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Archive for the 'Early Childhood Activities' Category
Part of buying toys for children is that they can help nurture that child’s development through role playing. For my daughter, we bought her a dollhouse for her fourth birthday and it’s helped a lot in her understanding of familial roles and pretend play.
Adding to her dollhouse, we recently purchased some wooden doll furniture for her. This continues in her comprehension of imaginary play and is an important part of childhood development.
If you’re looking to purchase an educational gift for your young child, you will likely come across a wide assortment of available toys. Especially in the recent past, there has been a greater emphasis placed on the importance of these educational products. Therefore, they fill the shelves in greater numbers and in greater diversity than ever before. And while this is a positive step in the right direction, it can leave parents a little overwhelmed. After all, how do you determine which toy is best for your child?
The best tactic is to try a lot of different options. Start your kid with educational board games. If you find that they aren’t responding well to these kinds of games, move on to educational puzzles. Perhaps these are more suited to your child’s skill set. After all, the most important thing to remember is that educational toys are intended to teach your children something. If they aren’t learning from them, they aren’t of any use. And don’t be afraid to let your kid help you pick the toys. If your kid expresses an interest in something, he or she is a lot more likely to actually use that toy.
A child’s early learning is enhanced by early childhood activities that promote imagination, from independent play to interactive play. There are a wide variety of early childhood toys available to enhance their imaginative play.
On a daily basis, your child see you prepare and cook meals. There are many toys available for your child’s food play activities that will provide hours of educational play. Pretend play food is available
that ranges from fruits and vegetables to multicultural meals, such as, sushi from Japan, pasta pronto from Italy, and fiesta flavors from Mexico.
Have your child prepare you a pretend meal. They can prepare a picnic lunch basket, have a pizza party, or set the table with plastic play dishes and have a fine dining experience.
What is your favorite pretend food play experience?
It is amazing how much playing puppet show theater can increase your child’s ability to express himself.
If your child has difficultly expressing himself, you should try puppet theater. With the use of finger puppets, hand puppets, and hand-operated rod puppets, your child can learn to express himself through role-play. Through puppet play, your child can express his feelings through different puppet characters, from animal hand puppets to community helper puppets. He can be a surgeon, a fire fighter, a police officer, or even a construction worker.
Try puppet theater to help your child express his emotions; you’ll be impressed on how he will open up and share his feelings.
While having fun playing with a play parachutes, parachute games encourage cooperative play, noncompetitive play, and reinforces sharing and taking-turns. Play parachute games also helps with strengthening upper body muscles, primarily the muscles in the shoulders, arms, and hands, and gross motor skills. When playing together, parachute games develop perceptual motor skills and a sense of rhythm. Language activities can also be incorporated into most parachute games.
See-Saw Pull: From a sitting position, pull the parachute back and forth in a see-sawing motion.
Make Waves: While gripping the parachute, everyone moves their arms up and down to make small and large waves.
Wave: Where one person puts hands up and person next to her follows action. (like the wave at a baseball game)
The Ocean: Pretend the parachute is the ocean. Try to let everyone who wants to have a turn ‘in the ocean’. Everyone is standing and one or two children (shoes off) go toward the center and lie down - then all make waves - it’s a neat sensation.
Mushroom: From a standing position, ask all the children to bend down and take hold of the parachute. When the leader calls “up”, all the children raise their arms lifting the parachute up as high as they can, then everyone takes 3-4 giant steps toward the center - making a mushroom shape, pulling the chute behind them and then they sit on the edge of the chute.
Ball Roll: Try to roll balls into the hole in the center of the parachute.
Popcorn: Start with everyone holding the chute stretched out. Place a number of small plastic balls, beanbags, or small stuffed animals on the chute. Shake the chute to make them rise like popcorn. See how quickly you can bounce them off without letting go of the parachute.
Poison Snake: Place four to six pieces of yarn or rope on the chute. By shaking the chute, try to make them hit the players on the other side. Keep track of who gets bitten.
Do you want to provide your child with an educational toy that will increase eye-hand coordination along with shape and color recognition? If so, we would like to recommend a shape sorting pounder.
As your child hammers away on the pegs of this shape sorting pounder, he will increase his eye-hand coordination and fine motor skills. While hammering, you can help increase his color and shape recognition by repeating the name of the color or shape of the peg that he is hammering. Take turns, ask him to tell you the color or shape that he wants you to hammer.
Guidecraft Magneatos are award-winning magnetic construction toys that allow children to experience the fun and mystery of magnet play, while at the same time build their imagination and motor skills.
Magneatos magnetic playsets are packed with large magnetic pieces that are kid-friendly, easy to handle, and safe to play with, yet these magnetic construction sets are more challenging then standard blocks and stacking toys.
How Magneatos Work:
A set of Magneatos comes with two basic pieces: magnetic balls and magnetic rods. The balls make a joint that can connect two rods. Put three or four rods together and you’ve got the base for a bridge, tower, or anything else that your imagination can come up with.
