Time at the playground is more than working off energy. Lots of learning happens in this space.
On the swing, even if your child doesn’t yet know how, the back and forth motion is a basic rhythm. It’s also a simple pattern. The slide is a physical experience of opposites, up/ down. Think of all the coordination and muscle skills children learn: climbing, sliding, swinging, stretching, reaching, jumping, running, pushing, pulling, etc. Children learn various ways to experience and position their bodies in all different kinds of spaces; the slide is much less confined than inside the monkey bars. Children learn timing, too, as they calculate just when to let go and when to hang on. And that’s only a start. Besides all the physical learning, there’s social, emotional, communication, language, math, science and more.
Come back to the playground tomorrow for more learning and fun, a terrific idea for summer.