It is also a hugely necessary part of childhood.



It is important for all those 'e' adjectives that spring immediately to mind. Your child finds playing exciting, enjoyable, entertaining, even exhilarating... For these reasons alone, playing with your child and providing play opportunities for your child (slightly different concepts!) are essential parts of your role as a parent, relative, friend or teacher.

But, play is also necessary... Children learn through playing. They learn about themselves, they learn about the world around them, they ask questions, discover how to socialise with others, get the chance to practice new skills, develop their imaginations... The list goes on.

It is a sad fact that, although research has shown that children have so much to learn through play, nowadays many children are given less opportunity to play than ever before. This could be attributed to several factors: the growth of more sedentary entertainment pursuits like television and DVDs, the understandable worries that parents have of letting their child play outside unsupervised, an educational focus on teaching curriculum subjects rather than child-centred learning.

Here are some fun indoor activities to get you started ...

Indian Indoor Wrestling

Age suitability: 7+ You will need: 2 players and a large carpeted space.

The two wrestlers must lie on their backs, parallel to each other, but with their heads at opposite ends. Hips must be touching. Both wrestlers must lift their inside leg and link it with their opponent's raised leg. The aim is for each wrestler to try to roll each other over by pulling with their linked leg. The wrestler that ends on his/her side loses that particular round. Play until exhausted.

Do-you-think-he-saurus?

Age suitability: 2+ You will need: your child's collection of toy dinosaurs, a large plastic bowl, some sand/soil, a flat lollipop stick

The next time that your child becomes bored by their plastic dinosaur toys, here are a few ideas to keep them entertained...

- Have a challenge where points are awarded by your child. Which dinosaur is the meanest beast? They must look closely and award points for sharpest teeth or scariest eyes.

- Which dinosaur flies the furthest when flicked off the sofa arm?

- Shut your eyes and let your child claw your arm with each dinosaur... Which has the scratchiest claws?

- Bury a selection of the dinosaurs in a bowlful of sand or soil. Their job is to be palaeontologists and slowly excavate the area with a lollipop stick to discover the buried fossils. Your job is to play the part of mad scientist and come up with some fascinating 'facts' for each amazing discovery. What it ate for its last meal, the smell of its breath etc.

Top Secret Club

Age suitability: 5+ You will need: various pens, paper and cardboard. Also plain paper, the juice of a lemon and some cotton buds.

This activity is often best if it comes from your children themselves, but you can prompt them with a few tales of how you did a similar thing when you were a child at a loose end. Children love organising secret clubs, particularly if they have friends over. The key word here is secret so, apart from your initial input, the children will probably enjoy it more if they are left alone. Encourage them to do the following:

- Decide on a place to hold club meetings (in the tree-house, a bedroom or even make a den out of an old sheet and the space behind the sofa).

- Choose a name for the club (the I'm Bored Indoors Club (IBIC), or the World Of Wackiness (WOW)) and then only refer to it by its initials so that it remains a top-secret piece of information!

- Make up private passwords, membership cards and secret code names so that each club member has a secret identity.

- Invent a top-secret code that only club members can crack. Lemon juice can be used as invisible ink. Paint a message on to plain paper using a cotton bud and, when it has dried, hold it close to a hot light bulb to reveal the hidden words.

Once organised, it may now be your role to send the secret agents on some missions, which they have to complete without being spotted by other family members. Send them to hide all of Dad's socks in Mum's sock drawer, or choose a key word like "planet" or "thunderstorm" that they have to include in conversation with Uncle Dave as many times as possible without him spotting what they're up to.