Realise The Potential Of Toys

Are you getting all you can from your toys?

Most parents are taking "baby" toys away that can still offer a huge number of benefits to children.  As an adult the first thing most of us do with any toy or game is get out the instructions or mimic the play that inspired us.  Quite often that is either an advert or a limited play period at a friends home or play group, we don't really think about all that can be done with it to really teach our children and help with their development.  Toys are superb tools and as with all tools the best way to use them is with knowledge.

To prove our point we took one of our most simple toys and even surprised ourselves with just how much potential we found.

The toy chosen was the Plan Toys Geometric Sorting Board.

Here are some of our suggestions on how this toy can be used.

1)                  Start at 12 months allowing your baby to experiment with the pieces by removing them and putting them back anywhere.  Start with colours and affirm the correct colour each time they take one.  As they develop their confidence in the game start pointing to the correct group of pins and encourage them to try and put the piece back on.  Show enthusiasm every time they try whether they are successful or not.  You can use your finger to gently guide or nudge a piece but don’t take over or they will feel frustrated.

Skills learnt:  Colour, shape recognition.  Following and giving simple instructions.  Hand eye co-ordination and simple fine motor skills development.

2)                  When they are ready evolve the game suggesting colours and shapes, first pointing then asking for them.  Always reward attempts and make sure you don’t say no, encourage them with a well done and then point to a different one that has the colour/shape you asked for.  Reverse the game and let them tell you which piece it is.  Use them to learn about shapes by talking about the number of sides they have.

Skills learnt:  Colours, shapes & following instructions.

3)                  Use the pieces to introduce simple addition or subtraction concepts.  As they grow more confident you can use the holes for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.  This is an easy way for children to understand what is happening in a visual way.  Ask them to make up a number using as few pieces as possible.

Skills learnt.  Addition, Subtraction, division and multiplication.

4)                  The pieces can be used to develop creativity.  Put the various shapes together to create a picture or object, easy ones are cars, trains and bikes but you can build houses, animals and lots more with a little thought.  Develop this by drawing around the pieces and then embellishing to create an animal or object, fruit, vegetables, people....anything!  Use them together to demonstrate how simple shapes can be used together to create recognisable objects.

Skills learnt.  Creative thinking, fine motor skills.

5)                  Use the pieces as currency, give each one a value (perhaps based on the number of sides or holes).  Play shopping or other similar games and combine mathematics with role playing.

Skills learnt.  Addition and subtraction, imaginative play, creative thinking.

6)                  Learn about patterns using the pieces by sorting them using colour or shape into simple patterns.

Skills learnt.  Patterns, repetition.

Skills learned with this “shape sorter” toy.

Fine motor skills

Creative thinking

Pattern making

Four primary colours

Four one dimensional shapes

The numbers 1-4

Addition of numbers to 10 (and above)

Simple multiplication

Simple addition

Simple division

Simple subtraction

Description

Following simple instruction

Let us know if you think of any other ways we can use it so we can add it to our suggestion list.

Wait it out the easy way...!

Research from Early Intervention Support says that a child of 4 years old will usually have an attention span of around 8-10 minutes. This can be very tiring for parents when a family holiday can include long car journeys, long queues and very excited children – and adults! At Stork Gifts we’ve utilised our parental experience with large broods to come up with some useful tips to help you make your holiday fun and as calm as it can be!

In the Car

Having a SatNav the children can see, especially one that shows duration remaining, helps them to visualise how long is left of the journey. This also helps cut down the frustrating ‘How long before we get there?’ request. When we are travelling a familiar route it can also be helpful to make them aware of landmarks, and then see how quickly they can spot them. This is fun for your children as well as helping them appreciate the progress being made on the journey. Excited children have a short attention span, so to keep them entertained we go back to the old simple classic - I-spy or who can spot the coloured car/animal/landmark etc first.

Trains and Planes!

Travel games and books that are small enough to fit a few different ones in your hand luggage are great to entertain the kids on long distance travels. But not only that put one or two in your pockets and they prove invaluable during long queues for theme park rides.  Let other children join in with you to make the whole experience more social.

Restaurants

All parents know that the long wait for food in a restaurant can be particularly boring for children, and it’s not always best to rely on the activity sheets & blunt pencils ‘sometimes’ provided. So we like to take stickers, stencils and pencils to help pass the time – and paper!

