School & Play

Illustration of a baby looking at its fingersYoung children learn to understand the world around them by playing. As tiny babies they will begin to play by exploring their fingers. Through such a simple game they learn the most complex of things like hand-eye co-ordination. If they put their fingers in their mouth they will start to explore texture, taste, even what size means!

As they get older, children begin to play increasingly elaborate games and by the time they are three years old they are engineers building skyscrapers with blocks, politicians negotiating their way through an imaginative game with their pals, or physics lecturers explaining the properties of sand, water and clay.

Photo of hopscotchWatching, exploring, asking a million and one questions, they are learning about how everything works at home and outside. As they play, their understanding unfolds and they learn important lessons from how to hop, to how to make, and lose, friends.