The Benefits of Clowning Around: Impacts of Play on Social Emotional Learning

Benefits

Clowning and playfulness, on the other hand, may take away from important learning time, distracting children and pulling them from the larger educational tasks at hand. However, clowning directly teaches the social emotional skills that curriculums often neglect. For children with intellectual disabilities, learning these skills is most effectively done with play.

Qualifications

In a study on the benefits of clowns on the playfulness of children with intellectual disabilities, researchers found that children who played with clowns not only developed better social emotional skills, but they also developed a better sense of play, mainly how to play alone and with other children in a safe, productive way.

Skills

• Encouraging mistakes and stumbles and misunderstandings all in service of making one another laugh
• Allowing children to examine their own identity safely
• Developing a greater sense of independence
• Teaching social emotional skills
• Encouraging play within children

Responsibilities

Clowning does not just give them the self-reflexive awareness and the confidence as previously mentioned, but also a greater sense of independence. In encouraging play within these children, they gain a greater understanding of themselves and their community of peers, suspending the scary reality of being a child in school and being welcomed into a playful world where mistakes are not so embarrassing, and they can generate a self-image that is explorative and confident.

About the role

Clowning and playfulness, on the other hand, may take away from important learning time, distracting children and pulling them from the larger educational tasks at hand. However, clowning directly teaches the social emotional skills that curriculums often neglect. For children with intellectual disabilities, learning these skills is most effectively done with play.