5 Ways that Children Benefit from Doll Play!
Playing is the way that children learn to make sense of the world around them and when dolls are involved in play-time, children are given the opportunity to practice real life skills. Despite traditional gender roles, dolls are a great toy for both little girls and boys as they offer a multitude of benefits to a child's development. Keep reading to find out the different ways that children benefit from doll play!
1. Social Skills
Playing with dolls helps to install social skills at a young age during a child's developmental years. By playing out scenarios with dolls and especially with other children, they are able to learn how to communicate and cooperate kindly with each other.
2. Self Help Skills
Children enjoy acting out scenarios that they see and experience which is beneficial when teaching grooming and hygiene habits. While changing a doll's clothing, children learn the sequence of steps that are required to get dressed which they can then use on themselves, similarly to including a doll during bath-time to help reinforce your little one's bath-time routine.
3. Nurturing Skills
When children care for a doll, they are learning to be empathetic and nurturing towards one another. Whether they are swaddling their baby doll, rocking it to sleep or giving it a bottle, practicing caring for a doll is practice in caring for others. For a more realistic experience, check out Adora's interactive NurtureTime Dolls with 3 touch-activated features.
4. Fine Motor Skills
Playing will dolls is beneficial for children developing fine motor skills as they are able to practice various hand movements through the many different forms of doll play. Giving their dolls a bottle or using utensils to pretend feed them is a great way of practicing these skills to be used when eating and drinking by themselves. When dressing their baby dolls, they learn how to use buttons, zippers, etc, which is easier for little hands when practiced on a doll before they learn to dress themselves. Introduce more forms of doll play with Adora's Baby Doll Accessories!
5. Language Skills
Introducing our little one's to dolls allows us the opportunity to teach a long list of vocabulary. Children can learn the words for different body parts, clothing or doll accessories. This isn't the only way that dolls help encourage speech development. Dolls are used as a tool of pretend play and allow children to expand their imagination, helping to further develop language skills. Children learn to communicate with the world around them by playing out real life scenarios with their dolls.