This study unit focused on the teaching of musical play in the foundation phase. Musical play is an important part of Life Skills and most learners tend to enjoy Life Skills and do quite well. When learners learn through playing games, they learn without realizing that they are learning, which they can benefit from in daily life.

Games have rules and if you don’t abide by the rules, you cannot play they game. Whether children wants to know it or not, they need structure and rules in their lives. Some learners cannot concentrate without structure and others tend to love chaos and through playing games, they learn to have a little bit of both, which helps learners to see the other’s needs as well.

Last year during the COVID 19 National Lockdown, our learners could not go to school and many of them did not play during this time. Instead of playing, they sat in front of television screens or tablets and cellphones. This is due to the fact that many people don’t have the finances to have lots of toys or a big enough yard to play in and thus they had to stay inside and their few toys could easily bore them over time.

Sometimes children play, but their game seems to be work to us who are not playing along. They could easily spend hours gathering rocks to build a racing track and cleaning up the area where they want the track to be. On the other hand, if we would have asked them to clean an area for us or gather rocks, they would have seen it as work. This is because the difference between play and work is that they choose what they want to do when they play, but we decide what they have to do and they have no say when it is work.

Playing requires you to actively take part. No matter how relaxed your game/ activity is, you have to do something in order for it to take place and go on. Some games have objects or instruments that you use in order to play and using these objects can help a child to develop fine motor skills which is very important to establish early on in their life.

Fantasy play is a very important part of a child’s life. They would then use their imagination and pretend to be in different situations. This could help children to cope with difficult situations in their life.

As teachers and parents, we should always encourage our children and learners to play as much as possible and we should try and play with them as much as we can.