The early years are a time when children learn through play and exploration. They develop in all areas and they build foundational skills that will set them up for schooling and life.
Holistic development includes physical, cognitive, social, emotional and spiritual development.
Here is a simple explanation of the physical benefits of play, as mentioned by Marike de Witt in her book “The Young Child in Context: A psycho-social perspective“.
1. Gaining Control Over the Body
From birth and throughout early childhood, play is the medium through which children gain control over their bodies.
They pass through predictable milestones in physical development as they spend time moving, exploring their world and strengthening their muscles.
2. Gross Motor Skills
Children develop motor skills that can be broadly divided into two groups – gross motor skills and fine motor skills.
As Martie Pieterse explains in her book “Language and School Readiness”, motor skills develop from the head downwards, spreading from the body to the limbs. For example, a child first gains control of their arms before developing control of the finger muscles and holding a pencil.
This means children start by building gross motor skills such as pushing, pulling, walking, running, swinging, swaying, rolling, hopping, jumping, throwing, catching, hitting and balancing.
They also build strength (including core strength), endurance, speed and smoothness in their movements. The more kids play, the more opportunities they get to practise these skills through repetition.
Here is a list of the typical gross motor milestones at various ages.
3. Fine Motor Skills
When children engage in play that strengthens the finger muscles, they develop fine motor control.
Activities like building puzzles, stacking blocks, pushing pegs into a pegboard, handling eating utensils, painting, drawing and playing with sand are all excellent for building small muscles.
These are the fine motor milestones that children progress through.
4. Perceptual-Motor Skills
When children are playing, their brains take in information via the senses, which they then make sense of (this is called perception). The brain, the body and the senses are always working together to execute tasks.
As Dr Lynne Kenney explains, “Perceptual-motor skills refer to the ability to perceive and interpret environmental cues in order to guide motor actions. Examples include driving a car or playing a sport.”
Playing during early childhood builds visual perception and auditory perception, which are both very important skills for learning to read and write.
Learning songs, playing rhyming games, building puzzles, and playing matching card games are examples of play activities that will develop perceptual-motor skills.
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Play also stimulates the two lesser-known senses: proprioception and the vestibular system.
Some of the following physical benefits of play also fall under the area of perceptual-motor skills:
5. Body Awareness
While young children are engaged in play, they learn about their bodies and develop what is called body awareness.
This includes:
- Knowing the body parts and where they are located
- Knowing the functions of each part
- Knowing how to get different parts to move
- Knowing the spatial location of the body
6. Spatial Awareness
Children need to develop an understanding of where their bodies are (position in space) and what movements they are able to carry out based on their position.
They see objects as being in relation to themselves – in front of, behind or next to. As they mature, they are then able to look at other objects and determine their position.
7. Laterality and Dominance
As children move and grow, they develop an inner awareness of both sides of the body. This eventually leads to a dominant side of the brain as well as being right or left-handed or footed (or both).
These will play a part in learning to read, write and do maths in the future.
8. Crossing the Midline
It is important that children learn to cross their midline. This means being able to move across the imaginary centre line of the body with say, the right arm stretched over to the left side of the page.
Many tasks rely on midline crossing, especially reading and writing, where the hands or the eyes need to constantly move over to the left side of the page (or right to left if you’re writing Arabic, for example).
If you look at a workbook of a child with poor midline crossing, you’ll often see a pattern in the writing: it starts on the left of the top line and then slants more and more towards the right as it goes down the page.
9. Eye-Hand-Foot Coordination
During physical play, children build their eye-foot and eye-hand coordination, which is the ability to perform movements with the hands (or feet) while being guided by the eyes.
Activities like catching a ball, cutting in a straight line and writing words on paper all rely on this skill.
10. Keeping the Body Active
One of the best ways to encourage having an active body is to let kids play. Children are seldom sitting still for long when playing.
With screen time being such a passive activity, play can be the perfect way to get the body going again, in turn waking up the mind.
Play is also a healthy outlet for energy.
11. Encouraging Health and Fitness
Play is not only good for keeping the body active but also for creating a life-long habit of being active.
By raising kids who play, spend time outdoors with their family and get involved in sports and games, they can develop healthy habits and make fitness a regular part of their routine.
12. Academic Competence
As I have shared in all these points, all kinds of play activities set the stage for academic learning.
Without play, children wouldn’t be able to develop the physical skills needed to hold a pencil, write from left to write, or track words with their eyes as they read.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about the physical benefits of play in early childhood.
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Elizabeth Proszek
Saturday 2nd of December 2023
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