If you’ve ever marveled at watching your kids play, you may have wondered how a Playground can help your child’s development.
Technology has made our children today acquire knowledge quickly thanks to electronic devices. While this has many benefits, it is also altering the natural development of our children.
Is there something we can do as parents? Yes, take your kid to the playground!
Playing is an underrated activity to develop the emotional, social, and physical skills our children need when they’re adults. Playgrounds can be a perfect space for your child to grow healthy and happy.
Here are 3 ways a playground can help your kid to develop:
A playground can help to develop motor and physical skills:
It is evident that when our children are running and jumping around the park they are burning more than one calorie. The physical development they get from playing is enormous not only on physical terms but also on mental ones.
If we look in detail at two activities that can be done in this fun space, for example, we find that climbing builds muscle strength and body awareness and teaches them directions like left, right, up and down. Swinging helps them to improve their balance, enhance coordination, and to teach gross and fine skills by gripping the chain and pumping legs to swing higher.
A playground can help your child’s social skills:
Playing with others allows us to not just make new friends, but to also develop and practice a wide range of social skills.
Sharing the same play space makes children’s interaction very easy. During these interactions children discover how to:
-Act and react to people around them
-Collaborate by taking turns on swing seats or other equipment
-Practice communication and active listening (for example by defining the rules of a game)
-Recognize social clues in body language and community effectively
-Address conflicts and plan teamwork.
Playgrounds help your children to improve their emotional skills:
Besides the development of physical and social skills, research has also shown the importance of frequent play to develop them emotionally.
Having a free space to play without any obligations makes your kid happy, relaxed, and calm. They can also face ‘difficult’ emotions like fear (when facing heights or a handrail, for example) which is essential to teach them how to overcome future situations.
Add that to more patience, empathy, and learning how to deal with frustration or defeat, and you’ll see how a playground improves your kid’s self-confidence and self-esteem.
Say yes to all of these benefits by building a playground for your backyard area. Here at Westplay, we can help. Don’t hesitate to contact us!
