Discover Different Ways To Encourage Play Time in Children

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Having time to play is an essential part of childhood and growing up. It is part of our roles and responsibilities as parents to provide our kids with an environment that encourages play time, creativity and independence.

However, it’s very easy to just leave the kids to it instead of using strategies that foster and promote play time. It’s important to encourage them to play independently, as our ever busier lives can leave children bored and disappointed, turning to the easy act of watching TV programmes or playing computer games that may not be the most appropriate for their social and mental development.

So, how can we encourage play time in children?

Allow Play Time Every Day

Just as we make sure that your children have enough time to sleep, do their homework or study, we can set aside some time to play each day. Whether they play with their cars or make a delicious meal for their dolls, disguise as indians or play a board game, it’s got great benefits if we can allow our children to just enjoy themselves and relax from their daily responsibilities and duties.

Experiences Mean Everything!

Children recreate experiences or activities they performed and enjoyed somewhere else when they use imaginative play. Thus, one of the simplest ways to encourage children to play and be creative is by providing them with diverse and meaningful experiences as regularly as possible. Make a family visit to the zoo or include your children next time you have to take the car to the car-wash service or enjoy a family picnic in a park nearby. You’ll soon discover how your children recreate these experiences in their daily games or use them as ingredients to spice up their play sessions.

Provide Some Props!

We can enrich your children’s pretend play opportunities by encouraging open-ended play. In other words, by offering them toys that have multiple uses and that help their imaginations expand powerfully. Stuffed animals, toy cars, pretend kitchenware, artistic materials, simple costumes (these can even just be mummy and daddy’s stylish old clothes from the 80’s), cardboard boxes or musical instruments. Invite children to play with them and allow them to use their imagination to create rich and highly detailed playing sessions.

Give Them Space to Play

Do your children have a safe, child-proof and comfortable space to play? Whether it’s outside or inside your home, it’s a good idea for children to have a place where they have everything they need within their reach: toys, props, books, art material… you name it! If possible, make sure that they don’t have access to screens and computers in their playing space as the idea is to encourage them to be as creative and open-minded as possible in their playing experience. Having their own play space encourages resourcefulness and independence in children as even though parents can be around and participate in their fun sessions, the idea is that they’re able to develop a complete playing session on their own while we’re mere spectators or limited participants.

Encourage Mess

Ok this one might get a bit of debate...I know how hard it is not to have a contradictory attitude towards children’s play time: on the one hand we love to see our children engaged in their play session and how they’ve turned their room or the living-room into a zoo, a city or a war zone but, on the other hand, we see the mess and complain about having all the toys around, cushions lying on the floor, blankets hanging from chairs and so on. As a result, sometimes we limit in some way or another their imagination.

That said, a good strategy that we can embrace in order to encourage play time in children is to accept mess as part of their creative process. We can then set aside time at the end where they’ll be required to clean that mess. I’m sure most will agree that cleaning up after yourself is a pretty handy skill for them to learn before they turn into teenagers anyway.

So here’s a few of the strategies that we can use to encourage children to play without your supervision. I invite you to try any or all of them in your family and share your findings. Which one has worked better in your case? Have you tried anything different?

Today's post is brought to you by babyvegas.com.au, and it includes links to their website. Searching for Sanity is not affiliated with Baby Vegas, so I earn no money if you click on these links. Now that the pressure is off, please go check them out and see the awesome toys they have.

3 ways to encourage whole brain learning through play

Hi guys, today I have a guest joining me to discuss whole brain learning and how you can incorporate it into your play time with your children at home, so please be upstanding and welcome Amanda from Shichida Australia.

When my daughter was around 1 year old, we began story-time at the library. It was a half hour of singing, reading, talking and some bubbles play. At first it was a way for me to get out the house and be around other people and not feel so isolated as a mom. I continued coming for another reason. I noticed that my baby was remembering signs and interacting with the presenter. My first thought was “I have a baby genius’ and my second thought was “i wonder what else she can learn through play?”

I began integrating music, dance and play into our everyday tasks. I would sing to the tune “If you’re happy and you know it’.

