Why is Creative Play Important?
- Gail Miles Posted On Dec 17, 2021 | Play
Creative play is a natural part of childhood development. Through creative play, children express themselves and explore ideas and concepts they come across in the world around them. In this blog post, Teacher Gail Miles explores why is creative play important for social and emotional development, along with some ways to support creative play.
Access related content:
Why is creative play important?
Creative play is an open-ended learning opportunity allowing children to be free to explore in a way that they choose, without strict rules and boundaries. This is brilliant for children to develop important skills, as they are born naturally creative and intuitive with vivid imaginations.
Nurturing this creativity helps them to grow, not only intellectually and physically but emotionally and socially too. Dance, music, pretend or dramatic play alongside the visual arts can help children to develop their senses, self-reliance, positive esteem, and well-being.
Creative play for emotional development
We all know that expressing how you feel can be quite difficult. Young children don’t always know how to explain what and why they are feeling a certain way and can find it difficult to manage these feelings too.
By providing opportunities for a child to paint, draw or tell a story about how they are feeling, you are allowing them to express themselves in a safe, non-pressured way. It’s through this creative outlet that they can work on developing their emotional intelligence and resilience, whilst processing, understanding, and expressing both positive and negative feelings.
Creative play for social development
When given opportunities to share, play and interact with others, children’s social skills grow. Creative play is a great way to build a child’s communication and social skills in a fun and supportive environment without the risk of embarrassment if they use words incorrectly. When children are engaged with their play, they may talk to themselves about what’s happening, as well as with their peers. This in turn leads to building their vocabulary and developing their imagination too.
Activities including singing, dancing, acting, drawing, creating models, going on nature trails, pretend playing with others or through using play equipment together, allows children to begin to understand that words give them the power to re-enact a story, organise play and can also provide powerful learning opportunities to show children that other people can do things differently even with the same resources supplied. It shows that ultimately everyone is different and that this is ok.
What can be used during creative play?
Finding creative play activities to do with your child doesn't need to be stressful or time consuming. Ideas for creative play can be found all around us. In fact, if we are not careful, it can be seen that over-structured play can actually inhibit creativity.
We can easily overlook many simple items that children find fascinating. They can often turn mundane objects into treasures. Household items can be used to make up games, tell a story or just have fun with.
What is loose parts play?
Loose parts are wonderfully open-ended and are a great example of using items that can create endless possibilities and invite creativity. For example, if a child picks up a stone and starts to play, most likely that stone can become something new using their imagination and creativity on their own terms and in their own unique way.
Loose parts are resources that can be moved, carried, combined, lined up, redesigned, and taken apart and put back together in multiple ways. Loose parts can be used alone or combined with other materials. There is no set of specific directions for materials that are considered loose parts as the child is the direction of them.
Here are some tips that you may find useful when encouraging creative play yourself:
- Give your child enough time to play.
- Provide open-ended activities that allow your child to express themselves in an environment they feel safe to open up in.
- Stop and listen to your child – you may be surprised at what they are trying to express! It is important for you to acknowledge what they are expressing and encourage them to open up.
- Have a cleaning station ready (if needed – this will eliminate any stress for you and keep the whole activity enjoyable for everyone).
- Have fun - After all that is the beauty of learning through play!
About the Author
Gail Miles is a Play Specialist and qualified teacher, with extensive experience in Education (specialising in Special Needs) and is a huge advocate for open-ended, play-based learning. Hoping to support parents and other professionals she shares examples of different types of play on her Instagram page (@the_playful_expert) to provide different examples for children to learn through daily. She loves to create and inspire others to be creative, which is shown in some of her Tuff tray plays through creating her own artwork for her own children to enjoy. This inspires their creativity to flow, and they use different resources in non-traditional ways to have fun with and learn! She also shares simple learning through play examples too – go check out her page now to see!
Browse our range of creative play toys and games to help your child express their creativity.
