The Early Communication: Play Skills : use this to learn as a carer about Play skills. This helps you to start implementing Play skills at home. Talks about types of play and how they are beneficial in developing early communication.
What is an Early Communication: Play?
Play is an integral part of early communication development. The Early Communication: Play infographic talks about the different types of play and how they are beneficial in early communication.
Play enables a learner to interact with others, solve problems, develop motor skills, and develop social communication skills. With the extent to which technology is in our learner’s lives, play has become even more important.
The different types of play each have their own benefits as they encourage the different aspects of development (sensory, cognitive, motor, social, etc). To promote a learner’s early communication skills, sprinkle various play opportunities throughout each day.
Play encourages the learner to use joint attention, gestures, cognitive (thinking) skills, and more which sets the stage for early communication development.
Learners are not locked into a stage. They can move from one stage to another as they grow and develop as well as when their communication skills improve or when they have more opportunities to interact with their peers.
Learners don’t always follow the typical sequence of play. For example, an older learner with communication skills may still prefer solitary play or a learner with little communication skills may play cooperatively with their peers. A learner’s stage of play can be influenced by their circumstance (i.e., setting, people, comfortability). They may prefer to play cooperatively with a neighbor but solitarily with a classmate.
Even though the stages of play can be influenced by outside forces, the stages are commonly used to assess a learner’s abilities for social interactions based on their interactions with their peers.
