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Children love playing, and children also love to engage in any activity that allows them express themselves. This play is actually benefitting the child in all domains in development without them even realizing. In emotional development, children are able to express their emotions through drawing, stories, painting, etc. These methods can help children express how they feel, and they will then be able to articulate their feelings more as they grow up. In intellectual development, children are constantly using problem solving skills. They are improving their cognitive skills when they question and wonder how certain items or toys work also. This helps to strengthen their intellectual development. Children are constantly using their motor skills as well as hand-eye coordination when they are playing. Smaller things such as using a pencil or pen also contribute to their physical development as well. Play also contributes to social development because children are engaging with other young children, and having conversations about the play. They could be pretending and sharing their ideas with the other children, which is great for social development. When children are interacting socially, it also helps their language development. Children are forced to use their words when playing with other children, whether it be asking for a toy or explaining a game. There are so many more benefits in each domain, but those are just a few (Monkey, 2022.)

The five senses are also crucial in children's learning. When children are using their senses (touch, taste, smell, sound, and sight ) it helps to increase their understanding about the world around us. Children are exposed to so many new things in early children that can only be perceived through the five senses. Children also learn that their actions affect the world around them using their five senses. Overall, the senses are the main way children gain new knowledge about life. Creative play plays a large part in sensory development. Children are able to touch new toys, smell new things, hear their friends taking, taste edible play items, and see new environments. It is important we develop these senses during play, so children are able to learn new things and understand how the world around them words. Having them discover new things through play is crucial in their development of their senses and their overall development (Monkey, 2022.)

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Monkey, R. (2022, October 20). Why is creative play important important for children’s development? Red Monkey Play. https://redmonkeyplay.co.uk/why-is-creative-play-important-for-childrens-development/

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In the early stages of a child's life, their brain constantly develops and needs continual stimulation. Whilst education is a focal point for children and their development, allowing children to express themselves and improve their physical, social, and cognitive skills is an enormous part of their development.

In this article, we're going to explore why is creative play important for children's development and how can you incorporate it into your school's programme.

What Is Creative Play?

As a parent or teacher, training children's brains and bodies to function in the real world is vital, so you should be teaching them as often as possible. If you visit and observe any nursery or school playground, you'll notice many different experiences for children to get involved in, ranging from sand play and water play all the way to role play areas.

Children love getting creative with any activity that allows them to express themselves. Creative play is fundamental in improving children's physical, social, cognitive, and emotional development, making it the perfect way to boost and develop basic skills for everyday life.

The definition of creative play is children's play, such as modelling or painting, that tends to satisfy a need for self-expression and to develop manual skills. These creative activities are incredibly important, especially in the early years when the focus is on the development of students.

Creative play is one of the best ideas for outdoor play in early years that any school or nursery can offer their students, as it allows them to have fun in unique ways! Whether it's arts and crafts, drawing, painting, building, cutting, modelling, or simply playing around with household objects, creative play is an easy way of getting children involved whilst having a very positive impact on their day-to-day development and experience.

The best materials to use are those used in everyday life, such as fabrics, costumes, recycled objects, or any other sensory materials. Creative play sparks imagination as children can use and create their own ideas with whatever materials and tools they have available!

What Are The Benefits Of Creative Play?

The creative play benefits are endless, as playing freely also allows children to express their creative ideas and imagination, which is an integral part of learning. It allows them to learn about and explore the world while sharing their ideas, thoughts, and feelings with their peers.

This can be a highly beneficial method of learning for children as the best way to learn is by getting involved and experimenting with new things rather than physically sitting down and listening.
"Children learn as they play. Most importantly, in play, children learn how to learn." - O. Fred Donaldson.
There are many other benefits of creative play that go well beyond the level of enjoyment that children get from being involved. The main benefit of creative play is that it develops valuable language and communication skills that they need in everyday life. This sets the foundation of their skills and knowledge to benefit them in the future whilst helping them strategise, communicate, and encourage their social skills.

In case you missed it, we have another great article on Why Is Free Play Important In The Early Years that you could read further for more information.

Emotional Development

Children often express their emotions through stories, drawing, painting, or activities rather than through words. These methods help them to understand their feelings more, particularly if they otherwise wouldn't express how they feel. Creative play promotes children to integrate these feelings into activities so that they can creatively express their thoughts and emotions in a way they are encouraged to do so. Through this, they'll be able to articulate their thoughts and feelings more easily as they grow up.

