Research has suggested that children could be encouraged to play more if parents read more to them and they are allowed to stay in their beds for an extra hour. The ECU Play Project found that children with a more structured day engage in 30 minutes more of improvised play daily. Dr Bronwyn Harman, an ECU School of Psychology and Social Science lecturer, said that while the importance of the three ‘R’s: reading, writing and arithmetic had long been recognised, it seems that there is a fourth ‘R’ : recreation, that is of equal importance. Researchers said that unstructured play was a crucial part of the emotional and social development of children as it helps them to make decisions and resolve conflicts. The group released statistics that showed that four-year old kids read for an average of one hour daily, watch TV for 1.88 hours each day and spend 10.35 hours a day in bed.
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