Learning is While to Playing
Author: Austin Stanfel
Playgrounds are an all-time favorite of the children since the very beginning, no matter how much they are forbidden from getting involved in risky activities such as walking up the slides, dangling from the monkey bars, playing tag games, etc.
Though summers would cause blisters on the skin, still they would love to have fun out there. Therefore, it is the primary place that helps children learn many things. The essential skills, such as social, cognitive, and emotional skills get developed here.
From the quick-paced games of tag, they learn about the speed, and the essence of time from hide-and-seek, motions from the to and fro movement of the swings, sliding down the slides teach them about potential and kinetic energies. These are just a few examples in which they learn important topics of physics without sitting in the classroom, and this is known as learning through fun. It is highly effective in establishing a strong foundational knowledge about a problem which the children will never forget.
How to remedy this?In a playground, they learn to make friends and get to know how important rules are, which are essential life skills and remain with them throughout their life. It is a place that provides them chances to expand and reinvent their imaginations, and they learn ways of overcoming the hurdles efficiently. A sense of belongingness to their communities gets developed in the outdoor play environment.
They learn strategic playing and following their thoughts through simple games such as tic-tac-toe. Such things teach them how a small wrong decision can affect them. Other qualities which are imbibed in them while playing is to do so without cheating and ensuring a fair game. The playground equipment itself teaches them a lot of things such as the range of patterns, shapes, and colors on the natural playground setup. Qualities such as assertiveness and humility are all learned here, through examples in which a child is shoving someone else to get a toy, whereas the other one shares his toys with him.
Similarly, they get to know that a faster merry go round can make them sick. They also play mental games which helps them in multitasking. The duck goose, hopscotch, and Foursquare make them learn about group games.
There are children from various cultural backgrounds and groups who gather in the playground and this scenario, and they come to learn about them with the maps of different places, which are sometimes painted on the playgrounds. This makes it easy for them to remember many things about the plans. The maps are coordinated to make sure that they point the right direction, which helps them in learning the location of a state and the other nations near it. With this, they gradually come across new words that add to their vocabulary.
Playgrounds with natural themes such as the deep sand areas, gliding swings that are hung from trees, fruit trees, and other edible plants, etc. help them to appreciate the nature around them and know its value in their life. This is something that they would not get inside the home. It is the best thing that a child can get as a gift from the parents and teachers because here they feel that they are having fun, but in reality, they are learning a lot while playing.