Why free play in kindergarten is so important

Reading time: 2 minutes Many parents are unsettled and horrified when their children tell them that they had free play in kindergarten. But it is more important than you think and is crucial for life.

Why free play in kindergarten is so important

From my own experience I know that many parents are unsettled or even horrified when the children tell them "We didn’t do anything today, we had free play". In the eyes of many parents, you can read at this moment that they don’t really know what it’s good for – after all, the children should learn something.

I think the uncertainty in the eyes of the parents is due to the insecurity and also the ignorance of many parents on this topic. Shine in many minds pictures like:

everyone is running wild
everything is messy and disorganized
the children are out of control
the supervisors drink coffee
the children are allowed to do what they want
there are no rules
Toys lie all over the place

At first glance, some of it is true, but many things are not.

Children have important experiences from the game. Children learn only through the things they do, touch, try out. They also learn from things that they cannot do if they have to come up with a different strategy or if they have an argument with another child – arguments must also be learned.

Free play is essential to become independent and to practice life. The development of independence is learned and tested in this game and also improved. In “real” life, they cannot try themselves and the environment and can simply improve and adapt wrong decisions. They cannot simply change their tone when they realize that the situation is not doing them any good.

Children research and test themselves in dealing with the requirements and in dealing with others – for this need the free spin.

In addition, the movement they get in this form of play is good and important to train things like motor skills or perceptions. Dealing with your own body, different materials and a lot of children gain important insights from different play objects. These findings are important in order to understand the world, to know and to understand laws and properties.

Many children today move far too little and lack basic properties on the motor level. As a result, the children have motor deficits and perceptual disorders. Perceptions are only developed by making, smelling, feeling, climbing, sliding, smelling, seeing, hearing and many other things – in motion – in free play.

Of course, children in kindergarten must and should be prepared for school, cutting, painting, handicrafts, building and playing board games. You should learn about nutrition, religion and people. For this, however, their perceptions must be optimally trained. A child who suffers from perceptual disorders, no matter how small, may have difficulty reading and writing. B an LRS or arithmetic weakness. These things are due to deficits in perceptions.

Free play in kindergarten is extremely important for the children and at home additional activities can be “built in” to train motor skills, independence and perception even further.