Play is one of the most important thing children can do and is critical to learning. Children are born to play. They are motivated and inspired by play. Their activities are not only for self-amusement, but also help them develop behavioural and social skills as well as having physical rewards. A child’s play changes as they become older from a small baby who looks lovingly at their parents face and tries to copy their expressions to a preschool aged child who uses their imagination in creative self-directed play. Play is also a natural gateway to building communication and language skills. Here are some ways that play in everyday life helps in the development of language.

Nonverbal communication:

Babies up to six months of age largely communicate through nonverbal behavior including smiling, making eye contact and copying facial expressions. When your baby reaches out and touches your face, they’re using their five senses of hearing, smell, touch, taste and sight to explore and make sense of the world. You can increase they opportunities for children to use their different senses by providing them with toys of different textures, sounds and colours.

Mouthing objects:

Parents are often concerned that their child is putting pretty much everything into their mouth. This however is a typical child development stage for your baby to pass through and it is part of their learning experience.

Around the age of four to five months of age your baby can grab objects with two hands - and the first thing they are is going to want to do is put in their mouth! This is ok and it helps them learn about different shapes and textures. When your child is putting things in their mouth they are doing what they should do at this age in order to learn.

Babies also put objects into their mouths as they are teething to provide relief to their irritated gums. This however is different to mouthing for discovery. There are commercially available products designed for your baby to chew as they are teething.

Child Directed Play

This is where the child leads and directs their own play. The caregiver takes the role of a ‘play partner’ who takes their cues from the child. Child directed play is great for encouraging communication and learning as it is initiated by your child's interests - and let’s face it, we all learn better when we are interested in something! I encourage caregivers to watch what their child’s hands are doing and where their eyes are looking and then provide language around that, such as describing what the child is doing, for example "Now you are throwing the ball to Daddy - what a big throw," when playing ball games.

Choosing the toys for play

It is absolutely fine for you to choose toys for your child to play with during child-directed play. You can encourage them by putting some blocks on the floor, or some toy cars or dress up clothes. Craft items are great for creative play and sensory activities and sports equipment like balls or climbing equipment are great for physical activity. Anything that extends your child’s exploration and imagination is fantastic to also help develop their communication skills.

Try not to have too many toys out at once as this might be distracting. We want our children to extend their play over time, and by focusing on just two or three toys out they are more likely to engage in longer and more focused play sessions than if they are distracted by many toys.

Throwing toys

Children often throw their toys. This may be simply because they enjoy it, because they are exploring what happens when they throw the toy, or to seek attention or express emotions (especially when they don’t have the language to do so).

Labelled praise can be an effective tactic to stop children throwing their toys. This is when you praise the behaviour you want to encourage and try to ignore the behaviour you don’t want, such as throwing toys. If they are playing with a toy without throwing it, you can say, “thank you for playing so carefully with your toys. I love it when you are careful with your toys”. By not mentioning the negative behaviour (throwing) and labelling the behaviour you want (being careful) your child will start to understand that they get your attention for being careful.

Action songs and the role of imitation

Songs which have movements children can copy are fantastic to encourage child development. They work with both fine and gross foundational motor skills as well as developing memory and recall.

Initially your child will enthusiastically listen and watch you do the actions to your favourite songs and rhymes. Then, at around eight months of age your child might start to imitate one or two of the actions. The older they get the more actions they will imitate.

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star – in my experience children love this song as the actions are quite simple.
Round and Round the Garden – many children love the anticipation of being tickled.
Baby Shark – I am not sure if the fad has passed however, it was and still is a favourite of some of the children I work with.
Daddy Finger Daddy Finger Where Are You? – children love the interaction between all 10 fingers.
Five Cheeky Monkeys Jumping on the Bed - great for early math skills as you count down from five to zero.

How play changes throughout childhood

Under 12 months of age

Play at this stage is largely focused around the humans in your baby’s life. For the first four to six months of life, your baby will be watching you intently and starting to copy some of your expressions. Babies of this age are fairly uncoordinated and will randomly feel, hit or play with objects that are very close to them. Once they able to grasp objects with both hands they then start to focus more specifically on objects within sight and reach.

To help with early communication development talk to your child about what they are doing. For example you can do things like describe their body movements.

You might have a colourful mobile over your child’s cot. Your child is lying on their back and reaches up to touch the mobile. You can say: "Your arms are reaching up to the mobile, you’re stretching your arms up so high, that’s it, stretch up”.

Or if your child is grabbing a rattle you can say: "You put both hands together to get the rattle and now you’re shaking the rattle, I hear the rattle when you shake it. You’re putting the rattle in your mouth. The rattle feels hard”.

12-24 months of age:

Pretend play is important for this age group. Pretend play is strongly linked to language development, cognitive development, problem-solving skills, and social development including social competence, understanding of social situations, and social skills. Continue to help your child by adding language to what they are doing. For example

Your child pretends to feed his soft toy monkey using a spoon. It is probable at this stage your child will repeat this single action many times. You can describe what your child is doing:

"Monkey’s hungry. You giving monkey some food. Yum yum, monkey loves banana!" Remember at this stage in your child’s language development they needs to hear language over and over. So while you might get bored with saying the same thing time and time again, you child is listening to you and the language is starting to make sense. Also by hearing your voice as they play, your child knows that you are interested in them and are part of their play. This supports their sense of wellbeing and the emotional development between your child and you.

24- 36 months of age

By now your child's play has become more complex> Instead of repeating a single action multiple times they can engage in multiple sequential play sequences.

For example you set up a picnic with some soft toys and some picnic items such as a cup, plate, spoon, drink and food. Watch what your child does – they are probably going to give the toy a drink and some food. You can say:

“Bear is hungry. You are giving the Bear an apple. Bear loves the apple it is so crunchy.

“Now he is thirsty and wants a drink. You are giving Bear a drink. Mmmmm Bear loves his drink”.

Or you may play with Duplo blocks. l like Duplo blocks for young children as they are much bigger and easier to put together at this age than Lego. I would encourage you to just put some blocks out and perhaps some toy animals. You can say:

“You are putting the yellow block on the blue block. That’s it, push it down. Now you have a red block. What a great tower you are building! That’s it, push it down”.

“Oh the tiger is coming to the tower. 'Grrrrrr' says the tiger.”

“Oh no! The blocks came apart. Now you are putting the green block on the yellow block. Your tower is getting so tall”.

A dress up box is also great for children at this age. You can ask family and friends to donate clothes for your child’s dress up box instead of buying new items or fancy costumes. As your child explores and plays you can say things like"

“I love your purple hat and your blue and green scarf”

“Oh you are putting on those black shoes. Oh my they are so big."

“You are walking so carefully in those big black shoes”.

Developing language is child’s play!