Why I Encourage My Child To Learn Through Play....What is the Rush for Formal Education?

In today's world, we seem to want our children to learn everything as early as possible.

We want them to walk and talk as early as they can, we want them eating solids long before their gut is developed enough to handle them, we send them to school to start bringing home homework long before they are even big enough to carry their own school bags.

What is the rush? Why do we put so much pressure on our kids to achieve these things at such a young age?

Is it because we don't want our kids falling behind what society says is 'normal'? Is it because we are scared of them missing out on things if they can't achieve these milestones when government or authority say they should?

What if our kids were allowed to reach each milestone when they are mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually ready to do so?

A child's formative years (often referred to as 0-8) are some of the most important years of his or her life. What happens to a child during these years has an effect on how they grow and develop later during adolescence and adult life.

If these years are so important in the development of our children, why are our kids forced to sit in a classroom to 'learn' when it is not necessarily the best way or time for them to do so? Why are they not allowed to just learn through play?

Play is a natural activity of childhood. It is what children do and it really is their way of life in the early years. It is also how a young child learns.

In fact healthy play is vital to social, emotional, physical, and intellectual development.

The benefits of play are many and include things such as building confidence and self-esteem, building relationships, problem-solving, conflict resolution, increasing language, understanding rules and limits, discovering talents, sparking creativity, inspiring thinking, defining personality and sorting out likes and dislikes.

In my opinion play is extremely important and I make sure my 3 year old has as much time to 'play' as possible, both with others and by himself.

But if play is so important, why don't many of our kids get to play as much as they used to?

Things like our own busy lifestyles, academics in preschool, increased screen time, lack of safe play spaces and violent TV/movie-based toys all reduce the amount of healthy play.

So how can we change it?

It is up to us as parents to bring back play for our kids. To encourage them to play by shutting off the TV, the ipad, the phone. By allowing our kids the time and space to be able to play instead of rushing them around on our schedules. By providing our kids with a wide variety of experiences and materials where they can try new things, and this is not necessarily toys. Look to nature to find interesting things to play with or encourage your kids to use their imagination. But mostly by taking a playful approach to life ourselves and demonstrating this to our kids.

After all....

Through fun, healthy play, children begin a love of learning which will be the basis of their learning for the rest of their lives

Thanks for stopping by and reading my post.
Please feel free to leave me a comment or question and I will try to interact with them all

Hugs

Kylie

Reference
http://www.earlychildhoodnews.com/earlychildhood/article_view.aspx?ArticleID=591