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From Baby to Preschool Play
The Wonderful World of Child's Play as They Grow
By Renee Roberson
Beginning around age 3, most children begin to enjoy creative play, which often includes self-expression through music and dance and arts and crafts. It gives children another outlet for making sense of their world and helps hone their manipulative skills.
Good materials to use are safety scissors, scraps of paper, nontoxic paints, markers and crayons. Children also enjoy listening to their favorite music, using instruments such as tambourines and maracas and moving to their own beat. Moen embraces creative play and enjoys teaching her students music and movement, as well as the different types of artistic mediums.
Around age 4, children begin to realize and experiment the fun of working as a team with peers. He may enjoy playing board games and other physical games, such as tag or kickball, with other children. Acklie feels that before that age children aren't mature enough to engage in cooperative play. "We start kids too early on games with rules," she says. "It should really be expected from around kindergarten and up."
Dramatic play, often combined with cooperative play with other children, is the highest level of play children will experiment with, Acklie says. It typically starts during the preschool years, during ages 3 to 5 years.
Also called imaginative play, children who engage in this type of play enjoy playing with puppets, pretending they are other characters (such as princesses or pirates) and dressing up and acting out stories. At Moen's preschool, her students enjoy playing in a mock doctor's office, on a pretend farm and shopping in a supermarket set up with pretend boxes and cans of groceries and a cash register.
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