3.1 Purposes of Play Play fulfills a wide variety of purposes in the life of the child. The importance of play in early childhood is strongly emphasized in a recent report by the American Academy of Pediatrics (Milteer & Ginsburg, 2012): Play is essential to the social, emotional, cognitive, and physical well-being of children beginning in early childhood. It is a natural tool for children to develop resiliency as they learn to cooperate, overcome challenges, and negotiate with others. Play also allows children to be creative. It provides time for parents to be fully engaged with their children, to bond with their children, and to see the world from the perspective of their child.... It is essential that parents, educators, and pediatricians recognize the importance of lifelong benefits that children gain from play. (p. 204) Play Fosters Physical Development Sensorimotor Skills On a very simple level, play promotes the development of sensorimotor skills, or skills that require the coordination of movement with the senses, such as using eye-hand coordination to stack blocks (Frost et al., 2008; Jones & Reynolds, 2011; Morrison, 2004; Tokarz, 2008). Children spend hours perfecting such abilities and increasing the level of difficulty to make the task ever more challenging. Anyone who has lived with a 1-year-old will recall the tireless persistence with which the child pursues the acquisition of basic physical skills. Fitness and Health Strenuous, physical play is especially important today, when obesity among children and adults has reached an all-time high. An estimated 64% of all adults in the United States are seriously overweight or obese. Approximately 10% of all children age 2 to 5 years and 15% of older children are overweight (Association for Childhood Education International [ACEI], 2004). It is crucial that early childhood programs offer children the opportunity for active, gross-motor play every day, as habits and attitudes toward physical activity are formed early in life and continue into adulthood. Outdoor Play Connects Children to Nature and Their Environment Nature Feels Good and Inspires Playing outdoors allows children to experience their natural environment with all their senses “open.” They can breathe fresh air and feel the invigoration of their hearts pounding as they charge up a hill. Children learn about the variety of creatures that may live in their area, explore the life cycle when they discover a cocoon or squashed ant, and experience fully with their senses how everything seems different after the rain. Where does the sun go when it is cloudy? Where does the wind come from? Questions about nature arise spontaneously through outdoor play and provoke children into thought and, if properly supported by the teacher, into deep investigations of the world. It is vital that we allow all children—urban, suburban, and rural—to discover the world outside and learn to appreciate the environment around them. Children must have ...

1. 3.1 Purposes of Play
Play fulfills a wide variety of purposes in the life of the child.
The importance of play in early childhood is strongly
emphasized in a recent report by the American Academy of
Pediatrics (Milteer & Ginsburg, 2012):
Play is essential to the social, emotional, cognitive, and
physical well-being of children beginning in early childhood. It
is a natural tool for children to develop resiliency as they learn
to cooperate, overcome challenges, and negotiate with others.
Play also allows children to be creative. It provides time for
parents to be fully engaged with their children, to bond with
their children, and to see the world from the perspective of their
child.... It is essential that parents, educators, and pediatricians
recognize the importance of lifelong benefits that children gain
from play. (p. 204)
Play Fosters Physical Development
Sensorimotor Skills
On a very simple level, play promotes the development of
sensorimotor skills, or skills that require the coordination of
movement with the senses, such as using eye-hand coordination
to stack blocks (Frost et al., 2008; Jones & Reynolds, 2011;
Morrison, 2004; Tokarz, 2008). Children spend hours perfecting
such abilities and increasing the level of difficulty to make the
task ever more challenging. Anyone who has lived with a 1-
year-old will recall the tireless persistence with which the child
pursues the acquisition of basic physical skills.
Fitness and Health
Strenuous, physical play is especially important today, when
obesity among children and adults has reached an all-time high.
An estimated 64% of all adults in the United States are
seriously overweight or obese. Approximately 10% of all
children age 2 to 5 years and 15% of older children are
overweight (Association for Childhood Education International
[ACEI], 2004). It is crucial that early childhood programs offer