Award Winning Toy:
Guidecraft Magneatos won the prestigious Oppenheim Toy Award in 2005 and 2006, and also won its SNAP, Special Needs Adaptable Product, both years. They were also featured in Money magazine and on the Today Show on NBC.
Magnetic play has never been so easy and fun, so if your child is ready for something more advanced than their ABC blocks, take a look at Magneatos.
Parachute games encourage cooperative group play that reinforces turn-taking and sharing and helps to build muscle tone. Parachute activities are usually quite physical. To avoid injuries and to maximize the fun, explain the terms and rules to your children before approaching the parachute.
Playing with a parachute will also help develop perceptual, cognitive, motor, and academic skills, that can be used in many aspects of a child’s life.
Terms:
Directionality - Forward, Backward, up, down, clockwise, counter-clockwise, right hand, left hand, high, low, and sideways.
Locomotor Skills - Skipping, hopping, walking, running, jumping, galloping, and leaping.
Movement Skills - Fast, slow, accelerating, decelerating, light, and heavy.
Ways to grip the parachute:
Rules & Safety:
Parachute games are for all ages; however, you may need to change each game for the age group that is involved. The nature of parachute games means that children are actively running around, pulling the chute, crawling around, and possibly climbing on other children. Playing with a play parachute is generally very safe; however, from time to time, an accident will happen.
To avoid injuries, explain the following rules:
Have the children remove their shoes before approaching the parachute.
Encourage the children to space themselves around the parachute so that there are no large gaps. If there is a large gap, roll up the parachute - making a smaller parachute.
Have the children hold the parachute with both hands at all times. Don’t allow the children to remove their hands in order to hit balls.
The children should take care of others: they should not kick under the parachute and they should watch their elbows, either of these can cause injuries.
If the parachute is used for trust exercises, i.e. walking on air - parachute game, use play mats under the play area.
If the parachute has a hole in the middle, please ensure that the children know it is dangerous to place their head through the center.
If these precautions are taken, your children will have an entertaining and educational experience with the play parachute.
It is important to keep your children safe when they are playing on their outdoor swing set. To promote safety during their active play, it is ALWAYS recommended to provide adult supervision and be actively involved. Stay alert, move around, and keep your kids in sights, especially your young ones.
1) Go over basic precautions with your children, such as, always taking turns and sliding down feet-first on the slide.
2) Refrain children from walking close to, in front of, behind or between moving play features.
3) Refrain children from twisting swing chains or ropes since this may reduce the strength of these items
4) Warn children to avoid swinging empty swing seats or gliders
5) Teach children to sit in center of swings with their full weight on the swing seats
6) Teach children to use the backyard playset in the intended manner.
7) Teach children not to get off play equipment while still in motion.
8) To avoid potential clothing hazards, while your children are using their backyard playsets, make sure they are wearing well-fit clothing and shoes.
(Avoid loose fit clothing or items with loose strings: drawstring pants, ponchos, halter-tops, scarves, or etc…)
9) Children should wear shoes at all times.
10) Allow your child to only play on equipment that is appropriate to his age.
11) Make sure the playground surface, underneath swings, climbers, and slide has the appropriate ground protection. (Standard lawn and grass areas are not considered as ground protection.)
12) Refrain children from climbing on playground structures when wet.
13) Bring a safety kit with you.
(This can be as simple as a zip-lock bag that contains some wet wipes, antibiotic cream and a few adhesive bandages.)
14) Make sure your child is wearing sunscreen and stays properly hydrated.
For more safety tips - view our other articles or visit our web-site: Playground Equipment Safety.
Information is supported by the National Program for Playground Safety
Do you want to provide your child with an interactive early childhood activity that doesn’t require batteries, fuel cells, or liquid fuel, and promotes physical activity that is safe, inexpensive, and quiet?
If the answer was YES, then check out this PlasmaCar by PlaSmart!
The PlasmaCar is a unique active ride-on toy that is sleek and aerodynamic, just like a race car, and is easy to operate on any smooth, flat surface.
It is also built to last because it is made of state-of-the-art, high-quality ABS plastics, rugged and durable for your child that is on the go. It features six wheels, a seat, footrests and a steering wheel. That is all it take to operate your PlasmaCar - other than your child. There are no pedals, no gears, and no batteries required.
The PlasmaCar is available in green, purple, blue, or red.
Your child will love how fast they can go on the PlasmaCar, and at the same time they will be physically active, increasing their coordination skills, and building upper-body muscle strength.
Here is how it works!
To propel the PlasmaCar, you rotate the steering wheel continuously from left to right. It also works in reverse. To zoom backwards, just switch the set of four front wheels around so that the larger ones are closest to the front of the car. To stop your PlasmaCar, just cease rotating the steering wheel and, when the car slows, put your feet on the ground to bring it to a full stop.
The PlasmaCar can go 2.8 meters per second - that’s over 10 km/h, yet be safe for your child. As with all bike activities, we also recommend the use of a child’s bike helmet.
The PlasmaCar is Pure Energy and Pure Fun!