Toddlers are full of imagination and innovation. Provide the children with waste cardboard, and they will make a castle with it.
Constructive or construction play, a significant part of development, helps children bring their imagination to life. All they need is the right tools, and they will shape, manipulate, or construct something unique with those tools.
Constructive play is an advanced stage of play where children actively use their senses and manipulate different objects to construct something novel. Constructive play starts later in life, around 2 years, and requires children to focus on one thing for a long period.
Additionally, constructive play allows children to build different things and let them explore the environment creatively.
Let’s see some examples of constructive play in real-life.
Exploring constructive play in real-life
1. Building sand castles
Building sand castles or sand tombs is a common constructive play example. Provide the young children with some sand, bucket, and water, and let them construct unique castles and tombs. Building sand castles or tombs helps children enhance their creativity.
2. Building blanket castles
Building blanket castles is another constructive play that young children engage in. Children pile up the blankets one upon the other and build castles with them. They even use pillows to make entrances to the castles.
3. Doodling
Doodling is another creative form of constructive play that allows children to express their feelings and emotions and help children to improve their creativity. Doodling is a form of art where children, with the help of pens or colors, construct small images to represent different things.
4. Painting pictures
Painting pictures is another form of art that young children engage in. They often draw sceneries, family pictures, pet animals, or anything that readily comes to mind. Painting pictures is a form of constructive play as children construct different pictures and allow their creativity to run free. Painting and coloring have various benefits that children can explore using constructive play.
5. Playing with play dough or clay to construct something
Playdough or playing clay is a common playing tool that encourages constructive play in children. Children often construct things like animals, shapes, fruits, vegetables, etc., while playing with clay.
6. Playing with legos or block games
Legos and block games are among the most popular toys for children. Children join the Lego pieces or blocks and construct multiple things, such as houses, cars, etc. representing their creativity and enhancing their cognitive skills by engaging in imaginative thinking.
7. Craft
Provide raw materials to the young children, such as papers, cardboard, beads, etc., and encourage them to construct anything from the given material. For instance, paper boats, games, etc., can be constructed using raw materials.
8. Puzzle games
Puzzle games are another common construction game where children construct different shapes or images using the given puzzle pieces. Puzzle games are further useful for enhancing problem-solving skills among developing children.
9. Creating rings or bracelets from material available
Young children make paper rings, bracelets with small beads, or necklaces with glass stones or beads. Young children often construct different ornaments from the raw material available around them.
10. Drawing murals on walls or sidewalks
Leave the young kids with pens or colors in a room, and they will surely find a wall to paint on. From rough coloring to drawing different pictures, walls or sidewalks become the canvas for the children to construct different things and showcase their creativity.
11. Woodworking
Woodworking is another construction game that young children prefer to engage in. Different construction or woodworking toy tools, such as hammers, saw nails, etc., are used by children to fix loose nails or flatten the nails on some cardboard. Children even construct different wooden structures using the tools.
12. Tangrams or magnetic tiles
Tangrams or magnetic tiles are other construction games that allow children to brainstorm and let their creativity run free. Children combine different polygon pieces of tangrams to construct different shapes or use magnetic tiles of different shapes to construct some figure or shape.
What makes constructive play important?
Playing games is more than just playing and enjoying. Play is a significant part of a child’s development and has various benefits. Children begin engaging in constructive play around 2-3 years; the stage can extend to 8-10 years. These are the crucial years for the children’s physical and cognitive development and growth.
Some benefits of constructive play are-
- Constructive play helps children enhance their creativity.
- Improves the social skills of the children, such as sharing their thoughts.
- It also improves the language and communication skills of the children.
- Constructive plays improve the identification and manipulation of objects.
- Constructive play helps boost problem-solving skills in action.
- Constructive play also boosts developing children’s imagination and helps them understand the world around them.
- Constructive play helps develop skills like cooperation among children.
- It also helps children develop abstract thinking. Constructive play can be encouraged by abstract thinking games and activities.
- Constructive play also improves the fine and gross motor skills of the children.
- Constructive play boosts self-esteem and self-confidence and it can be encouraged by self-esteem and self-confidence games and activities in children.
How to encourage constructive play in the children?
The constructive play has various benefits. Hence, it is important to encourage children to engage in constructive play. Parents or caregivers can encourage constructive play in children by-
1. Provide the right stuff
Ensure the children have the right stuff around them, such as Lego pieces, clay, raw materials, etc.
2. Play with the children.
A little encouragement will go a long way. To encourage constructive play in children, parents or caregivers should play with the children and encourage them to engage in the games.
3. Allow exploration
Allow the child to explore their surroundings and feed their curiosity. Children at a young age are full of curiosity and imagination. They will find new ways to play games if they can explore and try different things.
Final words
Constructive or construction play marks the development of cognitive and motor skills in young children. Children actively explore and manipulate their surroundings to construct new things straight out of their imagination.
Constructive play has multiple benefits; hence, with the right tools, parents or caregivers can encourage their young ones to engage in constructive play and help develop the children.
I am Sehjal Goel, a psychology student, and a writer. I am currently pursuing my Masters’s from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. Child psychology has always fascinated me and I have a deep interest in learning about disabilities in children and spreading awareness regarding the same. My other areas of interest are neuropsychology and cognitive psychology. Connect me on Linkedin