of.

It is interesting to note that play is deemed to be so important the United Nations High Commission for human rights has declared it to be a right of every child. If only I had known of this ruling when I was told by my parents to put my Lego bricks away and go to bed!

Despite the abundance of evidence showing just how vital play is for a child`s healthy development, there have been numerous cuts to time devoted to `free play` in schools over recent years. A study conducted by the National Association of Elementary School Principals in 1989, found that 96% of schools they surveyed provided at least one recess period for pupils. A decade later a survey conducted by Anthony D. Pellegrini, a professor of early childhood education, found that only 70% of schools had a recess break. It is of course vital that all children receive a good education, but with clear evidence as to the importance of play in their cognitive development, we must make sure that we do not let their academic lessons overrun and efface the time needed for this other mode of learning.

3 years ago
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