★Educational Value.
Through his play with toys of all types, the young child learns to know the shapes, colors, sizes, and textures of objects as well as their significance. As he grows older, he develops many skills in games and sports. Exploring, collecting, and other favored forms of play in late childhood furnish the child with information that cannot be obtained from school books.
Reading, plays, concerts, and well-selected movies broaden the child's information and at the same time give him enjoyment, Because material in books and movies and on television is often presented with vivid imagery and in exciting forms, it captures and holds the child's attention, thus increaseing his motivation to learn. Play helps the child to comprehend and control the world in which he lives and to destinguish between reality and fantasy.
In play, the child learns about himself and others and about his relationships with them. He learns about his abilities and how they compare with the abilities of others, and he is thus enabled to establish a clearer and more realistic concept of himself. Play permits him to experiment and to test his abilities without taking full responsibility for his actions, as he would have to in activities of a more serious nature. In drawing, for example, he can experiment as much as he pleases and know that he will not be graded on the basis of what he has drawn. In play, the child assumes many different roles and thus learns which roles give him the greatest satisfaction and at the same time enable him to establish the most satisfying relationships with others. Furthermore, he learns to play the sex role society expects him to play by pretending, in his play, to be the people who embody the socially approved patterns of behavior for his sex group.
★Social Value.
By playing with other children, the child learns how to establish social relationships with strangers and how to meet and solve the problems such relationships bring Through cooperative games, even with adults, he learns to give and take. Because adults tend to be tolerant of a child's aggressive tendencies in play, how ever, cooperation is more readily learned from play with other children. Within the family, make-believe play helps to reduce hostilities between parents and children and between older and younger siblings, thus resulting in better social adjustments in the home and a better home climate.
It is true that the child might learn to behave in a social manner through his contacts with children in school, but the typical school environment, unlike free play, offers little opportunity for social behavior. Rarely does the home or the school give the child sufficient outlet for the desire for social contacts.
★Moral Value.
Play is one of the most im important factors in the moral training of the child. Although he learns what the group considers right and wrong in the home or in the school, the enforcement of the acceptance of moral standards is never so rigid there as in the play group. The child knows that he must be fair, honest, truthful, self controlled, a good sport, and a good loser if he is to be an acceptable member of the play group. He also knows that his playmates are far less tolerant of his lapses from the accepted codes of behavior than the adults of his home and school environments. He therefore learns to toe the mark more quickly and more completely in play than in any other situation.