2. children the opportunity for active, gross-motor play every day,
as habits and attitudes toward physical activity are formed early
in life and continue into adulthood.
Outdoor Play Connects Children to Nature and Their
Environment
Nature Feels Good and Inspires
Playing outdoors allows children to experience their natural
environment with all their senses “open.” They can breathe
fresh air and feel the invigoration of their hearts pounding as
they charge up a hill. Children learn about the variety of
creatures that may live in their area, explore the life cycle when
they discover a cocoon or squashed ant, and experience fully
with their senses how everything seems different after the rain.
Where does the sun go when it is cloudy? Where does the wind
come from? Questions about nature arise spontaneously through
outdoor play and provoke children into thought and, if properly
supported by the teacher, into deep investigations of the world.
It is vital that we allow all children—urban, suburban, and
rural—to discover the world outside and learn to appreciate the
environment around them.
Children must have the opportunity for active, free, gross-motor
play every day.
Children with Disabilities
Children with disabilities, too, can discover the world and
appreciate the environment through outdoor play. We must
accommodate our programs to meet the needs of children with
disabilities by encouraging their outdoor activity. After all,
discovering the beauty of nature is one of the lasting delights of
childhood.
Play Fosters Intellectual Development
Symbolic Thought
Both Piaget and Vygotsky asserted that play is a major
influence in cognitive growth (Curwood, 2007; Hirsh-Pasek &
Golinkoff, 2003; Jones & Reynolds, 2011; Zigler et al., 2004).
Piaget (1962) maintained that imaginative, pretend play is one

3. of the purest forms of symbolic thought available to the young
child.
Vygotsky (1978) also extolled the value of such fantasy play,
arguing that during episodes of fantasy and pretend play, when
children are free to experiment, attempt, and try out
possibilities, they are most able to reach a little above or
beyond their usual level of abilities, referred to as their zone of
proximal development.
Acquisition of Information and Skills
Play also offers opportunities for the child to acquire
information that lays the foundation for additional learning
(Cavanaugh, 2008; Curwood, 2007; Elkind, 2007; Jones &
Cooper, 2006; Jones & Reynolds, 2011; Montie, Xiang, &
Schweinhart, 2007; Ramani & Siegler, 2007; Zigler et al.,
2004). Play fosters children’s math, science, and literacy
understanding and skills (Cavanaugh, 2008; Elkind, 2007; Jones
& Cooper, 2006; Zigler et al., 2004). For example, through
manipulating blocks the child learns the concept of equivalence
(two small blocks equal one larger one). Through playing with
water the child acquires knowledge of volume, which leads
ultimately to developing the concept of reversibility (if you
reverse an action that has changed something, it will resume its
original state).
TEACHER TALK
“So many of the children spend their time in front of the TV
when they are home. One of the benefits of my preschool is that
they can run around outside to their hearts’ content.”
Acquisition of Information and Skills
Play also offers opportunities for the child to acquire
information that lays the foundation for additional learning
(Cavanaugh, 2008; Curwood, 2007; Elkind, 2007; Jones &
Cooper, 2006; Jones & Reynolds, 2011; Montie, Xiang, &
Schweinhart, 2007; Ramani & Siegler, 2007; Zigler et al.,
2004). Play fosters children’s math, science, and literacy
understanding and skills (Cavanaugh, 2008; Elkind, 2007; Jones
& Cooper, 2006; Zigler et al., 2004). For example, through

4. manipulating blocks the child learns the concept of equivalence
(two small blocks equal one larger one). Through playing with
water the child acquires knowledge of volume, which leads
ultimately to developing the concept of reversibility (if you
reverse an action that has changed something, it will resume its
original state).
Imaginative, pretend play is one of the purest forms of symbolic
thought available to the young child.
Language Development
Language has been found to be stimulated when children engage
in play (Bergen, 2004; Cavanaugh, 2008; Isenberg &
Quisenberry, 2002; Tokarz, 2008). Ramani and Siegler (2007)
found that Head Start children’s math abilities improved after
they played numerical board games, in part due to the use of
“math-related language” that occurs naturally during the games
and that is an important precursor to math learning (Cavanaugh,
2008). Riojas-Cortez (2001) found that children’s play in a
bilingual classroom helped to extend the children’s use of
language experimentation in both languages.
Play Enhances Social Development
One of the strongest benefits and satisfactions stemming from
play is the way it enhances social development (Elkind, 2007;
Ginsburg, 2007; Jones & Cooper, 2006; Jones & Reynolds,
2011). Playful social interchange begins practically from the
moment of birth (Bergen, 2004; Copple & Bredekamp, 2009).
Pretend Play: Dramatic and Sociodramatic
As children grow into toddlerhood and beyond, an even stronger
social component becomes evident as more imaginative pretend
play develops. The early research of Smilansky and Shefatya
(1990) demonstrated the positive effects of play on social
development. Their methodological analysis has proven to be a
helpful way of looking at children’s play and is widely used by
early educators today. They speak of dramatic and
sociodramatic play, differentiating between the two partially on
the basis of the number of children involved in the activity.