Intellectual Development

When getting involved with creative play in the early years, young children can gain basic problem-solving skills. Creative play boosts their intellectual development by improving their cognitive skills whilst allowing them to pay attention, process how things work, and analyse why it works. Recent studies show that children who engage in creative play are more likely to pay attention to the teacher's instructions than children who don't.

Basic problem-solving such as figuring out how things and the world work, will help the little learners understand more complex problems later on in life. This, in turn, will enable them to follow instructions, solve problems, and make their own decisions in a much better way.

Physical Development

Creative play benefits physical development in children by improving their fine motor skills and their control. It also improves their hand-eye coordination, which will help them later on in life with sports and writing.

Playing with small objects within a creative play area can help them control a pencil or paintbrush, making it the perfect activity for progressing their early physical development.

Social Development

When engaging in creative play, young children can interact and socialise with their peers as it's a great opportunity to share their ideas and imagination with others around them. This helps with their social interaction skills, basic communication skills, and their confidence too.

All of these skills learnt through creative play will enable them to learn academically, whilst as a toddler or young child, exploring, discovering, and learning new things can be very exciting. This is why the best way of learning is through observation and being hands-on! With so many valuable benefits, can you see why is creative play important for children's development and why you should encourage it?

How To Get Involved With Creative Play?

Creative play can involve any materials or space, so it is extremely easy for children to get involved. It doesn't have to be a stressful activity with much thought or planning, but just something simple to get them excited and creative.

The best way of encouraging creative play is to use easy and simple objects, such as recycled objects and items you might find around the house, including egg cartons, tin-foil, and bubble wrap, to name just a few. You can also use sensory objects, including sponges, paper, and clay. You can get involved with creative play in any area, whether it's outside with outdoor playground equipment, in an open field or even indoors in a school classroom.

Whilst young children can be spontaneous and excited to try new things, it's a great way of interacting with them and letting them develop their emotional, physical, intellectual, and social skills. To get involved with creative play, you can follow your child's lead and get involved in the fun! To find out how you could encourage creative play in your children's lives, you can read our Buyer's Guide To Children's Role Play Equipment, packed with tips and creative play examples.

Get In Touch Today

Does creative play sound like something your school or nursery could implement? At Red Monkey Play, we can help complement your teacher's programme perfectly whilst elevating your student's learning and play time to the next level!

You can see for yourself all the success we've had with our playground design in our case studies, where our truly bespoke and consultative approach to playground design shines through. We have a wide range of different playground equipment options, including role play equipment, sensory playground equipment, and physical development equipment options that your students will love.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us, as we'd be delighted to answer any questions you may have. All you need to do is to send us an email at hello@redmonkeyplay.co.uk or call our Leicester office on 0116 366 9922, and one of our team members will happily assist you and discuss how together we could create the perfect outdoor classroom and play area for your school or nursery!

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Why Is Creative Play Important For Children's Development?

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Explore why is creative play important for children's development and how you can incorporate it into your school's programme.

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Resource Supporting Play Materials for Developmental Domains

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Resource Supporting Play Materials for Developmental Domains

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This website is Youtube based, and teaches children how to draw many different things. I thought this website was great to support emotional development by allowing children to express their emotions through drawing, it supports their cognitive development by having them follow a tutorial on how to do something, and it supports physical development by making them use a pencil and different coloring mediums. Through this website, children are able to development their senses of sight, sound, and touch. Children are looking at the video to see how to draw the picture, listening the video, and touching the paper and pencil to physically draw the picture. I think this is a great age- appropriate site to help children develop many developmental domains, and helps them do so in a creative way.

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Art For Kids Hub - Art Lessons - How To Draw For Kids

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Welcome to Art For Kids Hub! Here you'll find all kinds of art lessons for kids, including how to draw for kids, even painting and origami for kids.

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Resource for Supporting Play Materials for the Senses

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Resource for Supporting Play Materials for the Senses

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I though this sorting colors activity is great to help develop young student's senses. This game has students sort different color objects. This would help students develop their sense of sight, sound, and even touch. Students are using their eyes to match the color to the characters, and the website has sound effects to help develop the sense of sound as well. Students are using a computer to drag the objects, which activates their sense of touch as well. Through this game, young children are able to learn different colors and physically learn the colors through their senses. The website is simple and easy to use for young children.

