30 Ways That Play Cultivates Creativity in Children (and Adults, Too!)

By Nic Breedlove

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “Work hard, play hard” at some point in your life. There is even an old proverb: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” This emphasizes the importance of balancing serious work and expressive fun. Regardless of age, embracing play will benefit you in the long run. 

Our team at Playground Equipment has gathered some of the beneficial components of play for children (and the inner child!) to show how important it is to the developmental stages of a growing individual.

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What Are the Benefits of Play?

The most important factor of play to keep in mind is that play is not separate from learning. For children, in fact, it is their primary method of learning. Since play can feel like the default state of a child, it can feel easy to forget how beneficial it is for children to engage with the world around them. No matter the age, however, there are positives to cultivating your creativity through play. It helps you to build skills that become important at every stage in life. On average, children who engage in regular physical play are healthier than children who do not. An active lifestyle as a child often translates to an active lifestyle as an adult. 

Play supports a child’s emotional and mental skills. When a child decides to let another child play with a toy in their possession, they are demonstrating decision-making skills. When children have to wait their turn to use the slide at a playground, they practice emotional regulation. When children assign roles in a game of hide-and-seek, they are learning teamwork. Through play, children gain confidence, learn to cooperate with others, and nurture relationships with those around them. 

Another lesser-considered benefit of play in development is the improvement of language skills. It’s less that practice makes perfect and more that practice makes progress. The more children are encouraged to practice their language skills, the more likely they are to improve their language development. Communication is furthered as children can express themselves through verbal and physical language, listen to others, and interpret the body language of those around them. 

Structured Play Versus Unstructured Play

Children’s play can take the form of two different methods: structured play and unstructured play. Both ways have their upsides and downsides, and neither is necessarily superior to the other. Basically, it is essential for children to regularly experience both types of play to express their potential to the fullest.

Structured play, as you may infer from the name, is set up to use rules or boundaries to achieve a specific goal. This goal typically involves learning or mastering a new skill. Board games, tag, and sports like soccer or hockey are great examples of structured play. There is a clear goal to be achieved and a clear end to the game.

Unstructured play is open-ended and does not necessarily have a set goal. This type of play promotes creativity because children have the freedom to experiment, which is not usually present in structured games. It is essential to aid children’s social skills, as they must collaborate with others and work out any conflicts or disagreements during the play. Children running around on a playground is an example of unstructured play. Left to their own devices, children often delegate turns on different equipment, come up with challenges, and establish their own rules or guidelines. 

What is Play Deprivation?

In children, play is vital to their development—so much so that a lack of play can become detrimental to a child’s well-being. There has been a decrease in unsupervised free play among children in recent years. This decrease can be attributed heavily to a rise in solo entertainment involving technology, which has decreased physical activity, less outdoor time, and an increase in more mindless behaviors like eating while consuming television or video games.

Poverty can also be a barrier to letting children access the full benefits of play. Typically, there are fewer spaces for safe play for children in low-income neighborhoods and, as a result, fewer opportunities for children to participate in the play. Parents and guardians are less likely to be able to afford certain types of structured play for their children, such as the ability to participate in organized sports. Organized sports often require a fee for joining, clothing, and equipment. It also involves transportation for the child to and from practice and games, which may be yet another issue for some low-income households.

How Can I Encourage Play?

Depending on age, a parent or guardian should have realistic expectations for what a child will learn through play. A 3-year-old will be at a very different development stage than a 6-year-old. After expectations are established, parents can create a safe and child-proofed area for children to learn and explore without the risk of overstimulation. Next, provide possible toys or activities for the child depending on whether it is structured or unstructured play that day. Children also don’t need extravagant toys to learn, so parents should not feel like they must empty their pockets to support their child’s playtime. The imagination is the most powerful tool they have!

 

