Playing Is Educational

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)

As we get deeper into winter, I know that I am longing for spring.

Until that time, I would like to encourage you to use indoor creative sand play activities using indoor sandboxes or sand & water tables. 

For us parents or teachers that want a mess-free experience, use a sealed sandbox where the sand is completely enclosed.  Your child can use magnetic wands to push magnetized creatures and vehicles through the sand and make trails. 

A sand and water table will allow your child to have a sensory experience with a large variety of educational play activities.  They can use plastic sand toys and molds to turn playtime into learning time.

Either way, your child will enjoy hours of creative play indoors. 

Don’t worry, spring will be here soon and we will all able to enjoy the beach and the sand again!

Sometimes we need to look at things like a young child.  Early in  childhood development, a child begins to see things that we think are very basic, in a very complex way.

They don’t know about shapes, colors, and designs.  Everything is new and exciting to them in a very complex way.  In their early learning, a child begins to learn about shapes and patterns like circles, squares, rectangles, and triangles, and explore how they can fit together to make different shapes.  A house is a square and a triangle, a bus is a rectangle and two circles, and a flower is a circle and triangles for the leaf petals.

Using pattern blocks as a hands-on early childhood activity will help teach a child sorting, classifying, and ordering, in an entertaining way.  Children will love to play with pattern blocks to design and build things.  During their play, they will develop their visual perception, early geometry, logical thinking, and problem solving skills.

Encourage your child to explore and play with pattern blocks today!

Keep your child actively playing with this Fun-A-Saurus!

This 5 piece puzzle-like play structure can be assembled and disassembled to allow your child to have hours of fun. 

They can assemble all 5 pieces together and create a dinosaur-like character (like Puff the Magic Dragon) and they could imagine riding it to mystical places. 

They can attach the head and tail pieces to one center piece to create a sitting rocker! 

The 3 middle pieces can be assembled to create a ring (measures 34″ outside diameter and 22″ inside diameter) that can be used for other creative play activities or for your child to sit in. 

Construction Grid Blocks are heavy-duty low maintenance construction blocks that are perfect for young builders to use either indoors or outdoors.  These 12″ durable blocks are just right for your child’s hands and attach easily together allowing them to imagine and build their own castles and tunnels.

After the construction is done, they can have hours of fun playing with their own creations.

Your children will love to learn about basic mechanical concepts by playing with Gears! Gears! Gears!  These early childhood toys will provide your children with hours of entertainment as they increase their color skills, small moter skills, and eye-hand coordination.  

Your children can learn the value of money by playing money-related math board games.  They will also increase their arithmetic skills as they use coins and bills to pay for purchases, compute change, handle allowances and gifts, collect earnings, and make deposits into college savings accounts.

Math board games like Making Change Octominoes, Managing My Allowance, or Presto Change-O will help your children learn how to save money and take advantage of sales.  Your chldren’s lives will be enhanced because they learned these skills.

2008 will be a year to remember.  As the economy has turned against all of us financially this year, we all have to become wise about our money and purchasing decisions.  It is important to teach your child about financial responsibility.  When your child is young, teach him about the value of coins and dollars.  Teach him the math that goes along with the value: 10 pennies = 1 dime; 10 dimes = 1 dollar; etc… 

Pretend play store at your home.  Use groceries out of your cupboards or use pretend plastic foods, boxes, and cans.  Teach them about buying decisions and what is a good value and ones that are not.  You can be the cashier and your child can be the purchaser; allow him to pay for the groceries with play money.

Your child will learn the value of money and how to make buying decisions, which will be important in his future.  

If you want to have a little bit for fun with your children tonight, but you want to do something educational – consider playing Dominoes.

By playing with Dominoes, your children can increase their math skills, by learning about whole numbers and fractions in either pictorial or numerical forms.  They can also learn pattern recognition, color & shape recognition, and practice their fine motor skills.

So give Dominoes a try!