Why are Play and Activities important for Children?

4.3 Explain how play and activities are used to support the development of speech, language and communication. Play is vital to a child and young person’s development because it enables them to enjoy learning and promotes their development and also helps with their speech, language and communication skills, their physical, emotional, social and intellectual development. Parents and practitioners need to understand how play supports children to learn and communicate with others, as it supports their speech language and listening skills. There are numerous games you can play with a child, young person in almost any environment and at any time, such as…

•When traveling in a car, plane or train.

•Playing in the park, visiting the zoo or other centres.
•Going to the supermarket or within the local community.
•In the home, garden or at a setting they attend.

When we provide positive interactions, facilities and visit, attend or live in enabling environments we are encouraging and supporting the right atmosphere for children and young people they can learn and develop their speech language and communication skills.

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As children develop good communication skills, the children will also need to be able to share and discuss their learning with their carers and their peers to help them to develop relationships. We can encourage children by helping them with their own concentration skills how they use their own observations, by listening and interacting with others this will help them to develop knowledge and their intellectual skills, their concentration and attention development. We need to provide a diverse range of resources to enable them to play, learn and develop their communication skills such as- •Books -are a great way of developing their speech and literacy skills, you could focus on books with symbolic sounds for early speech, story books to develop language, or looking at pictures and commenting on what you see, and listening to what the child and young person says.

Providing a wide range of assorted books in other languages and different font sizes so that children with visual needs or other languages can read and understand. This is important to promote inclusion. We can also provide books in braille or audio and video books •Role play- dressing up and pretending in the different role play areas will expand a child or young person’s creative imagination. They can talk and share ideas through role play and create stories to share and discuss their knowledge, feelings and imagination. When children use multi-cultural resources and new objects in their paly they learn about the names of different foods and other items in the role play area.

•Music, songs, verse and rhymes- is also a good way to help them with their speech and language as it promotes repetition of words when we sing and talk in verses and rhymes. Children learn through repetition and singing rhymes is a good way to teach language. We can use musical instruments to teach beat and rhythm, fast and slow, quiet and loud which also promotes listening skills. When children and YP are taking part in a group it is enabling them to communicate and to interact with others or one other person. Making up songs at bedtime or bath times creates a good routine for them to join in to develop their skills to communicate. •Creativity – providing a wide range of creative materials which are available for children to play with will enable a child or young person to express themselves creatively, they can then share their ideas and how they created their item. It also encourages them to use their fingers and hands and develops their hand and eye coordination skills. When they are being creative they can be choosing and making choices and decisions such as paintings, drawing, tracing all these activities prompt communication as they discuss and use the tools to create and also is helping with their fine motor skills. •Small world play- when children play with small toys such as cars, trains, planes, animals, dolls, characters and shapes etc. They will use them creatively and make noises and sounds that they make and this will help to develop their awareness of sounds, pitch and tones. When children and adults share these toys they work together and share language and knowledge this supports the child to learn the names of objects and the sounds they make and what they are used for developing intellectual knowledge and also their language skills.

•Puppets and dolls- children and young people will have grown up playing with.

•Baking and cooking will-when we use a wide range of ingredients with children and young people they will learn new words about staying safe near
hot surfaces.

•Messy play will-support and allow children to use their senses to investigate and play with assorted messy materials adults and children can discuss senses and feelings and learn how to chat to describe things that they like or dislike.

The wide range of equipment we make available and the diverse range of sensory and exciting toys that we provide encourage a child to interact as they play. It provides a fun way to involve and encourage a child or young person to discuss, chat and, develops their speech, language and communication