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Play In The Early Years – Sand and water play for toddlers has many surprising developmental benefits, such as improving motor skills, social and emotional awareness, improving language and speech, encouraging creativity, and improving math and science concepts. Sand and water play is sensory play, so it opens up opportunities for learning through curiosity, problem solving, exploration and creativity.
Here at the Kids Club, we are committed to positively shaping a child’s future in the classroom. We encourage our children to experiment with their senses to achieve the above psychological and emotional benefits, as well as accelerating cognitive development.
Play In The Early Years
So the next time your little one is drawn to sand and water play, remember that it’s a great learning opportunity for them!
Outdoor And Nature Play In Early Childhood Education: Dietze, Beverlie, Kashin, Diane: 9780134742083: Curriculum & Instruction: Amazon Canada
To learn more about the surprising benefits of sand and water play in the early years, keep reading.
It is important in the early years of a child’s development to develop and practice their fine motor skills. Part of fine motor development is when children learn how to hold objects in their hands (ie a pen or spoon).
Sand play activities offer children many opportunities to use and develop their fine motor skills. For example, grasping the handles of the paddle, they throw and pour sand and water with their hands. Using tools like mini-shovels, rakes, buckets and more not only supports their fine motor skills, but also helps develop their hand-eye coordination. Forming these skills at an early age can help with feeding, tying shoes, sticking jackets and holding a pen at school.
During sand and water play, children often start a dialogue with their peers about what they are building or ideas they may have. This offers a wonderful opportunity for language development and a learning moment to share new ideas and increase vocabulary in a fun and relaxed environment. When a child plays and experiments with sand and water, educators often ask them questions about their creations and encourage a two-way conversation. These interactions that the child has with educators and peers during sand and water play positively contribute to their improved language and speech development.
Purposeful Play And Active Learning For Early Childhood And Primary Learners
It’s no secret that nature and outdoor learning offer some of the best early years learning opportunities. An early learning setting is the best environment for children to develop their social skills and emotional awareness. Through sand and water play, they are encouraged to share, listen and cooperate with other children. This supports their learning with empathy and helps them recognize emotions in others (and, importantly, how their actions can affect the emotions of others). Allowing children time to explore how they feel when playing with sand and water supports their emotional growth and ability to self-regulate their emotions; identifying what makes them happy, sad, excited, etc.
Sensory activities like sand and water play are one of the most exciting types of play for little ones. Children’s sand play also provides countless learning opportunities, especially in mathematical and scientific thinking.
For example, we can introduce the use of measuring cups and weights when playing with sand and water, opening children’s minds to the mathematical concepts of measurement, weight, volume and more. As well as scientific concepts, such as when dry sand is mixed with water, it becomes wet and can then be made into different shapes and structures. Children and educators can extend this learning to a wider range of natural and mathematical concepts such as hot and cold water, the color of water, density when adding other types of liquids, sinking and floating, etc.
Perhaps the biggest benefit of sand play is that it develops their imagination and improves their creative thinking. Early childhood specialists explained how increased creativity can long-term support a child’s mental flexibility and ability to absorb new information more easily and may find a lifelong love of learning. Therefore, sand and water play has many benefits for young children’s emotional and psychological development and well-being.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion In The Early Childhood Classroom
If you would like to learn more, call Kids Club Early Childhood Learning Centers or schedule a tour now to your nearest Kids Club Early Learning Center, click here to see your nearest center.
As Australia’s leading early childhood care provider, we always put your child first. We are committed to 7 national quality standards. Whenever they are left to their own devices, you will find that they always gravitate towards play. That’s because it’s one of the main ways they learn and begin to understand the world. In this blog, we will look at why free play is important for children and their development.
To understand why free play is so important, we must first understand what it is and the principles that define it. When looking at the different styles of play and the theories behind them, there are always rules and goals they want to achieve.
How “children choose what they want to do, how they want to do it, and when to stop and try something else.” Free play has no external goals set by adults and no curriculum imposed by adults. Although adults usually provide space and resources for free play and may be involved, children take the lead and adults respond to cues from them.
The Benefits Of Water Play For Children’s Development
Although we will focus on children in this article, it is not exclusive to early years learners. Free play is a creative activity of spontaneous and free improvisation done by children, artists and people of all kinds. So you might want to apply some of these practices yourself!
Before we explain why free play is so important, it is worth knowing that since children nowadays have fewer opportunities to play, we need to really define how important play is for children to learn and grow. A lack of play opportunities is harmful to children because it affects their emotional development, which can lead to an increase in anxiety, depression, and problems with attention and self-control. Without play, young people fail to acquire the social and emotional skills necessary for healthy psychological development.
Along with this are the obvious physiological benefits. One of the main reasons why creative play is important to children’s development is that it often develops their physical motor skills. For example, if children play team or group games, they will be able to develop both physical and social skills.
Because free play is important in helping children become emotionally and physically healthy human beings, it also offers children a chance to play without guidance. Therefore, although free play independently develops many of their skills, it is vital to allow children to explore through play to help them develop further in new ways.
Culturally Responsive Teaching In Early Childhood Education
In fact, the need for unstructured play in children’s lives is very important for optimal child development, a fact recognized by the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights as a right of every child. If you want to know more, you can read our comprehensive Buyer’s Guide to children’s role-play equipment.
There are a huge number of benefits of free play for both young and old, which can be divided into different key categories that both teachers and schools are looking for. So, let’s look at the benefits of free play in more detail.
Free play encourages children to develop their imagination while using their creativity. When given a myriad of different stimuli without any plan from teachers, it forces students to think creatively and have fun on their own. Children’s brains thrive on a challenge, which can really help them.
They will explore different materials and their properties and use their knowledge of what they have discovered to play imaginatively, which can be done independently or in groups. When students come up with new games with the objects at their disposal, this is a form of creativity, especially when they make a game using nothing physical, such as role-playing equipment.
Risky Play In Early Childhood Education
Similar to creativity, free play allows children to develop problem-solving skills. Problem solving and creativity are often linked because they involve thinking outside the box. Children can solve problems independently through construction-based games and movement or in a group environment by navigating games or group disputes.
The key here is for the adults to stay out of the process and let the children work things out on their own or together in a group. However, if necessary, adults should obviously intervene, but always allow children to go through trial and error first when trying to get to the desired end result. If they are in a group, learning to negotiate and manage conflict by finding a solution to a problem with other students is a great way to demonstrate problem solving! Even better? Try to encourage them to play outdoors as it has huge benefits for their health and well-being. In case you missed it, we have a great blog on Why outdoor learning and natural play improves well-being that you should read next.
Free play is the perfect opportunity to develop physical and motor skills as children can run, jump and chase outdoors while playing.
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