If you see the color (insert color), pick it out! (while pointing to the color)

If you see the color (insert color), pick it out! (while pointing to the color)

If you see the color (insert color), give a wiggle and a giggle

If you see the color (insert color), pick it out! (while pointing to the color)

I used this basic tune to talk about not only colors, but shapes and body parts. Before long, my itty bitty baby was starting to recognize shapes, colors and body parts. It is how she learned almost anything: we danced, sang and pointed stuff out.

I thought, imagine how fun school would be if we played to learned beyond preschool?

New research is supporting the idea that play and learning are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they go hand in hand. Research is showing that children that engage in playful learning are developing memory skills, their language is developing and they are able to adjust to an academic learning environment. This whole brain approach to learning is changing the way we learn and remember things. In fact, research is showing that all functions of the brain are connected.

A pioneer in childhood whole brain learning, Dr. Makoto Shichida, has committed 40 years to developing techniques to stimulate early development of the brain. Dr. Shichida emphasizes parent-child bonding and when a child feels free to express himself, he is more able to learn. This is a balanced approach to whole brain learning.

Here are easy ways to incorporate this whole brain, play based learning into your schedule without feeling you are adding more to your plate. Try to engage at least two senses at a time. 

1. Schedule time for physical play, integrate music into your play. Hot potato with music or musical chairs are two examples. Silly time and having your child using hand-eye coordination, while waiting for musical cues stimulated different parts of the brain at once.
2. Have adult and child interactions. Pretend you are in a restaurant and your child is the server and chef. Pretend you are a patient in a hospital and your child is the doctor.
3. Recreate an experience, such as travel or a vacation. Pretend you are in another country and practice using simple words from another language. This helps engage the multi-language circuit of the brain.

The most important things to remember are to let your child’s imagination run wild, make sure your child feels safe to express himself, and let your child be the guide.

(http://www.shichida.com.au/)

About the author:. Amanda works PR for Shichida Australia ((http://www.shichida.com.au/), spreading her love for childhood learning through fun, music and play.  When she isn’t chasing her two kids and (trying to) prepare healthy meals, she is cuddling her fur baby, a 9 year old boxer.

Product Review - Magnetricks

Hello again my lovely readers, I am back again to share more joy with the people. This post is actually a long time in the making, mainly because I tried really, really hard to get professional looking pictures, but given that I am *not* a photographer, and my biggest skill is basic editing in Photoshop, it took me forever to get anything even remotely good enough to do this post justice.

Now today I am going to do a very rare product review. As you guys know, I don't do a lot of these, because I don't want this blog to become a giant billboard. But every now and again an offer comes along that I cannot pass up, because I really feel it is a great product that needs to be shared. This is one such product. I was recently contacted by an amazing woman who has started her own business despite being a single mum to TWO kids under the age of five. I'm not sure if she's a genius or slightly mad, either way the products she sells are amazing, and I am honoured to have been asked to share them with you.

So today I am reviewing a product called Magnetricks. Michelle started making magnetic routine charts and reward charts for her children as a way to help maintain a proper routine etc, and was soon encouraged by friends and family to start marketing them for other mums and teachers trying to find a less wasteful way to manage the day to day routines.

So we were given two sets of magnets to check out and review, one was a reward chart in the shape of a race track (because thanks to Mario Kart Miss K is racing car crazy right now), and the other was a set of magnetic shapes, designed to teach children about shapes and geometry, as well as being heaps of fun.

I decided to use the reward chart in an attempt to get Miss K to start listening more. We're having a real struggle with her ignoring direct requests, or even using sass towards adults telling her to do her chores. I wanted to squash any feelings of entitlement she was developing, as we don't work that way in this house, all good things are earned, and one way to earn in this house is by being respectful. So the day the magnets arrived, Miss K and I sat down and I explained that every day that she showed that she could listen to all of the adults who care for her during the week, she'd get a new race car for her track. By the end of the 8 days she had managed to gain all of her 8 cars, and as a reward I took her for her first trip to the library. She was so excited to get to go and see all the books, and we even borrowed her very first book.