Ways
1. “Almost all creativity involves purposeful play.” — Abraham Maslow
2. “Kids who have play as part of their school day do better in school, become better team players, and develop into more creative thinkers – they are much more likely to carry these skills into adulthood.” — KaBOOM!
3. A scientific study by Nature.com found that people who engage in everyday bodily movement generate more and better ideas during inventiveness tests than relatively sedentary people.
4. “The playful state of mind is fundamentally exploratory, seeking out new possibilities in the world around us. And that seeking is why so many experiences that started with simple delight and amusement eventually led us to profound breakthroughs.” — Steven Johnson
5. “Play allows children to use their creativity while developing their imagination, dexterity, and physical, cognitive, and emotional strength. Play is important to healthy brain development.” — American Academy of Pediatrics
6. “Play is the stick that stirs the drink. It is the basis of all art, games, books, sports, movies, fashion, fun, and wonder—in short, the basis of what we think of as civilization. Play is the vital essence of life. It is what makes life lively.” — Dr. Stuart M. Brown
7. “Play offers children an opportunity to achieve mastery of their environment. They control the experience through their imaginations, and they exercise their powers of choice and decision-making as the play progresses. Play helps develop each child's unique perspective and individual style of creative expression.” — PBS.org
8. “For many people, play continues in adulthood and is a major contributor to successful problem-solving. Physical scientists often report having built and taken apart machines when they were kids. Conversely, work in adult life is often most effective when it resembles play.” — Sam Wang, Ph.D. and Sandra Aamodt, Ph.D.
9. A British Journal of Sports Medicine study found that creativity and mood were enhanced independently in participants following an aerobic workout or aerobic dance. (Steinberg, Sykes, Moss, Lowery, LeBoutillier, Dewey, 1997).
10. “Abstract thinking is play. When a child fantasizes, he is playing. By taking images, ideas, and concepts from inside their own minds and re-organizing, sorting, and re-connecting in new ways, children create. They create play worlds, hopes, desires, and wishes.” — Bruce D. Perry
11. “A review of data from hundreds of thousands of American children argues that a decrease in children’s abilities to imagine and see things from different angles over the last thirty years might be related to fewer opportunities to play.” — Pedagogy of Play, Harvard University
12. “Children are natural scientists—they come into the world ready to experiment and learn through play. And they use what they discover to not only adapt the structure of their brains but also strengthen the skills they need to continue being engaged, flexible learners for their whole lives.” — The LEGO Foundation
13. “Playful play may have many functions but I suggest one important role is linked to uncovering new solutions to challenges set by the environment. The benefits may occur long after the necessary experience has been gathered in the course of play.” — Sir Patrick Bateson
14. “Play relieves feelings of stress and boredom, connects us to people in a positive way, stimulates creative thinking and exploration, regulates our emotions, and boosts our ego.” — Association for Play Therapy
15. “Adult success in later life can be related to the experience of childhood play that cultivated creativity, problem-solving, teamwork, flexibility, and innovations.” — Dr. Michael Yogman
16. A study by the Cardiff School of Education found that children who played with salt-dough created more colorful, imaginative creatures following the activity versus children who did a structured exercise involving copying text from a board. (Howard-Jones, Taylor, Sutton, 2022).
17. “When children play with natural materials they generate their own ideas, which seems to fuel their innate creativity.” — Christine Kiewra
18. A global cognitive evaluation of 268 adults found that “Playfulness may serve as a lubricant in productive work relations. A playful interaction may help release tension or open up the field for new ideas in a brainstorming situation.”
19. That same study also found that “…adult playfulness was best predicted by humor, the appreciation of beauty and excellence, low prudence, creativity, and teamwork. As expected, single strengths (e.g., creativity, zest, and hope) demonstrated strong relations with facets of playfulness…”
20. “Through imaginative play and creativity, students are afforded the opportunity to explore, experience, and develop skills and thought processes.” — Hayley Dominey
21. A nine-week observation of preschoolers given high and low-structure play objects concluded, "This resilience and creative prowess suggested that even within constrained environments, pre-schoolers possess inherent capacities for creative expression and linguistic growth through imaginative play experiences.” (Iqbal, Zahoor, 2023).
22. Organizational psychologist Robert Litchfield found that a playful workplace can foster a sense of psychological safety: “You signal to [employees] that creativity is wanted and you set up an environment for letting that loose.”
23. “The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct.” — Carl Jung
24. “Think of playtime as an innovation lab where tomorrow’s civilization is being actively designed.” — Jordan Shapiro
25. A meta-analysis of studies on the link between play and creativity by the American Journal of Play concluded: “We believe, then, that pretend play is a tool children carry with them regardless of their circumstances. If we can enhance their ability to play, doing so should give them an advantage in creative problem solving and creative expression as they grow older and become adults.”
26. In one study, 86 preschool students participated in a program that involved weekly 75-minute play sessions. Results showed a significant increase in verbal creativity (fluency, flexibility, originality), graphic creativity (elaboration, fluency, originality), and behaviors and traits of creative personality. (Garaigordobil, Berrueco, 2011).
27. “It is becoming increasingly clear through research on the brain, as well as in other areas of study, that childhood needs play. Play acts as a forward feed mechanism into courageous, creative, rigorous thinking in adulthood.” — Tina Bruce
28. “Creative people are curious, flexible, and independent with a tremendous spirit and a love of play.” — Henri Matisse
29. “Play is the way children learn. When children play, they explore possibilities and invent new worlds. Play is creativity in action.” — Alison Gopnik, UC Berkeley Psychology Professor
30. In Cornell University’s prolific paper, The Nature of Human Creativity, child psychologist Sandra Russ, Ph.D. concludes, “After forty-seven years of studying pretend play and creativity…” that: “Pretend play can be used as a vehicle to develop and enhance processes important in creativity and in other areas of adaptive functioning in children.”