Speaking of Play: 3-4 Years
Introduction
Whew! You made it through the “Trying 2’s”! So what is next? There is so much going on in a child’s development during this next stage. Children are able to understand and start to have more control over emotions, be capable of developing early friendships, use longer sentences, have a stronger memory, and continue to develop their motor skills. Three year old’s love to play make believe. While your child is becoming more independent, they still need your support. Keep reading to learn more about how to nurture your child’s play and communication development during this stage.
Play Development
Play at this stage becomes increasingly social. Your child will move from playing nearby other children (parallel play) to now more actively playing with other peers. Around 3 years of age, children enter the associate stage of play. During this stage, two or more children will play with the same toys together, but are not yet working towards a common goal. For example, children may play with blocks near each other and communicate together, but are not yet working on building one tower together. Through associative play, kids start developing their first real friendships. Children also start to develop what is known as “theory of mind” during play, in which they begin to understand the perspectives and emotions of others.
Your child’s play sequences will become more complex and less isolated. For example, a child mixes a cake, bakes it, serves it, and then washes the dishes. Play sequences evolve into using less realistic props. For example, a child may pretend that a stick is a sword. During block play, your little one will be able to build 3D structures. Your child’s advancing cognitive skills will also shine during play, as you watch them being able to act out new endings to play scenes. They will problem-solve events they have not experienced and hypothesize using “what if”.
Communication Skills
Your child will understand most of what you are saying at this stage. They are beginning to become much more social and are interested in having conversations with you and telling you stories. Metalinguistic abilities, the ability to think and comment about play, begin to show. Around 3 years of age, your child should be able to produce sentences 3-5 words in length and by age 4 will be able to produce sentences 4-6 words in length or more! Your child’s articulation skills will also become more fine tuned during this time. By age 4, most children will be able to be understood at least 75% of the time. Your child will start using more descriptive language, such as shapes, sizes, colors, textures, and spatial relationships. By age 4, modals (can, may, might, could, would, will) and conjunctions (and, but, if, so, because) appear. Your little one will also begin to respond appropriately to “Why” and “How” questions.
Toys to Explore
Playing dress up allows for your child to use their imagination. You can change up their play by asking questions or providing different types of responses during play. The possibilities are endless!
Dress Up Clothes
Your child’s imagination is flourishing during this stage! Having a box of dress up clothes for your child to wear will provide endless opportunities to act out different scenes.
Dress up clothes don’t need to be fancy. They can be old purses and hates you no longer use, last year’s Halloween costumes, or hand me downs from friends or siblings.
Encourage your child to try out alternative endings to their play scenes by suggesting a different problem to encounter or asking “what if?” questions. For example, if your child is pretending to be a doctor, maybe this time the patient ate too much ice cream! Oh no! What should they do?
Board games are the perfect opportunity to support social skills, early academic concepts, and cooperative play. It’s also an easy family activity that everyone can enjoy.
Board Games
Your child is now interested in learning to participate in social activities. Simple board games provide a structured opportunity to learn more about social skills such as taking turns, working towards a common goal, winning, and losing. Games can also incorporate early academic skills such as colors, counting, and shapes.
Try playing cooperative games to help your child learn about social rules before adding the pressure of winning or losing to a game. Peaceable Kingdom and HABA My Very First Games make a variety of games that don’t focus on winning or losing.
As your child becomes more adept at understanding games, you may try simple games that incorporate winning and losing, such as Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel and memory games.
Magnatiles are a fun way for children to use different shapes and colors to build creativity, as well as engage in problem solving and imaginative play. I’m sure we can all remember how much fun it was to build forts, towers, houses, and more with anything we could find around the house.
Magnatiles
Magnatiles allow children to build 3D structures using various shapes of differing sizes and colors. They are a great toy for nurturing problem solving, creativity, and imaginative play.
Magnatiles also work well for building structures for little people or animals. This allows for new opportunities each time Magnatiles are used. This time your child may build stalls for his animals, but next time he may build a playground for his little people to play on!
Construction toys such as Magnatiles provide a great opportunity to ask your child How and Why questions. Ask your child how one of their structures works or why they need to use a certain shape!
RAWR! Fun animal sounds are motivating for children to imitate and use throughout play. Toy animals support your child’s ability to engage in conversation while pretend the animals can talk.
Animal Figurines
Toy animals allow children to act out so many different scenes as their imaginations continue to grow. Your child can use animals to act out new scenes and problem solve new endings.
You will notice your child giving dialogue to toys. Children can use toy animals to have little conversations during play!
You can play with your child by following their lead with the animals and pretending to make some of the toy animals talk!
Whether you spend time together making your own or buy some from the store, puppets are an easy way for kids to use their imagination through pretend play. You can build on their language by expanding their utterances or modeling expanded sentence structures while acting out play scenes.
Puppets
Puppets are another way children can act out play scenes while incorporating dialogue. This is a great way to incorporate imagination and language into play!
Puppets don’t need to be fancy. Try making your own using socks or paper bags!
Your child is learning so much through play! Play continues to play a critical part of how children this age learn and practice new skills as they become more independent. But remember that your child still needs you to encourage and help them!
This blog is part of a series. Click here to read an introduction about all the stages of play! Stay tuned for the next post in this series as we dive into the next stage of play! Concerned about your child’s play or language development? Feel free to contact us!