Playing Is Educational

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!

This classic game makes a great addition to any party or playground activity! 

Ring Toss Games are fun and educational games that can be played indoors or outdoors by a wide range of age groups.

They can be played by one person or by a group.  When played in a group setting, your child can learn about taking turns. 

Younger children can stand closer for success (Ring Drop) and as their eye-hand coordinination improves, spread the posts further apart to create a more challenging game.  This will also help them develop their wrist movement skills.  

Your child can practice his or her counting skills through scoring.

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.

Everyday there are opportunities to teach your children the general concepts of math.  From the time they are an infants, we can begin teaching math by using counting activities.  These activities can include story telling like one little piggy, two little piggy … to counting their blocks as we play with them.

Children do not always grasp the concepts of math immediately.  Show them why and how math works.  For example: When having a pizza dinner or sharing a dessert with your family you can teach fractions to your children.  Start out with whole item (in this example = 1 pizza), then start dividing the pizza into portions to share with the family.  Discuss how much is being used or how much is left over.

As they learn the concepts of math, they will increase their deductive reasoning skills and learn that math is fun.

There are also many educational math board games available that can be used to teach mathematics.

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.