Hide-and-seek, tag, playing school, playing house? Playtime surely is a magical and educational moment! Playing is a fertile and essential ground for the healthy development of children. It enables children to develop their creativity to its full potential.
Playing invites children to interact with their own inner universe and, also, with peers. While playing, children develop their emotional, motor, and cognitive capacities; test physical and mathematical concepts; and build knowledge. They also have the chance to relive and give new meaning to situations experienced in their daily lives.
“When children play house or play doctor, for example, they rebuild and re-signify relationships and experiences. This way, they elaborate feelings, emotions and give meaning to their experiences”, Camila Maia, be.Living’s Early Childhood Education coordinator, explains.
According to Camila, playtime should be free, as it opens up the gounds for endless learning. “Adults have the important role of thinking about the context in which the child plays: the organization and planning of the space, the materials arranged, the quantity of such materials, how they are displayed, the offer of non-conventional materials, that is, not only ready-made toys, such as cardboard boxes and objects that stimulate the child’s creative and imaginative development. At school, it is the teachers who will think about this organization of contexts, spaces and groups. But playtime should be free.”
Camila explains that playing freely allows children to make choices. “It is an opportunity that children have to develop autonomy and creativity at its full potential, from their own internal storylines”.
The educator states that the way a child plays is a hint on their mental health”. We understand that playtime is when children re-signifies their experiences, elaborating their emotions and feelings, giving meaning to what is happening in their day to day lives. Playtime sheds light on how they are feeling, how they are reacting to the circumstances they are going through. The relationships established whle playing are connections that they make with their real lives. All of this must be observed. Playing is a kind of X-ray of the child. What is experienced by the children in real life is represented while they play, and should be welcomed and looked at very carefully by the adults supporting their development”.