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The Sesame Street friends help children learn to sort objects into groups based on primary color.

© 2020 Sesame Workshop®, Sesame Street®, and associated characters, trademarks, and design elements are owned and licensed by Sesame Workshop. All rights reserved.

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The Sesame Street friends help children learn to sort objects into groups based on primary color. 2020 Sesame Workshop, Sesame Street, and associated characters, trademarks, and design elements are owned and licensed by Sesame Workshop. All rights reserved. |

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Resources for Incorporating IFSP, IEP, and SDI Goals

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Resources for Incorporating IFSP, IEP, and SDI Goals

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I found this great PDF of many different ways to adapt activities for young children with disabilities. This resource has many great ideas for teachers, but further down in the document it mentions many adaptations for play activities such as blocks, table toys, art, library, sand and water, and housekeeping corner. This source is detailed, but very easy to follow along with. It even has blank space for parents to add their own adaptations if they please. I think giving parents and caregivers many options on how to adapt will benefit them and the child greatly.

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Sometimes, parents do not have the opportunity to take their children outside to play or to safe play areas. Online play can be just as great for children when they do not have the opportunity to play safely in other environment. This resource highlights again the benefits of playing games online that help develop the domains.

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Because playing online games involves sitting in front of a screen, it is often dismissed. However, online gaming can be positive for young people. Games require a level of interaction and skill from the player; unlike watching television, which is more passive. Games can be a concern for parents and teachers, but playing games can also have beneficial impacts for children and young people.

State of play

The Interactive Games and Entertainment Association (IGEA) releases an annual report into the demographics of gamers in Australia. The 2018 Digital Australian snapshot highlights just how popular gaming is as a pastime for children and young people.

This report is backed up by research commissioned by The Office of the eSafety Commissioner into the use of online gaming by young people in July 2017. The research found that around 60% of young people played online games. Only 17% of respondents reported experiencing online bullying. When faced with online bullying, 42% of young people turned off chat, 41% ignored the bullying and 38% blocked bullies or stopped playing games with bullies.

Read more about the demographics of gaming in Australia with the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association's ' Digital Australia 2018 report'. The IGEA also produced a series of videos exploring different aspects of gaming.

Read more about this research on the Office of the eSafety Commissioner's 'State of Play - Youth and online gaming in Australia.

Benefits of gaming

Games are engaging they require higher order thinking, problem solving and persistence. Many games, even first-person shooting video games (which may not be appropriate for children) teach cooperation, group work and scenario-based learning. Most games require strategy to understand and then work within the rules. All games offer a mix of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. Humans play games precisely because they are captivating and reward us when we succeed. The Australian Office of the eSafety Commissioner, Think U Know UK, and the NZ organisation Netsafe all recognise that online games can help to develop teamwork, concentration, communication and problem-solving skills. They are also an opportunity for young people to practise communication and conflict resolution skills.

How can online games improve thinking skills?

Research by the Queensland University of Technology has found that games can improve thinking skills in children. Games often require children to follow instructions, consider their actions, and respond to problems. This can help develop important thinking skills, such as:

awareness of the environment

attention to detail

problem-solving and planning

literacy.

Read more about the research at the Queensland University of Technology's Video games benefit children: Study webpage.

How can online games help children manage emotions?

Games can be a lot of fun for children and young people, but sometimes they can be frustrating too. It is not uncommon to try something and have it 'fail' or not go according to plan. They can also encounter unexpected or surprising events. This can help with skills such as:

regulating and managing emotions

learning how to calm themselves

building resilience.

How can online games improve social skills?

While online games can seem like an isolating activity, it is often more social than some people think. In fact, according to the Office of the eSafety Commissioner, 81% of Australian young people aged 8-17 played an online game and 64% played with others in the 12 months to June 2017. Half of those surveyed had played online games with someone they had not met in person. Many children end up playing games with friends, and some even make new friends. This can improve a child's social skills, including:

collaboration and teamwork

understanding behaviour

peer-to-peer learning.

Read more about this research at the Office of the eSafety Commissioner's research library.

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Playing games can be good for you! There are social, emotional and cognitive benefits for playing video games and online games.