The Importance of Play

Children learn through play. A preschool program that values the importance of play is going to be able to offer your child the best opportunities to learn.

Play is how children begin to understand their world. Children develop socialization skills by playing with other children. Play helps children learn to solve problems in an environment that is supportive to this process. Children also develop the critical thinking skills necessary to ask question and figure out how things work. Through these activities children continue to strengthen their language development.

It's very important for children to be able to hold on to something like blocks, to be able to build with them. That's making sense of their world. When they are building with blocks, they are developing their gross motor skills. They are also developing math concepts.

When children are working with art materials, this is a chance for them to be creative. This is an opportunity for them to use open-ended materials. With art, you want to just give them paint and paper, because they will go in all different directions. That's what is really great about art - it's so open-ended.

Dramatic play offers social and emotional development, as well as language development. You can incorporate writing skills into dramatic play. For instance, if you want a child to learn writing, they can take down an order in a restaurant with a pad of paper and a crayon. Or they can help make a grocery list. When they internalize it through play, they will be ready to move on to formal writing when they get to kindergarten.