KOMPAN

Play to Play and Play to Grow

By Jeanette Fich Jespersen, M.A., Manager of the KOMPAN Play Institute

Play is essential to human beings. To play is to have fun and learn at the same time. To children, playing is the way of gathering knowledge of the world around them. Through play children build their social, physical, cognitive, emotional and creative skills. 

There is nothing like free play outdoors to a child: the air and the sounds make a world of sense experiences and the child has a chance to jump, run and shout – to be a child. In fact, for children up to quite an age play is the only way to learn and learn in a way that is great fun. Play patterns develop from the age of 1 to the age of 99, as the brain and sensory and motor skills develop.

All children are unique but they usually have their developmental stages more or less in common. This means that we can work with favourite games and play equipment for the specific age stages – always bearing in mind that what the children older than you do is more interesting than what the younger children do – because you play to grow and thus measure yourself with the role models.

The commonly acknowledged divisions are infant age (up to app. 1 year), toddler age (up to 3 years), pre-school age (up to 6 years), school age (up to 12 years), and finally the pre-teen and teenage/adolescence years. These divisions are made according to the psychological research of Eriksson and Piaget. There are subdivisions within each age group. From the age of approximately nine we talk about a pre-teen or tween group: Not really wanting to be childish, but not really teenagers either.

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