Kiddipedia
With the threat of the COVID-19 Delta variant plaguing states around Australia and New South Wales’ lockdown set to continue for the foreseeable future, it’s important to take a step back and reassess the tools we have to help our kids through these challenging times.
With social interaction and any outdoor experiences drastically reduced, play remains an essential tool for children and adults alike to reconnect, learn, relieve stress, and simply have fun.
What is play?
It might sound like a simple question, but before we can add more play to our children’s lives, it’s important to understand exactly what we mean by ‘play’. Any activity or experience can be considered play, or play-based when it is naturally motivating, meaning no external reward is required.
Play should also have enjoyment and/or positive effect demonstrated, with an opportunity to self-direct, make some choices, and be creative and/or imaginative. Play involves full engagement, both physically and mentally, with repetition and practice being common traits.
Although a toddler’s play will look and sound different from a kindergarten child’s play, a teenager’s play, or even an adult’s play, these characteristics will be the same no matter what your age. Yes, even adults could use a little play time every now and again!
The value of play
Play has a wide range of benefits for children, including helping to promote cognitive, language, physical and social-emotional learning. Whether the children are learning a language, developing literacy, exploring numeracy or discovering the natural world, they do so through activities and experiences that are play-based.
Let’s look at some examples of play and unpack what skills a child might learn from them. Consider a toddler filling containers with water and dumping them out repeatedly. While this might look like a simple activity to an adult, it is actually building a child’s fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, beginning their understanding of cause and effect, and helping build an understanding of the properties of water.
How about a nursery child making ‘pizza’ with playdough and sharing it with you to ‘eat’? Here, they’re building fine motor skills and social language, along with numeracy concepts such as bigger than, smaller than, same as, divide and equal.
Play at home
Play is an important part of some education models, such as Maple Bear’s student-focused learning model, which is just ramping up to launch in Australia. However, it’s important that parents and family members actively bring play into home life too – especially in lockdown, where the boundaries between school and home are incredibly blurred.
Learning through play can easily be supported in the home environment without spending a single dollar. For younger children, many materials you can easily find at home can be considered ‘toys’, including plastic food storage containers and lids, sponges, cardboard or plastic boxes, pots and pans, bubble wrap, toilet rolls, paper towel rolls, old cards and magazines, or even a big bowl of soapy water.
For slightly older children, there are many ways to implement play at home, including clearing a space for practising dance, martial arts, yoga, or Zumba. How about teaching your child a new skill such as how to volley a ball, or letting them teach you how to play video games? Other ideas include cooking meals together, holding a Karaoke night, or getting creative by making TikTok or YouTube videos.
Don’t object to energetic, loud play. Understand that children need to expend pent-up energy, just as they would do at school during their break time. Remember that play is learning, and it reduces stress by boosting joy, laughter, and calm feelings – all incredibly important in the middle of a potentially stressful lockdown.
While lockdown is an incredibly challenging time for the entire family, play can be a silver lining amongst the clouds. It helps build a stronger parent-child bond, reduces stress, and creates lasting memories. And remember: play isn’t just good for children, but can be incredibly helpful to adults’ wellbeing too. So don’t hold back, get stuck in!
Carlos Ferri, director, Maple Bear Australia
Carlos Ferri is the director of Maple Bear Australia, an education company that brings the best of Canadian education to Australia and the world by offering high quality bilingual (immersive) education opportunities for schools and child care centres.
After arriving in Australia over a decade ago unable to speak English, Carlos has since learned the language fluently, and has used his global knowledge to empower his business success and was awarded Sydney Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2019 and was included among Business News Australia’s Top 100 Young Entrepreneurs 2020. His experience puts him in the perfect position to understand the benefits of a bilingual education and the advantages and global perspective it gives students.