So the reward chart was a total success. I've tried reward charts in the past with minimal success, so I wasn't sure if we'd have much luck this time around, but she really responded to the magnetic cars, and the fact that I'd let her race each new car around the track when she earned it was always a treat. The colours are lovely and vibrant, so very pleasing to the eye, and they were a good size for little hands. I was also able to put the yet to be earned magnets higher on the fridge so she could still see them, and see how close she was to earning all of her cars, so that was a good incentive too. The beautiful thing about using magnets is that the reward chart is completely reusable. If I wanted to I could go back and do another week of concentrated listening, or I can use any of the other 8 options that come with the reward chart. It even includes two blank magnets so you can come up with your own behaviour you want to practice. The only issue I can see with that is that the pictures on the magnets are printed on glossy paper, so the blank is a one time use only, as any markers you draw on it with will not come off, and trying to clean the magnets will destroy the printed image. However I think you could make it reusable by covering it with clear contact, or another type of plastic/acetate adhered to the top of it, so that's always a good option.  The Magnetricks website even includes a post which helps you to get the most out of your reward charts, with handy tips and tricks you can use to get the most out of any effort to teach a new behaviour, or correct an old bad habit.

Just some of the behaviors you may wish to modify as a stressed parent.

The other magnetic product we had to play with was the shapes. This set came with 43 magnets in 7 different shapes and various sizes to play with. Miss K and I both had a lot of fun playing with these magnets and trying to come up with different pictures we could build using the shapes.

These are great for encouraging imaginative play, and I was amazed at the different pictures Miss K was able to come up with on her own once she got started. She made shooting stars and people and a tree, and together we built a robot and a train. The magnets have gotten plenty of use over the past few weeks, and I love that she's got something to occupy herself while I'm in the kitchen cooking dinner or cleaning up, (on the odd occasions when that actually happens,) so it keeps her out of my hair right when I need it. The other thing I liked about these was that the magnets stacked on top of each other well, and were easy to separate when you wanted to build a new picture, making the possible combinations endless.

A train, complete with gigantic smoke stack.

The images are printed on thin magnets, which I thought would make them less likely to stick onto metal, but the magnet is surprisingly strong for something so slim, so you don't need to worry about them ending up all over the floor like other magnets for kids I've seen in the past. The other good thing about them being so thin is they ship flat, so postage is cheaper, and apparently they are less likely to cause harm if swallowed by small children. Of course given the risk, you do need to supervise small children when they are playing with these magnets just to make sure that doesn't happen.

I *think* this one is a robot. 

All in all I am super impressed with these magnets. They are so bright and cheerful, fun to play with and very easy to use. They were shipped to me very quickly, (which is always a good thing) and the available range is pretty big. Aside from the reward charts and shapes there are routine magnets, vocabulary magnets, communication aide magnets, and some just for fun sets (including Minecraft characters for any of you Minecraft nuts out there.)

So if you or anyone you know is in the market for a fun, educational toy for your kids, or something designed to make your life run a little bit smoother, then head on over to the Magnetricks website now and check out their awesome range. 

Disclosure:
Now because I live in Australia, I don't actually have to disclose when I receive goods in return for a blog post, usually because it is implied, however in the interests of transparency, I will say that I received these magnets in return for reviewing them on my blog. The opinions I have given are all my own. The fact that these magnets are freakin' awesome just made my job even easier.

Things I never thought parenting would teach me

I'm back again. I know I didn't write anything for you guys yesterday, but I had the opportunity to go visit an old friend last night for a quiet evening watching Misery, and I had to take it. I figure since I'm a mum now and I can't get into sex drugs and rock and roll anymore, I might as well get Kathy Bates and James Caan going at each other with sledge hammers and door stops.

So after a quick look at the calendar this morning, I realised it is only 15 days until Miss K's 2nd birthday. I can't believe I've almost been doing this for 2 years now. Before I became a parent, my longest stint in a job was 18 months, and then it was a case or quit or get fired. Luckily my current boss can't fire me, or I would have been gone a long time ago.

Now as any parent will tell you, the years fly by before you get a chance to sit down and think about it. But I would like to take a moment to share with you just some of the things that I have learnt over the past 2 years that I never realised would be a part of my education as a mum. As logic dictates, I will start with number 1.

