Children and Physical Play

Physical play includes activities that use physical movements to allow children to use their energy, giving children the chance to develop gross and fine motor skills, learn new things and socialize. Physical play also benefits a child’s health and understanding the importance of physical play is vital to your child’s development.

Ideal physical play incorporates play with social interactions and problem solving. Physical play provides various health benefits. It promotes early brain development and learning in infants and young children and decreases the risk of developing health conditions like coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes mellitus, obesity and many other chronic health conditions.

Most children naturally develop the ability to run and walk. However, they require practice and instruction to develop hopping, galloping, sliding, catching, jumping, throwing, kicking, bouncing and striking skills. Children incorporate these skills into sports, games and dance. 

Playgrounds are perfect places for a child to develop mental connections, socialize and develop fine and gross motor skills mentioned before.

Although those who are parents now may have spent spent most of their childhood riding their bikes and playing games like baseball or football on side streets, many children today spend much of their time indoors, playing games on their tablets or watching television. Research has found that unstructured outdoor play is critical to the health of children. However, many have experienced a marked decline in the time they spend in free play.

Parytrap's Summer Club holds strong to the importance of physical play. It not only offers structured outdoor games but also opportunities for the children to explore and have fun in the sunshine of the great outdoors.


Written by Margaret Said, Partytrap Summer Club Coordinator

Disastrous dinners?

Ever had that dinner in which everything seems to go wrong? Food thrown on the floor, refusal to eat, tantrums and so on? I thinks this is something most parents have come to grips with at some point in their lives, and most agree, even though we cherish and look back on many past memories - dinner time is usually not one of them!

Child eating patterns can be of a great concern for parents and is one of the leading issues presenting in pediatric care, according to Faye Powell. Recent research has shown that " friendly interaction between mother and child instead of coercive strategies, like pressure and physical prompting, may encourage young children to try different foods.".

Having your child try new food and being greeted by tantrums and refusal to eat can test anyone's patience, however responding with aggressiveness will only help your child associate that food as something that is 'bad' and that is why there is so much pressure to eat it.

Some ideas that might help encourage your child to eat :

1. Let your child explore and experiment with the food
2. Modelling - try eating the food yourself first and emphasis how good it tastes, this will then make them curious and might help them want to try the food themselves.
3. Introduce the new food in a fun and creative way ex : yummy green trees (broccoli), crunchy carrots , juicy tomatoes ect.
4. Be patient! Children will test your patience and your boundaries, keep firm but also remember that as an adult there are foods that you yourself don't like and it's not the end of the world if your children don't like it either.

For more information on the study quoted above please click on this link!

Dr. Stephanie Bartolo
HCPC registered counselling psychologist (U.K)
Psychologist (under supervision) (Malta)