Lev Vygotsky: The Importance Of Play

Theories and Experiences According to Playscotland.org (n.d.), “play is often called the ‘work’ of children”. There is a plethora of things that children learn from play. First, play provides growth in all developmental domains. This developmental growth includes cognitive, emotional, physical, and social domains (“The Importance of Play,” (n.d.). Cognitive development includes language skills and combining different ideas to create new ones (Sohn, 2015; “The Importance of Play,” n.d.). Emotionally, play can provide children with self-confidence and self-esteem. The physical aspect that play provides is a child being physically active while they are playing. This can include balancing, climbing, jumping, kicking, and running. Lastly, children are learning social skills while they are playing and interacting with others (Sohn, 2015). Over the years there have been numerous theories regarding play; however, one theorist, Lev Vygotsky, is whom I connect the most with. Lev Vygotsky was a psychologist whose theories has strongly influenced education. He believed that social interaction helps cognitive development (McLeod, 2007). Vygotsky’s theory on play is that play allows a child to connect language with the outside world and allows them to understand and create new ideas (“Play,” 2015; “The Importance of Play,” n.d.). During play, a child …show more content…
First, when I was young, I engaged in a lot of pretend play. I would play school using my stuffed animals as students. While I was playing school, I would talk out loud to myself and ask them questions. When I started school and made friends, I would go over to their house and we would play Barbie’s. Like Vygotsky suggested, both of these types of play allowed me to build my language development. If I was not talking to myself while playing school, I was having conversations with my friends while we were playing