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

Dealing with children's seperation anxiety

Whether you are a parent, aunt, granny, granpa, teacher, carer or child, I'm sure we have all experienced or at least witnessed the heart-breaking scene of a child throwing a tantrum and refusing to leave his/her parent's side when being dropped off at school. It's also good to say that as well as being emotional, this scene can also get very tiring when it happens on a daily basis.

Seperation anxiety usually begins in infants between 4-6 months, then re-emerges at 18 months after the child has learnt to differentiate between the mother/father and other care-givers. As opposed to adults, young children do not have the capacity to understand that when you leave, you will be back. If young children have not developed what Piaget calls object constancy, there is a great chance that he/she believes you have disappeared forever. No wonder that poor little kid latches on so hard! There are a few ways in which you as a care-giver can help the child ease into this and reduce the anxiety

Peak-a-boo

Despite being a fun game, peak-a-boo serves a much deeper purpose. Playing peak-a-boo with your child allows you to develop a strong relationship in which the child experiences a few seconds of anxiety at the thought of losing you, but is relieved quickly when you show your face again. This eventually sends the message that even though you have disappeared, you do eventually come back.




Explain your day and why you are leaving
With most children, especially those over 3, it has found to be helpful if you explain why you are leaving and what most of your day involves for example explaining that you are going into your office, and then will write some things on paper ect. This helps the child to get a concrete idea of what you are doing. It is also vital to give the child a rough estimate as to what time you will pick him/her up. This gives them a goal to focus on.

Transitional objects

These are objects that the child picks as a form of 'security' such as blankets, dolls, pieces of your clothing, soft toys ect. This is their way of keeping a part of you with them and helps ease the transition of you not being there. Don't be too quick to remove these objects as it does help them to cope.


In summary, always remember that such tantrums all stem from anxiety and fear that you will abandon the child. The easiest thing is to reassure them that this is not the case, and that you will be back, even if you are leaving for a little while. Also, it helps to know that despite maybe feeling irritated by the tantrums, they ultimately occur because the child finds it unbearable to think of a world without you. So amidst all the frustration, there is a silver lining :)