Creative play, a great learning tool

With young one, learning during playtime is the easiest way to incorporate a lesson. While they are having so much fun playing,  they are barely noticing that they are learning some new skills.

I like a certain structure to our playtime, like when we are playing board games or hide and go seek and other games or the sorts. At the same time I do let  the girls have some time to play freely, without "rules" or structure.

I think that it is important to have a balance between both freedom and structure. That goes beyond just play, but that is a whole new post.

I have to admit I often use that time of free play to do some catching up on chores like dishes or laundry, but I catch myself from time to time, just listening or watching them play. There I stand, smiling, being in awe of how much they have grown, how creative they have become and how much they have learned.

If I could stop time, capturing those little moments, I would.

I was reading Mama smiles blog and came across her post on The importance of creative play, there she mentioned a few skills that comes with letting children creatively playing.

1. The ability to self-entertain
2. The development of language art
3. Emotional self-regulation
4. Social skill practice

I have to say all those are true for our family. I  have seen all the points being practice during the girls free play. Of course I do sometime have to intervene and break a fight or two, Ok, there are days that I feel more like a referee then anything else. We all have days like that right? For most part, I seen them growing more and more and I love what they are becoming. 

These pictures are just a glimpse of some creative free play, I should have took a video, it was pretty funny seeing her act out the book we had been reading earlier that day.

How about you, what skills are your kids learning from their free play?

Before you ask, the outfit was found at a local thrift store, in the Halloween costumes section. She notice it from far away and was begging me to get it for her. 

Can you tell what book we are reading aloud from this post???