Playing Is Educational

This is the first article in series of articles that will provide you the information that you should consider when purchasing a Wooden Outdoor Play Structure.  We will also provide you information regarding playground safety and installation safety tips.

This first article will provide you an overview of some of the general information that you should consider and these topics will be discussed in larger detail in our future articles.  If you have any other questions or suggestions, please e-mail us at customerservice@playingiseducational.com or submit a comment pertaining to this blog.

Let’s start out by discussing why you should even consider purchasing a Wooden Play Structure. 

1. A wooden play structure is an investment in your child.  We live in a world where technology has over-taken our children’s lives, with computers, ipods, and hand-held games.  Children have become less physically active.  Purchasing a wooden play structure will be an investment in your child’s physical development, social development, and imagination skills.
2. If you purchase a wooden play structure you will also be investing in your family’s togetherness and family fun.  Your wooden outdoor play structure will become a elegant gathering spot to visit your friends and family as the children play. 
3. You will also be investing into your home and yard because your wooden play structure will become the focus of your backyard landscape for years, and even generations, to come.

Now that know why you should invest into a wooden outdoor play structure, what else should you consider?

You need to determine what wooden play structure is going to be right for you and your child.

1. Determine where you are going to place your new outdoor play structure. 
2. What size do you want the wooden outdoor play structure?  (Allow additional room around the wooden play structure as a safety zone - for your child’s safety.  This will be discussed in a later article.)
3. What activities/features would your child enjoy?  (You may choose different features depending on your child’s age level.)
4. What kind of wood do you want to use for your outdoor play structure? (Premium Pine or Redwood)
5. Consider maintenance and safety features of the wooden play structure.
6. How easy are the instructions to install your new play structure?
7. What warranties come with your wooden play structure?

Other very important factors to consider are safety zones around the play structure and installation safety tips.  We want your child to have a nice, safe area to play in and avoid getting hurt.  (Did you know that each year, more than 200,000 children go to U.S. hospital emergency rooms because of injuries on playground equipment and about 50,000 of those are from home playgrounds.) 

All these topics will be discussed in detail in our later articles.  Make sure you add us to your feeds or add us to your favorites to receive these articles.  Once again, if you have any questions, comments, or additional topics you would like to have us address either respond to our blog in the comments area or e-mail us at customerservice@playingiseducational.com. 

 The jigsaw puzzle is one of the oldest forms of amusement that dates back to the late 1700’s. The jigsaw has passed through many phases of development to become today’s modern pastime. Jigsaw puzzles have a range of uses, from education, entertainment, to emotional and physical therapy.

The predecessor of the modern jigsaw puzzle was invented by John Spilsbury in 1767. It was used as a teaching apparatus to help children to learn the geography of England and Wales. It was a wooden map with no interlocking pieces. In fact, interlocking jigsaw wooden puzzles were not introduced until much later, with the invention of saws that could cut raw materials such as wood with the accuracy needed to produce the interlock. From this beginning through the 1800s, jigsaw puzzles caught on and grew as a popular pastime.

It is a well known fact that block play increases a toddler’s eye and hand coordination. Also, playing with toy building blocks encourages logical thinking and increases a toddler’s awareness of the space around him. Having building blocks as part of a toddler’s toys promotes appropriate social behavior. In addition, a toddler learns to share and build with parents, siblings, and other playmates. Language skills have also been discovered to greatly improve by playing with building blocks. This takes place when the child is encouraged to speak about what he or she is building.

Toddler building blocks are available in different kinds. You can use a set that has number and alphabets to initiate your child’s learning process. The child can be taught to be familiar with numbers and alphabets by choosing between two blocks. The child can also learn to distinguish alphabets and numbers by picking out a particular number or letter that has been asked for. In addition to these educational activities, these blocks can also be used just as plain toddler toys. The blocks can be stacked up to form a tower and then a ball can be used to knock the tower down.

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)

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!