Every time a child plays, it opens up a whole new world, allowing them to grow their imagination, helping them process the world around them and giving them opportunities to role play and explore their thoughts, feelings, observations and experiences - promoting good mental health.
Play allows for exercising and improving gross motor skills, such as hand eye coordination, balance, general coordination and strengthening the neural pathways in the brain. This in turn puts our children in great stead to develop and fine tune their fine motor skills.
Not to mention play also helps to expand understanding of language and numeracy and, when you get involved too, it can really strengthen your relationship, build trust and create a strong bond with your Wee One.
I could go on and on but I think you get the point. Play is so fundamental for our children developmentally and the best thing about it is - it's FUN!
Providing children with the opportunity to play will allow them to flourish. You don't need lots of 'stuff' or toys to achieve this, just one or two well chosen pieces at key points during early years development is more than enough and will provide hours of play and so much development potential for your precious Wee One."