1. If you believe Playschool, archaeologists wear ice cream buckets as safety helmets 
2. If you fall asleep to a children's show, it will invade your dreams in the most messed up and un-G-rated ways possible.
3. Nothing is more entertaining than putting a CD on and letting your kid go nuts
4. No matter how many toys they have piled up in the corner, they will always go for the one thing in the room you don't want them to touch
5. You may think your floor is spotless, your child knows otherwise and will find absolutely every tiny piece of rubbish you have missed
6. No matter how prepared you are for leaving the house with your child, your child will always manage to do something you weren't ready for.
7. Nothing makes you turn into your own mother faster than having a child
8. The simplest things in life can really be the most pleasurable
9. Having a child gives you license to be a child yourself. Even if only for a little while
10. Childrens shows can be very entertaining. Especially if you have a filthy mind capable of twisting the most innocent sentence into something disgusting.
11. There is no problem that can't be fixed with a cuddle. Or a Wiggles brand band-aid 
12. No matter what the "experts" say, chocolate is an acceptable bribe, which will work every time
13. Your house suddenly becomes a terrifying death trap once you put a child in it. Even if you baby-proofed it before she was born
14. Being a parent means that you are amazing in someone's eyes. Make the most of it before they realise how big an idiot you really are
15. The minute you bring that little person home, all the rules fly out the window and you become the blind leading the blind
16. There is no such thing as ready to be a parent
17. Housework is never as important as playing with your child (at least that's my excuse)
18. Pick your battles. Does it really matter that she's eating her macaroni and cheese with her fingers?
19. But always set the rules early in the game. Something that looks cute the first few times can become destructive or dangerous (or very irritating) quickly.                 

And lastly

  20.  There is no better feeling than being the only person a child wants

Well these are just some of the things I've learnt since Miss K was born, and I know that my education is far from over, but I can't wait to see what else this little dirt monster has to teach me.

Well that's it for me, I'm off to do some grunt work in the back yard. I'll be back next time with more fun. Stay awesome peeps.

A stroll down memory lane

A friend of mine has started getting all nostalgic on Facebook lately and finding pictures of all the old toys and gadgets from her past. Given that she is of a similar age to my mother, I didn't think that I'd be able to remember a lot of the things that she could, but it turns out that either I have an awesome memory for things that were made before I was born, or once upon a time things were made to last, and last they did.

But she in turn has got me thinking of all the things I loved as a child, and miss now that I am an adult and it is no longer acceptable to have a room filled with toys and shiny things just because they are pretty. So with that I'd like you all to take a stroll with me down memory lane, as we go back twenty years to my childhood. (Man that is a long time ago. Now I feel really old.) Below are some of the toys I played with and loved as a kid.

This is a Barbie knitting machine. For anyone who never owned one of these, it was great for knitting an entire ball of wool into a pointless tube. Apparently you were supposed to be able to make it into clothes for your Barbies, but I could never figure out that part, so I spent many an hour making long woollen tubes. I don't think I ever looked as happy as that girl on the box while I was using this machine, mainly because the only thing it did really well was tangle up, so I spent more time yelling at it and crying in frustration than smiling at my tubes. 

This lovely lady here is a Cupcake Doll. The point of this one was you could turn her skirt inside out, and she would turn into a cupcake. This one pictured is exactly the same as the one I had as a kid, I can't believe I can still remember what colour Cupcake Doll I had, but as we've already covered, I have a mind full of useless crap. The problem I found with this doll was that for some reason the skirt and the hat would never quite meet up once her skirt was turned inside out, so my cupcakes always looked like the icing was about to fall off. 

My cousins had this board game when I was a kid, and even back then I hated the maths questions the most. I don't think I ever won this game as a child, but when my big sister bought it years later when we were all adults, I was surprised to find how much smarter I had gotten over the ten years since I had played it last. I was now able to answer the questions in a kids board game with relative ease. Yay me!

Ah Koosh balls. I don't know anyone who didn't own at least one of these in their childhood, these pointless balls of elastic. They didn't even hurt when you threw them at someone, but rub them in their hair and it was pure agony. I know this because my sister decided to teach me a lesson. a painful, hair ripping lesson.

I had forgotten about these until I started getting all nostalgic earlier this week. Magic Diaper Babies were little plastic figurines, whose nappies changed colour to pink or blue when immersed in cold water. I can't remember how many of these I had, but they were a very coveted item for me as a child. I can remember begging mum to buy me more any time we went to K Mart. 

Who here has never played with a Spirograph? I pity your sad life if you've never had the pleasure of making pictures with this awesome toy. We got one when my dad owned a second hand store in the early nineties, and I remember the huge fights we would have when someone wasn't sharing one of the discs, or even worse someone lost a disc. I think I'm going to have to find one of these for Miss K when she gets older, as it is an awesome way to kill a couple of hours.

