The organisation Early Years Matters defines the importance of play as the following:
‘Play underpins the EYFS. It also underpins learning and all aspects of children’s development. Through play, children develop language skills, their emotions and creativity, social and intellectual skills. For most children their play is natural and spontaneous although some children may need extra help from adults. Play takes place indoors and outdoors and it is in these different environments that children explore and discover their immediate world. It is here they practise new ideas and skills, they take risks, show imagination and solve problems on their own or with others. The role that adults have is crucial. Adults provide time and space and appropriate resources. These might include clothes, boxes, buckets, old blankets that will inspire play and fire children’s imaginations. They observe play and join in when invited, watching and listening before intervening. They value play and provide safe but challenging environments that support and extend learning and development’.
Age Range | What does play look like in this age group? |
Birth- Three Years
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Babies and young children love to play with anything from their fingers and toes, to their toys, as well as with sounds and with adults and children. When young children play they learn at the same time, so play is a very important way for children to learn. If you watch very young children playing you will notice that they don’t always need other children or adults because they are quite happy playing alone, provided they can see and hear others near by. When babies play, their whole bodies are involved in reaching, grasping, rolling and touching things. As they become more mobile and they gain control over their bodies babies enjoy putting things together such as piling blocks on top of one another or banging balls together, or filling and emptying containers. Two year olds love to pretend, basing their play on imitating things they have seen you, or other people do, like vacuuming, talking on the telephone or playing a trumpet. When they play like this they don’t always need the real thing, as they will make do with anything that they can adapt to their pretend play. By the time they are moving towards their third birthday children begin to play with others more, and increasingly enjoy playing with other children. Babies and young children also enjoy looking at books, listening to stories and rhymes and joining in with songs. As they hear and join in with stories, songs and rhymes and look at books, young children become familiar with different sounds and words, and they begin to anticipate events
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Play opportunities needed | |
They learn through looking, listening, touching, tasting, investigating, exploring, experimenting and through playing and talking. This means that young children need to have opportunities to:
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Age Range | What does play look like in this age group? |
Three to Five Years
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Providing high quality planned experiences for children’s play is an important way for adults to support children’s learning that is both enjoyable and challenging. When children play, they are learning at the highest level. Play can extend certain areas of their learning – for example, developing language skills by promoting talk between children or introducing new vocabulary that they use and act out in their play. One example of a planned experience for older children in the EYFS would be setting up a health centre in a classroom. Children enjoy finding out about stethoscopes and Xrays, role playing different jobs, diagnosing a sore throat and even bandaging a pretend broken arm. Such a playful approach to learning builds on children’s interests and responds to their ideas for play and also allows scope for structured activities to teach specific skills and knowledge. |
Whilst the Education Endowment Fund (2019) report that the evidence base for play-based learning is weak and inconsistent, it does indicate a positive relationship between play and early learning outcomes. ‘On average, studies of play that include a quantitative component suggest that play-based learning approaches improve learning outcomes by approximately five additional months’.
The EEF (2019) published the following key considerations for practitioners when implementing a play based strategy into a learning environment:
- How does the way you organise equipment in the learning environment support active learning, play and exploration? For example, can children access resources independently?
- How effectively does your environment encourage and support children to develop their language, literacy and mathematical understanding through play?
- How does the balance between child-initiated play and more structured activities meet the learning needs of your children?
- How confident are your staff in effectively supporting learning through child-initiated play?
- How will you evaluate the impact of any new play-based approaches you introduce?