Kids today hear lots of stories about their parents and grandparents exploring their neighborhoods, trying to build treehouses in the summer, and spending hours practicing make-believe in the backyard. In other words, kids today hear about unstructured play, but they don’t experience it as commonly as today’s adults did during their childhoods. Although parents have good intentions, a lack of unstructured play is not good for our children’s development.
What Is Unstructured Play?
Also known as open play or free play, unstructured play is a type of spontaneous, child-led play that enables children the freedom to follow their interests, explore, imagine, and create without structured goals, predetermined rules or instructions, or adult direction.
The Importance of Unstructured Play: Developmental Benefits
Unstructured play is crucial to childhood development, and a lack of open play can actually disrupt a child’s normal cognitive, emotional, and social development. Children who engage in frequent unstructured playtime tend to be less stressed, happier, better adjusted, and even more intelligent.
In addition to promoting physical activity, unstructured play offers the following developmental benefits:
- Cognitive Development – Children practice critical thinking and problem-solving during unstructured play, which supports cognitive development.
- Social Development – During unstructured play with other children, children learn cooperation, collaboration, empathy, negotiation, and social skills.
- Emotional Development – Children also learn to regulate their own emotions during open play.
- Physical Development – Free play is often highly active, helping children develop both gross and fine motor skills.
- Confidence, Independence, and Self-Reliance – Playing on their own, children must think analytically, solve problems, and take the initiative to make decisions on their own. This helps them become more independent, confident, and self-reliant.
- Resilience – During open play, children face challenges and cope with setbacks on their own.
- Creativity and Imagination – Without preestablished boundaries, activities, and rules, children exercise creativity and strengthen their imaginations.
Ideas for Open-Ended Playtime Activities
Unstructured playtime shouldn’t come with too many rules or an overbearing amount of direction that could limit a child’s creativity. However, children often turn to their parents for ideas of what they can do, and the following are some excellent unstructured play ideas that you can suggest:
- Explore the backyard
- Build a pillow or blanket fort
- Build with blocks
- Play imaginatively with dolls, action figures, or other objects
- Invent a new game
- Draw, paint, or make a sculpture from natural materials
- Play dress-up
- Find pictures in the clouds
- Play make-believe (i.e., play house, grocery store, doctor, or restaurant)
Unstructured play can occur alone or with siblings and friends. Sometimes, parents participate, too. When parents join their children for open playtime, be sure to let the child take the lead, decide what to do, direct make-believe stories, and solve problems.
While a child’s playtime needs some boundaries for safety, unstructured play will ideally be spontaneous, imaginative, child-led, and full of endless possibilities. While learning might happen along the way, there shouldn’t be a clearly defined learning goal or outcome for the playtime.
How to Balance Playtime With Academics
Unstructured play is important for your child’s development, but it can’t come at the expense of their academic performance. So, it is important to help your children achieve a healthy balance between school, homework, extracurricular activities, and free time for open play.
Parents can help their children find a healthy balance between playtime, schoolwork, and structured activities like extracurriculars by helping them create and stick to a schedule while avoiding things that waste their time, and also working with them to prioritize tasks. Work with your children to accomplish difficult tasks first, so that they can fully enjoy their free time afterward. Tackling the most important things first will help them relax and not be stressed about unmet deadlines.
Support Your Child’s Healthy Development and Wellness With an Experienced Pediatric Team
At Children’s Wellness Center, our team of pediatricians is passionate about supporting and helping parents foster healthy development in children.
If you have concerns about your child’s unstructured playtime or are looking for ideas to create a safe space for unstructured play in your child’s life, our pediatricians can help you find ideas that meet the needs of your child while assuaging your concerns. If you have any questions about the importance of unstructured play, please contact us.