Playing Is Educational

Dramatic play should be a primary part of every child’s early childhood activities.  This pretend play encourages a child to explore and expand his imagination by allowing him to invent and create his own scenarios.

As a child explores various ways to play, he will increase his problem solving skills, langauge skills, vocabulary skills, and story telling skills. 

Dramatic play also promotes a child’s willingness to cooperate and share with others, which will increase his communication skills and other social skills.

Dramatic play is only limited to a child’s imagination, and little children have very big imaginations.

Children learn through play.  As the toddler grows into the young child his interest widens.  More and more, educational kids games will interest him.  Puzzles and simple crafts will catch his attention and he will spend longer hours working on them.  Even at this age, the child will still need parent supervision but clearly, he is on his way to discovering independence.

Educational games for kids are bonding moments, with the parent, sibling or friend.  They are obviously using their minds when putting together a puzzle but there are benefits that are not immediately apparent. The game appears to be simple, yet experts say that they nevertheless require conceptual and social skills. Dealing with a playmate, for example, can be stressful at this stage.  Suffice it to say that even the simplest of games can be a learning experience.

Unit blocks are the #1 must have early childhood toys because they are  imagination-building educational toys that are fun, creative, and educational.  When boys and girls build castles, villages, bridges, or  towering buildings, they are also building their imagination and fine motor skills.

Unit Blocks Marble Run, created by Guidecraft, provides for the combination of fun and lessons of marble runs with the traditions and educational foundations of unit block play.  They will be a instant classroom and home favorite.

This set can be expanded easily by integrating it with traditional classroom unit blocks.

We have all grown up with the familiar blocks called Lego!  These educational toys allowed us to increase our imagination and fine motor skills; building castles with towers and imagining who was in the castle made up part of our daily activity.

But, where did they come from?

In 1932, Ole Kirk Christiansen, a master carpenter and joiner, established a small business in the village of Billund in Denmark where he manufactured stepladders, ironing boards and wooden toys.  Then, in 1934, the company adopted the name LEGO for their products, formed from the Danish words “LEg GOdt” or “play well”.  Ironically, they later realized that in Latin the word means “I study” or “I put together”.

In 1947, the LEGO company dedicated itself to the toy business and purchased a plastic injection-molding machine for making toys.  Up to this point there were no LEGO bricks as we know them today.  The factory produced approximately 200 different varieties of plastic and wooden toys - but the predecessor of the familiar brick was created under the name of Automatic Binding Bricks; they were available only in Denmark at this time. 

By 1951, the plastic toys accounted for half of the company’s orders, signaling the subtle shift from the familiar wooden toys to the new and more popular plastic. Because of this, the Automatic Binding Bricks were renamed “LEGO Mursten” or “LEGO Bricks” - the familiar term we all know them by today.

Eventually the “LEGO System of Play” was released, allowing an owner of a LEGO System to expand and create without a strict set of guidelines to follow.

In 1967, LEGO released the DUPLO brand - a larger version of the familiar block but for children under five years old. In 1969, DUPLO was released internationally and took off like a rocket as parents everywhere take advantage of the opportunity to let their children play with the safe and creative early childhood toy.

Today, LEGO remains a family business, with grandson Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen currently at the helm.   LEGO has sold over 200 million sets in over 100 countries.
 
LEGO sets are used for early learning activities everywhere.  LEGO Sets range from Community Building Sets to Wild Animal Sets and even Fire Rescue and Hospital Sets. 

You invested into a wooden outdoor play structure to enhance your child’s life.  To keep your child safe and to maintain your investment, we suggest that you perform the following maintenance to your wooden play structure:

1)  To keep your wooden outdoor play structure looking good for years to come, you should apply a stain or apply a waterproof coating on it every 1 - 2 years to prevent water penetration.  ( This applies to all wooden play structures.  It does not matter if the play structure is pine, redwood, or cedar. )

2)  Inspect the wood framing for any splinters, large cracks,  rough spots, sharp edges, or decay that may occur due to wear and usage.  If required, you should sand them down, and then stain and waterproof the areas.

3)  Inspect for any deterioration or corrosion on structural components that are in contact with the ground.

4)  If your wooden outdoor play structure requires ground footing supports - make sure that they are not exposed.  If they are, back fill the area with sand or bark mulch.

5)  During the regular usage season, twice a month, make sure the your play structure is safe for your child.  Inspect all the nuts and bolts to assure that they are not missing, loose, or exposed.  ( Tighten if needed. )  It is particularly important to to check and tighten all bolts at the beginning of the season. 

6)  Check the swing elements, swings, chains, and slides monthly for wear, cracks or deterioration.  Inspect for any rust or chipped paint on any of the metal components.  Replace these parts at the first sign of deterioration.

7)  Inspect for any missing or damaged equipment components such as handrails, guide rails, and swing seats.

8)  Add sand or bark mulch to any worn or low areas beneath your wood play structure.  ( If is recommended to have at least 5″ of loose-fill surfacing in a playground area.  See: Consumers Product Safety Commission at cpsc.gov for more information on protective ground surfacing.)

9)  If you live in an area where the temperature drops below 32 degrees Fahrenheit or if the play structure is not going to be used, remove the swings and canopies to prolong the life of those items.

When you invest in a wooden play structure, you are making an investment in your child’s early childhood development by increasing her self-confidence, social skills, imagination, physical strength, and muscle coordination development. 