Now I don't know many little girls who didn't own at least one of these sewing machines as a child. I had to wait until my big sister outgrew hers before I could inherit it, but I remember staring at it enviously when it was hers and wishing I was old enough to be able to use it. Once I owned it I realised that I was a terrible sewer, and the only thing I could make was crooked, clumsy tissue pillows for my Barbie dolls.

Speaking of Barbie dolls, this was one of my favourite dolls as a child as it is the first one I can remember that was bought especially for me, and not a hand me down from my big sister. She came with a special bottle of sparkly hair gel which smelt lovely, so I think I spent more time smelling this doll than actually playing with her (I never said I was a normal child) but I do remember her hair was an absolute monster to keep neat, and my mum spent many hours de-tangling her hair for me when it got really bad. 

I have saved this one for last because this was my absolute favourite toy as a child. This is a Lil Miss Singing Mermaid doll. I don't know exactly how popular she was when I was a child because I didn't have any friends who owned her, but I loved her more than anything else. When I was six I went through a real mermaid phase, partly because The Little Mermaid had come out on video and it was my favourite movie. My parents bought this for my sixth birthday, and I also had a cake decorated with plastic mermaid figurines. This doll sang when you pushed her stomach, and her tail would change colour if immersed in hot water, so she became my favourite bath time toy too. I even slept with her for a while. I actually tried to purchase one of these dolls on eBay a couple of years ago, but apparently it is a real collectors item these days because the one I was bidding on eventually got sold for over $70 and I wasn't prepared to pay so much for a doll.

So there you have it, my childhood in one tidy little blog. I'm sure there were other things going on at the same time, but when I think back to being a kid, this is what I see in my mind. If anyone else out there had a favourite toy in the eighties or nineties that they want to share with me, please feel free, I love nostalgia in all of its forms.

The point of Pinterest

So apparently there is more to Pinterest than just pinning pretty photos onto random boards. It is supposed to serve as a source of inspiration for projects, renovations, organisation and crafty things. I have heard from a lot of people (mainly other bloggers that I obsessively follow) that while they love pinning things to their boards, they rarely use the tips or instructions provided with the photo. A lot of Pinterest projects are cropping up everywhere as people madly try to make use of all of the wonderful ideas that are available at our fingertips.

Now a lot of my boards don't really have anything that I can use in future projects or crafts, I have just pinned them up because they are pretty, or they make me laugh. But I do have one or two boards with some wonderful ideas on them, some of which I used in Miss K's new bedroom. So given that I have technically been using the Pinterest boards for inspiration, but I've never really done anything exactly as it was presented to me, I decided on Friday to actually make something from one of my boards. And the beautiful thing about it was it was something Miss K and I could do together, and she could play with once it was finished. We made a discovery bottle

Pictured: a discovery bottle

This was the photo I used as my inspiration. I didn't read the instructions on how to make this, as how hard can it be to put sparkly things into a bottle? So on Friday afternoon once mum went to work, Miss K and I sat down with a bottle of water, a heap of tubs of sequins and beads and spent ten minutes making a discovery bottle. I was surprised at how much fun Miss K had putting the various items into the bottle, as I figured out she would have lost interest in this part pretty quickly, but she was there with me to the very end helping put sequins and beads into our bottle, she even chose which order we put the things in. And given that I was mixing children, water and carpets we managed to keep the mess to a minimum too which is always a bonus.

Pictured: A discovery bottle, as taken by a terrible photographer.

So we made our discovery bottle, put on the lid and I showed her how to shake it around to make all the sequins and beads inside float around, and I waited for her to get so excited she couldn't contain herself. But like with all the best laid out plans of mice and men the excitement wasn't so much palpable as non existent. Miss K was mildly interested with the pretty colours and movement, but she wasn't bouncing off the walls in glee. So I persisted and kept shaking the bottle and moving it around hoping to get something of a better reaction from her. But it seemed that Miss K wasn't going to have a bar of it, she ignored my questions about how pretty she thought it was and what colours she could see and kept taking the bottle away from me and putting it on the floor out of my reach. I was beginning to get frustrated at how much time I had wasted making a toy for her that she didn't like until I realised I had it all wrong.

