The United Nations recognizes play as the right of every child.  Play is not a luxury; it is a tool for education and health.  It teaches important life lessons and develops skills like cooperation, leadership and teamwork.

The Right to Play (www.righttoplay.com) organization was started in Canada in 2010 to promote life-skills in aboriginal youth.  Working with volunteers and partners they use sport and play to enhance child development in disadvantaged communities.  Their vision is to create a healthy and safe world thought the power of sports and play.

The National Association of the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) states “Play is a critical component of the early childhood classroom. It is respected as a powerful integrator and generator of knowledge. Through play children develop socio-moral judgments, advance their social and language skills, elaborate upon their intellectual understandings, and assume personal responsibility for learning.”   John Dewey said that “Play is children’s work; it allows for practice, and dealing with feelings.”  Children who feel good about themselves and are excited about playing are not afraid to take chances, try new things and make mistakes. The following are some activities for enhancing play.

Infants: Symbolic Play: This form of play begins at about 12 months, for example young children often pretend to eat and sleep. These behaviors mark the beginnings of representational thought, the first sign that the child is beginning to construct mental symbols and images of the real world of objects and actions.  They can wash a doll in the waterplay table then pretend to feed it and put it to bed as if it were a real baby.

Toddlers: Early Pretend Play: These behaviors become more stable and elaborated during the second year.  Have children act out what they’d do in different weather situations.  Pretend you are; walking in the rain, playing in the sandbox on a hot day, walking barefoot on a hot sidewalk, playing in the snow, walking in a puddle, carrying an opened umbrella, or pretend to be the wind.

Preschoolers: Cooperative Play:  As children get older play becomes more complex, and especially play with others is more important.  Play becomes a vehicle through which children activate their memories.  Studies have shown that young children were much more likely to remember objects after they had played with them, more then when they studied pictures of the same toys.  These children learn through meaningful interaction with their environment.  Children can make musical instruments for a group band.  Maracas can be made by filling small plastic water bottles with beans or rice, tambourines by using aluminum pie plates, and drums out of coffee cans.

Play helps learning, memory, and well-being.  It sculpts responsive, socially adept, and flexible brains.  Play makes us smarter and more adaptable all our lives.

(Stuart Brown, president of the National Institute for Play and author of Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul)