toddler development

The Importance of Play For Toddler Development

Play is a dynamic part of your child’s development or growth. Outdoor games help to establish your child’s strength and physical growth. On the other hand, indoor and educational games help to improve your toddler’s mental and learning abilities. However nowadays, due to loss of outdoor areas, increase of educational or academic pressure and excessive screen time, benefits of play are not fully reaching to the kids. Here are some points that can help you, as parents, to understand how your kid can easily learn and improve their abilities through playing:

How Does Play Help?

●      Enhance Early Brain Development For toddler development

Outdoor and indoor games help to stimulate your kid’s brain growth in many ways, such as offering major life experiences to setting the base of child’s brain growth. Because a kid’s brain is like clay that can be easily molded into any form. You can help your child with sensory play, games, and play materials to build a stable and balanced mental foundation.

●      Improve Kid’s Aptitude For Toddler Development

Primary playing can be related with advanced intelligence progressive in lifespan. You can simply teach your kid and help them learn by doing. For example, ask them to count objects or name the objects in front of them. Because counting blocks or objects is a comparatively easy way to help them to understand and learn math instead of writing numbers. You can help them to understand how they can add or subtract numbers with the help of objects. Show them cards with the pictures and names of animals or fruits, so they can learn by seeing them. You can even show them color cards and ask them the name of the color.

●      Stimulate Senses

Some games such as sensory play helps your kid to enhance their senses, including touch, sight and hearing due to them being put to use more. You can ask them to indemnify the name of the animal by letting them hear the sound it makes. It can also be done in the case of objects and appliances. You can also ask them to play the clap game but without the blind fold, where you hide and clap to indicate where you are. It gives them a sense of direction and betters their hearing power.

●      Boost Their Creative Thinking

Games can be the best way to boost or enhance your kid’s creativity. As you know, creativity is thoroughly tied to deviating thoughts and helps explore many imaginable solutions and produce creative ideas. You can give them LEGO’s so they can create what they imagine or you can give them colors to paint their imagination. And with the help of colors, you can also teach them how to write numbers or alphabets so you can help them to sharpen their minds. It also teaches them to differentiate between colors and identify the color orientation of different things.

●      Develop Social Competence and Empathy

Playing with friends, parents or siblings can also help children to develop their social and cultural skills. For example, playing with other toddlers or relatives can help them learn working as a team, following rules, cooperating with one another, improving their self-control, boosting self-confidence, and more. In this way, they can increase their mental as well as social abilities at the same time, which helps them to adjust in school and outside from their home environment.

Different Games That Can Be Played For Toddler Development

Hide And Clap

In this game, you can hide at a place in your house not too far from the child and clap loudly for the child to hint where you are. It will be a fun and active play for the child. In addition to this, it develops their observation and hearing abilities to follow the sound and sense your presence.

Puzzles

Easy and small puzzles help your child to think critically and observe deeply. You can get a puzzle of their favorite toy or their favorite animal and help them in completing it. You can also recite the features of the animal in the puzzle to make them learn about them, like their sound, their food and where it is found.

LEGO

LEGOs give an open space for the kid to apply their unique imagination. First, don’t instruct them about what they have to make but let them make whatever is in their mind. Tell them that they can do anything and make anything possible with their creativity and their imagination power when they are combined with handwork and commitment.

Coloring

Coloring is another play that interests most of the children very much and gives their imagination a space to run wild. You can give them illustration books to fill colors in or make them draw aunty things they like to power their creativity. They also learn while playing with colors.

Final Thoughts

Because play is very important for  toddler development, these cannot be skipped or substituted with smartphones or televisions​​. There are several other games that can also be played with the toddlers, other than those mentioned above. Parents should engage personally more and more in these activities and encourage the child’s participation as well to enable them to get the most out of these activities.

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