It turns out Miss K did like her new toy, so much so that she didn't want to share it with me. And she still won't share it. Any time anyone picks it up she makes a mad dash to them and grabs it away. She even wanted to take it to bed with her that night. So I really should write to the makers of this toy and thank them for turning the inner brat in Miss K into the outer brat in Miss K. But I can't complain really because it turns out I got it right for once. Score one for mum!

Pictured: Miss K not sharing her toys

She slimed me!!!

So for today's play date, Miss K and I decided to get a little dirty (well I decided and Miss K was forced to go along with it). I mentioned a few posts ago that Miss K hates getting her hands dirty, which is why we're having so many problems with getting her to eat finger foods. So I decided to tackle this problem today by making some slime for her to play with. We started by trying to make monster blood, but after an entire pack of corn flour, all we had was white water so I had to scrap that idea, and made play dough instead.

For anyone who doesn't know how to make your own child safe play dough at home, the recipe is as follows:

1 cup of water
1 cup of salt
2 cups of plain flour
1 table spoon of oil
food dye to colour.

Add all the ingredients together and knead until it forms a dough. To make mixing the colour easier, I put the food dye in the water. And there you have it, a child friendly dough. (I still wouldn't recommend eating it, as the salt makes it super salty, just ask Miss K)

Yup, she stuck it straight in her mouth. After half a bottle of juice to get the salt and flour out of her mouth, we set out to let her know that it can be OK to get your hands dirty. She was pretty resistant at first, and although she was happy to touch the dough, she would try to get any of it that stuck to her hands off as soon as she let go.

But once she saw that I was OK with having the goo all over my hands, she started to get into it and was really enjoying herself by the end....

...Let me try that again. She was really enjoying herself by the end...

OK so I guess we put the camera away before she started having fun, but trust me, she really did like it. She even decided to try playing with her noodles at dinner time, and they were much slimier.

So even though the battle is not completely won, we're one step closer to Miss K being OK with having dirty hands, and hopefully that will make life all round a little bit easier.

Taking a time out

So today I was a little bit naughty. And by this I don't mean I had four pieces of chocolate instead of two. I mean that instead of vacuuming the floor and doing the dishes this afternoon I had a play date with Miss K.

Normally when mum heads off to work after school, I stick Miss K in the middle of the lounge room with a huge pile of toys and run around cleaning up so the place is nice for mum when she gets home in the evening. This usually involves a lot of running to and from the lounge room to make sure Miss K isn't getting into anything while my back is turned, and I spend a lot of time tearing my hair out, and Miss K spends a lot of time whinging at me because she wants someone to play with and I'm not giving her the attention that she wants. But today, I decided to do things differently and see how less stressful my afternoon was. First I hid everything that Miss K is not allowed to touch, so that I wouldn't have to say no to her at all, then I just sat in the middle of the floor and watched.

I'm actually ashamed to admit that this isn't how every afternoon is spent for us, and I am going to take steps to remedy this immediately because today was the most relaxed that both Miss K and I have been for a long time. Instead of panicking that there was too much to do and not enough time to do it in, I crawled around the floor and had fun and laughed. I also had a lot of time to look at my little girl in disbelief, because there are still days when I cannot believe how lucky I am that this beautiful child is my daughter. In the past 11 months she has grown and developed in so many ways it is mind blowing. She takes joy in the simplest things like a stuffed teddy or an old computer mouse, and everything is so new and amazing to her. Today we danced together to her little keyboard, and sang songs and wrestled. There were no tears, there was no saying no to her and there was no frustration that I couldn't juggle housework and parenting.

Amazingly, the house didn't fall down around my ears because there was a pile of dishes in the sink, and even dinner wasn't the usual wrestling match it is every other night because we were both in a great mood. I even managed to get the lounge room cleaned up and have a coffee made for mum when she got home. So in the afternoons from now on, the rest of the world is going to have to bugger off because it has officially become mummy and Miss K time. This does mean that anyone who reads my blog is probably going to have to wait a few hours extra each day to read my posts because the computer is not even going to be looked at while there is playing to be done.

Well I need to go to bed because tomorrow is mother's group and my little sister is visiting us, so I need to get my beauty hibernation. See you after my next play date!