“Opey-shuh! Opey-shuh!” Aah, yes…that’d be my 16-month-old son Desmond shouting “open-shut” from his room, which loosely translated means his car is stuck. I hear it often because Des loves to hunker over his Fisher-Price garage set and stuff cars into nooks to see if they fit, or drop them down the ramps.

As it turns out, he’s also mastering those fine motor and language skills. Because with kids, play is never just play. It is a child’s most important job, as the simple act of playing helps boost much of their growth and development. “We know play expands intelligence,” says Karen Jacobs, coordinator of training and education for YMCA Canada East in Halifax. “It allows children to accumulate knowledge.” So what’s really going on when they’re banging around in their toy kitchens and building towers with blocks?

games without frontiers

BALLS Whether they’re throwing, rolling, kicking or even just holding them, toddlers are using balls to figure out how to move and manipulate the big muscles in their arms and legs. These gross motor skills, plus hand-eye coordination, are improved by physically figuring out how the ball works — round things roll, square things don’t. If you add a playmate or two, enhance her social development by teaching her about sharing. “Even talking about the ball and its physical properties also works on language skills,” explains Jacobs.

BATH, WATER TABLE OR SANDBOX These activities offer open-ended kinds of play, says Margo Kirk, executive director of Halifax’s University Children’s Centre. “You can have a bath with nothing in the tub except your child and still have a lot of learning opportunities,” she says, especially the cause and effect of splashing and moving about in the water, playing with items that sink or float, or even blowing bubbles. “That’s a good way to help with the mouth forming different shapes, and later words and sounds,” says Kirk. In the sandbox, again, it’s all about filling the bucket, emptying the bucket and learning what happens when water is added to the sand. Hiding small things in the sand for your toddler to find can also encourage problem solving.

PLAY KITCHEN These sets — or even just a few spoons and some small pots — are fabulous for dramatic play, says Jacobs. Nope, not Shakespeare. More like the world of make-believe when they start pretending to be mom or dad in the kitchen at home, making meals, eating the plastic food and classifying food groups (fruits, veggies, meat, etc.). Kitchen sets also bring out the natural explorer in your child when they start opening and shutting cupboards, putting things in them and taking them out.

BLOCKS These improve your child’s understanding of spatial relations — notably the shape and sizes of the blocks and how to manipulate them. “Toddlers experiment — what happens if I put the littlest block on the bottom? Would the tower fall over?” says Kirk. Blocks help other kinds of play too — lined up, they might represent a road or a train track or the parts to build a house. “So you’re getting into a more abstract creative representation of materials as well,” says Jacobs.

SCRIBBLING Experimenting creatively with colours and what happens when you put the crayon to paper is fascinating stuff for toddlers. At first, she may just be interested in holding the crayon, but as months go on, she’ll start producing random squiggles that will boost her fine motor skills, and may even help her decide which hand she prefers to use.

time for play

While play is critical to a child’s development, go one better and remember to give your child the freedom to play, even if it means putting aside ideas about what you think he should be doing. “As parents, it’s sometimes hard to be patient and allow our children to take the initiative and develop their own independent thinking skills,” says Jacobs. “Our good intentions to show a child the “right’ way could mean missed opportunities for discovery, not to mention wonderful social interactions. Taking time to really play with our children allows us to be part of these “a-ha’ moments.”

Writer Astrid Van Den Broek wonders if her son Desmond is learning anything when he throws cereal at his four-year-old sister Annika.

Learn more about what classic baby games teach your child at canadianfamily.ca/peekaboo