Self-Confidence:  At the beginning, your child will not know how to maneuver around a wooden play structure.  As he learns how to climb the ladders, slide down the slide, or swing on the swing,  she will increase her own self-confidence.

Social Skills:  A wooden play structure will provide a wonderful location for your child to increase his social skills and build life-long lasting friendships.  Your child can learn how to interact with her siblings, friends, or neighbors playing at his play structure, by sharing the swing or taking turns sliding down the slide.  They can plan their next imaginative adventures, tell stories, and play games in their own private fort deck areas. 

Imagination Development:  As your child plays with her steering wheel, telescope, and periscope on his outdoor play structure,  she can let  imagination run wild.  They can pretend that they are climbing a mountain, sailing a big ship, or flying to the moon.

Muscle Coordination and Physical Strength Development:  When your child plays on the climbing ladders or rock wall of the wooden play structure, your child will increase his balance, muscle coordination, and physical strength.

The key to investing in a wooden play structure is to make it a one time investment.  Make your investing decision as if your child is 10 years old.  Invest into a play structure large enough for your child to grow into, not out of.  That way you don’t have to purchase different playsets as your child gets older.

The key to teaching counting to your child is to make counting entertaining. 

Start teaching your child about numbers and counting in their early childhood activities.  They can begin learning how to count in their everyday play, long before they even realize that they are being taught.  You must be interactive when you play with your child.    These techniques can even work long before your child can talk.  

Here are some everyday play activities that you can do to help teach counting skills.  

Playing with Blocks - Childrens Educational Toys:

When you are playing blocks, count them as your stack them together.  You child will be entertained, because they will 9 times out of 10, knock the stack down.  Smile and say, “oh no”, and then stack them together again as you are count them.

Ask your child to hand you some blocks and as they do - count them.

Sort out the blocks by color, shape, design, or size.  Count how many of each you have.        

As your child advances, alternate who stack the blocks together.  You can place the first block and count 1, then have your child stack the next block and count 2, etc…

You may even find things like flash cards, dominoes, or a wooden bead abacuses with beads that are different colors and shapes, very useful to teach your child their counting skills.

Around Your Home, Store, or Restaurant Games - Arithmetic Games

As you dress your child, count their fingers, toes, arms, legs, eyes, etc…  Count the buttons or snaps on their clothes.

As they eat their favorite foods - grapes, pepperoni, french fries - you can count how many they ate.   

Count the stairs as you walk up and down them.

When you are at the store, count the number of products that you put into the cart.  Tell your child that you need three boxes of cereal and count them as they load them into the cart.

Singing and Counting

Children love singing and dancing around.  Use songs to help your child learn about counting and arithmetic skills.  Start out by singing songs like: “5 Little Monkeys Jumping in the Bed” and then move into other musical tunes.  There are many CD’s or DVD’s that are focused on math skills like counting, addition, and subtraction.  Listen to them at least once a day.

As mentioned earlier, the key to teaching counting to your child is to make counting entertaining.  This can be achieved by using these early childhood activities and arithmetic games.  Remember to count out loud to them when they are young, and to do these activities thoughout the day to reinforce these mathematics and counting skills.

Everyday we hear about obesity in the news and the health issues that it causes.  Let’s help our children learn about nutrition with fun and meaningful activities that introduce health and wellness concepts. 

Start out by using the new food pyramid for personalized nutrition needs based on your child’s age, gender, and physical activity.  Then, choose foods according to the USDA’s MyPyramid to practice good hygiene and healthy food choices.

Encourage your children to use fun songs (sipping cider through a straw to “Apples and Bananas”) or other hands-on activites like board games, word searches, photographic food cards, and matching activities to help them learn about and appreciate the variety of fabulous foods that we enjoy every day, while exploring nutrition. 

Weather affects everyone, everyday!  ( Droughts, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc…)

A good way to help children understand how weather affects us everyday is to have them make observations about sunlight, rainfall, wind speed, wind direction, and temperature.  Chart their observations, and explain other weather terms like: evaporation, isobars, jet streams, and wind chill factors.

Launch scientific investigations of severe weather phenomena using recent disaster events.  Discuss interesting weather facts and set up group research projects and lab activities to simulate volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and lightning.

Understanding and following the weather can be fun and educational.

A young child can increase his or her speech skills by singing songs, chants, and rhymes! 

To make singing fun and entertaining for children, introduce them to rhythm instruments.  Encourage them to be interactive when they sing by playing along with a musical instrument.  Children can make the sound of ocean waves using shakers, pretend to be a train using sand blocks, create a rainstorm with rhythm sticks, and pretend to perform circus tricks with jingle bells.

(What is your favorite song, chant, or rhyme?)

Here are some sample songs:

The ABC Song:  A,B,C,D,E,F,G,- H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P, - Q,R,S,- T,U,V,- W,X,Y,Z  now I know my ABC’s, next time won’t you sing with me?

The Itisy Bisty Spider:  Itsy bitsy spider went up the waterspout.  Down came the rain and washed the spider out.  Out came the sun and dried up all the rain.  And the itsy bitsy spider went up the spout again!  (Repeat) 

Shoo Fly:  Shoo, fly, don’t bother me - Shoo, fly, don’t bother me - Shoo, fly, don’t bother me - For I belong to somebody.  I feel, I feel, I feel like a morning star.  I feel, I feel, I feel like a morning star. 

Row-Row-Row Your Boat:  Row, row, row your boat.  Gently down the stream.  Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily.  Life is but a dream.  (Repeat)