Childhood is an important stage of life as it is a stage at which a great deal of learning occurs.
Children learn through play:
- to make choices
- to share
- to build
- fine motor skills
- to be independent individuals
- to respect their own choices and abilities
- hand eye co-ordination
- language and communication
- cognitive development.
Children learn to explore their own imaginations and they learn through trial and error. They learn time skills. They learn behaviours expected during this playtime and how to act and how to expect others to act. Early numeracy and literacy skills are developed.
Children should be encouraged to engage in a variety of experiences to:
- develop all of their skills
- to teach them self confidence
- so they gain self esteem and self satisfaction from learning new things
- so they do not get bored and stagnant in their learning
- to provide them with many different opportunities and ways of learning things
- to gain physical, emotional, social, communicative abilities
- so that a child will want to learn new things from a range of experiences
- also to show them that new things are not scary