Why Creative Play for Kids?

Play is open-ended, and children have the freedom to use familiar or old materials in a new or unusual way, stimulating mental growth by providing opportunities for trying new ideas and ways of thinking and learning creative problem-solving.

Creativity and innovation are key components to a successful life. Learning to love the creative process will build a child’s ability as a creative thinker in all avenues of life, transferring skills to other areas.

This helps with nurturing growth as an individual in all areas of learning and enhances self-development.

The more varied experiences children have, the wider the range of creative expression.

Creating something to hold in their hand encourages pride, satisfaction, and self-worth. This, in turn, helps children gain confidence in their abilities and inspires them to keep trying new experiences and activities, knowing that their ideas or creations are valued.

Their scribbles or lumpy sewn pillow is a treasure to a child (and likely for you, too!)

Knitting your own sock, building a rocketship from cardboard, painting your own picture – all contribute to a quiet confidence that you can do anything.

Focusing on one item at a time requires concentration and provides time for the brain to connect what is being learned to what has been learned and to possibilities of what can be learned.

Play is an opportunity to achieve mastery over their environment. Children can control experiences through their imaginations and exercise their powers of choice and decision-making as the play progresses.

It is well known that creative activities provide a positive outlet for all ages as a healthy way to express both positive and negative emotions, helping work through difficult emotions and understand them.

Playing provides opportunities to explore real-life situations, emotions, and dynamics in a way that makes children feel safe. Acting out everyday situations, like arguments or cooking, helps children rehearse and understand the world around them.

For example, issues and problems encountered in real life can be acted out and processed through playing with miniatures (like dollhouses) where these feelings and challenges can be explored and sorted through on a small scale.

Additionally, free play has been proven through extensive research and real-life experience to reduce stress, anger, depression, and ADHD, to name a few.

Play helps children understand they can affect their own environment.

These fine motor skills take practice to develop. Holding a pencil and cutting with scissors all contribute to developing proprioceptive input, dexterity, and tactility.

For example, learning where to place furniture so that the door of the fridge doesn’t hit the table or the toilet is placed where you can reach the toilet paper helps children understand the position of things in space.

Playing with blocks, children are confronted with challenges related to measurement, equality, balance, shape, spatial relationships, and physical properties.

Assembling tiny mechanical objects using a tool, fitting Lego blocks, or throwing a rock all help in this area.

Play counteracts obesity and improves movement, balance, and gross and fine motor skills.

Dancing, climbing, throwing, and crawling all help develop gross motor skills, which involve movements of the large muscles and relate to body awareness, reaction, speed, balance, and strength. Humans rely on gross motor skills for everyday life, forming the basis for fine motor skills.

These days, children are exposed to screens at an increasingly young age, so developing fine motor skills (hand and finger strength) is vital.

Painting, drawing, cutting, and manipulating clay all help develop these skills.

In a year, a child goes from not really recognizing they have hands to using the right pressure on crayons to draw. The amount of strength and coordination needed for children to accomplish this is more challenging than trying to draw with your toes!

The ability to overcome challenges leads to success in many areas of life.

Creative play allows children to work things out for themselves, organize and analyze information, and make connections to achieve their goals.

“F.A.I.L” is First Attempt in Learning – Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam

Whether it’s figuring out what material to use for a craft, learning if a particular glue is strong enough, how big to cut something to fit, or stopping paint from dripping – all contribute to the creative problem-solving thinking process.

If two children want to be the same character, they have to decide a way to solve this problem and will experience the results of good and poor decisions.

Different activities require more complex thinking skills and a growing understanding of basic science to make sense: mixing specific colors to create a picture may seem like fun, but without an intellectual component, the creativity falls apart (everything looks like mud!)

Even at a young age, creative activities develop basic math skills such as geometry, measuring, and sorting.

Concepts like large and small, above and below, hard and soft, wet and dry can be grasped through play, as well as developing observation skills, listening to instructions, exploring different textures, and recognizing different smells.

Ever watch a child playing and talking to themselves about what they are doing? Or how much do children talk to each other when playing? This helps to build vocabulary and develop imagination without embarrassment if using the wrong words.

Learning to play with others is essential in developing the ability to get along, communicate, allow a free flow of opinions, collaborate, learn to consider the needs of others, and appreciate different values and perspectives.

Dramatic play allows children to experiment with and understand social roles.

Interpersonal skills can only be developed with people, not machines.

More time spent isolated in front of a computer or television means less time talking and interacting.

The University Clinic for Communication Disorders in Mainz, Germany, has discovered that every fourth child of preschool age, and 18 to 34 percent of children three and four years of age, suffer from speech disorders. Yet, researchers observed that children who could barely talk were lightning-quick when it came to computer use.

Carnegie Mellon University psychologists Robert Kraut and Vicki Lundmark discovered serious negative long-term social effects sustained through extensive use of virtual reality. After following a study group of 96 families of various backgrounds for two years, they found an average increase in depression by about 1 percent for every hour spent online per week. Loneliness increased as well. On average, subjects began with 66 people in their social circle, and for every hour each week spent online, this group shrank by 4 percent (from the book High Tech Heretic by Clifford Stoll).