5. Dramatic play involves imitation and may be carried out alone,
but the more advanced sociodramatic play entails verbal
communication and interaction with two or more people, as well
as imitative role playing, make-believe in regard to objects and
actions and situations, and persistence in the play over a period
of time.
Sociodramatic play in particular also helps children learn to put
themselves in another’s place, thereby fostering the growth of
empathy and consideration of others. It helps them define social
roles: They learn by experiment what it is like to be the baby or
the mother or the doctor. And it provides countless
opportunities for acquiring social skills: how to enter a group
and be accepted by its members, how to balance power and
bargain with other children, and how to work out the social
give-and-take that is the key to successful group interaction
(Elkind, 2007; Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff, 2003; Jones & Cooper,
2006; Jones & Reynolds, 2011; Koralek, 2004).
Games with Rules
Piaget maintained that children in the concrete operational
stage, approximately 7 to 11 years old, engage in playing games
with rules. It is through this type of game playing that children
learn what rules are, how to follow them, and what happens
when rules are not followed. Larger issues, such as fairness and
cheating, emerge and inform the child’s developing sense of
social mores and personal moral behavior. In Piagetian theory,
playing games in the early elementary years is crucial to the
child’s social and moral development (Curwood, 2007; Elkind,
2007; Jones & Reynolds, 2011).
Play Contains Rich Emotional Values
Expression of Feelings
The emotional value of play has been better accepted and
understood than the intellectual or social value because
therapists have long employed play as a medium for the
expression and relief of feelings (Elkind, 2007; Koralek, 2004;
O’Connor, 2000). Children may be observed almost anyplace in
the early childhood center expressing their feelings about

6. doctors by administering shots with relish or their jealousy of a
new baby by walloping a doll, but play is not necessarily
limited to the expression of negative feelings. The same doll
that only a moment previously was being punished may next be
crooned to sleep in the rocking chair.
One of the strongest benefits and satisfactions stemming from
play is the way it enhances social development.
Relieves Pressure
Omwake cites an additional emotional value of play (Moffitt &
Omwake, n.d.). She points out that play offers “relief from the
pressure to behave in unchildlike ways.” In our society so much
is expected of children, and the emphasis on arranged learning
can be so intense that play becomes indispensable as a balance
to pressures to conform to adult standards.
Mastery
Finally, play offers children an opportunity to achieve mastery
of their environment. In this way, play supports the child’s
psychosocial development, as discussed in Chapter 1, promoting
the development of autonomy, initiative, and industry. When
children play, they are in command. They establish the
conditions of the experience by using their imagination, and
they exercise their powers of choice and decision as the play
progresses.
Play Develops the Creative Aspect of the Child’s Personality
Imagination
Play, which arises from within, expresses the child’s personal,
unique response to the environment. It is inherently a self-
expressive activity that draws richly on the child’s powers of
imagination (Elkind, 2007; Jones & Cooper, 2006; Jones &
Reynolds, 2011; Isenberg & Quisenberry, 2002; Jalongo, 2003).
As Nourot (1998) has said, “The joyful engagement of children
in social pretend play creates a kind of ecstasy that
characterizes the creative process throughout life” (p. 383).
Divergent Thinking
Play increases the child’s repertoire of responses. Divergent

7. thinking is characterized by the ability to produce more than
one answer, and it is evident that play provides opportunities to
develop alternative ways of reacting to similar situations. For
example, when the children pretend that space creatures have
landed in the yard, some may respond by screaming and
running, others by trying to “capture” them, and still others by
engaging them in conversation and offering them a refreshing
snack after their long journey.
Play Is Deeply Satisfying to Children
Probably the single most important purpose of play is that it
makes children—and adults, too—happy. In a study of 122
preschoolers in eight various child care settings, 98% of the
children cited play as their favorite activity. In addition,
researchers found that the highest quality centers offered the
most opportunities for free play and allowed extended time for
children to play. Even in the centers that were rated “low
quality” (where teachers were observed yelling at children and
punishing them frequently), the children made play the central
focus of their day, liked play best, and expressed happiness
because they were able to play (Wiltz & Klein, 2001).
Regardless of their situation, almost all children find happiness
in play.
As illustrated in Figure 3.1, play forms the essential building
blocks in the construction of the whole child.
Figure 3.1 How the building blocks of play construct the whole
child