The study identifies the best kinds of experiences for babies, toddlers, preschoolers, and young elementary school students to build cognitive, motor, language, and social-emotional development. Under the philosophy that play is the business of young children, the partnership study found that the arts engage children in learning, stimulate memory, and facilitate understanding. Role-playing games, poems, songs, rhyming, dramatic storytelling, and other creative arts play can develop language skills and a love of learning. The study's report, Young Children in the Arts , includes developmental benchmarks and appropriate arts activities for children from birth to age 8. Parents and adult caregivers are encouraged to use character voices and dramatic gestures when reading or telling stories and to make sock puppets to increase the enjoyment of the tale.
Older children can write poems and improvise stories with simple costumes.