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Week 3 – Play
Play is all about having fun! Not only does play help build creativity and imagination, it also helps build language skills for our early language learners. Whether your child is simply rolling a ball back and forth with their siblings or putting on a costume and pretending she’s a Princess, they are going through different stages of play development.
As early language learners our little ones go through what Jean Piaget refers to as the sensorimotor stage. He suggests that children from birth to about age two understand the world through their motor abilities such as touch, vision, taste, and movement. There are 5 types of play within this stage:
1. Object permanence & means-end play: (9 to 12 months): Pull string on dog toy and it moves towards you.
2. Cause & Effect: (13 to 17 months): Push button and balls come out of gumball toy.
3. Autosymbolic Play: (17 to 19 months): Drink from empty cup.
4. Pretend Play: (19 to 22 months): Engage in play schemas, pretend she is mom to baby doll. Use toy broom.
5. Symbolic Play: (24 months): Child understands that something can symbolize or represent another i.e. banana for phone. Pretend that stick is a broom.
Source: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-object-permanence-2795405
