Play Time!

“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood”
—Fred Rogers

If you didn’t already love Mr. Rogers... 👆🏻
💕He really got it.

The importance of play cannot be overstated. It is how children learn about their surroundings, develop cognitively, and learn and practice language.
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Play will look very different as a child ages. Play with an infant will center more on turn-taking, exploration, imitation, and simple cause and effect activities. Toddler play becomes more complex as pretend play starts to develop. .
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Language is learned and practiced so naturally through play. Nouns, verbs, sentence structure, grammar, word-endings, prepositions, pronouns, and basic linguistic concepts are just a FEW of the pieces of language that can be addressed in play. Play allows language to be taught and learned in a natural setting where a child is engaged and motivated. Creativity, imagination, turn-taking, and other social skills also come into play as children grow and interact with other children. .
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Play can be used in SO many ways, to elicit so much rich and natural language. I’ve left you some various types of play that children use to get you thinking about how you can use play with your kiddo to bring out some new speech and language skills