In the Hotel

A pack of cards and a good puzzle are a great way to bring the family together in the evenings, or when the smaller children need a nap. And don’t forget to bring a selection of story books to help send all the children off to sleep at night.

Planning

Some careful thinking can alleviate at least some of the coming frustrations with children.  Plan toilet breaks and make sure everyone at least tries to go before getting in the car, joining a queue.  Bring water and something small and healthy to snack on, but keep water usage to sips or you’ll end up making pit stops.  On hot days take a small hand held fan to keep them cool and when all else fails bring out the Gameboy or DS!!!  Even as die hard traditionalists accept that sometimes hand held toys can be a real saviour.

References

Early intervention Support

Art & Craft Brain Food

At Stork Gifts we love arts and crafts. It is always great fun to let your imagination run free and get covered in glue, paper and paint having fun with the kids.

Art can help children to improve their fine motor skills, hand eye coordination, dexterity, patience, and attention to detail. All of which are valuable skills to help your child get the best in the education system. But on top of all that they also are learning how to be creative, which is a valuable skill now linked to intelligence, problem solving and business success.

Sadly these skills are not always understood and nurtured in our increasingly test focused school system, so conducting arts and crafts with your kids yourself is teaching them important lessons they may otherwise miss out on.

One of the most important factors when partaking in arts and crafts together is the freedom of expression it offers.  There are no rules to creativity and every picture, painting or model offers a wide variety of discussion options.  There is no right and wrong, a pink cow is every bit as valid as a black and white one.

For younger children you can discuss form, colour and materials but equally you can discuss the story behind it or create a story for the project.  Link it together to build and develop the story further with reading, writing or storytelling.  For older children they can build on their skills and use a particular subject to increase their understanding and interest.

A nice thing about art, as a family activity, is that can “usually” be done with very little spend, preparation or stress.  Everyone can join in regardless of their ability and you can use just about anything.  Collect leaves on the walk home from school and use them to print with, cut into fun designs, sketch, make a collage from, trace, photograph or use in a model.

Paper mache is one of the best projects and is relatively inexpensive and simple to do.  You can keep your project as simple or complicated as you like.  It’s superb for using with other materials and teaches about technique, form and design.

Keep your activities age appropriate and prepare well when you can to make creative play so much fun you won’t even realize they are learning.

If you would like some inspiration to get crafty this summer visit our website and have a look at our craft kits and craft materials to keep children entertained for hours!

Some of our family handywork!!

Daddy took the project very seriously!

Dion, Aged 6 was free and vibrant in his design!

Ebonie, aged 9 chose a subject she loved.

Ethan, aged 8 experimented with various effects.

Jude, aged 2 was fond of the stencils & stamps.

Mum, age unknown, took the imaginative view.

Thai, aged 11 enjoyed adding character & humor.

Materials used... Djeco stencils, stamp set, gel pastels, farm stickers & Egmont pencils.  Time spent together as a family, a shocking 2 hours - we completely lost track of time!



Bad habits NOT bad food.

As parents we face a daily battle of conscience over our children.  We hear from multiple sources about the number of children who are now overweight or more worryingly, obese.  We’re aware they require a healthy balance of diet & exercise on a daily basis. The love we feel for our children is unquestionable, we want them to grow up healthy, happy and with the best opportunities for life, so where are we going wrong?

Part of the problem is that in modern society parents face more pressure to provide for their children.  We work longer hours, suffer more stress and the demands on us are endless.  Part guilt, part convenience and many other factors contribute but none make parents the monsters the media portrays us to be, nor are the solutions as obvious or easy to execute.

Why do we spoil them?

Contrary to the general train of thought our opinion is that the biggest problem is not bad parents but bad routines. Children thrive on routine, easy to establish yet devilishly hard to break.  When you consider how powerful a sugary snack can be at bringing a smile to a child’s face, it’s cheap, convenient and easy and as long as we’re giving them fruit and vegetables it’s must be ok.

The crucial word is “regularly”.  Rewarding good behavior with a treat once in a while is perfectly ok.  Doing it every time you go shopping or when you need them to be well behaved or quiet for a period is introducing bad routines.  Take pudding for example, it’s ingrained into us to follow dinner with pudding (the nice bit!), a routine reward for eating their dinner but eating healthily should be a natural thing to do.

Now we’re not saying take away all puddings but some days an ice-cream on the way home can replace it.  Introduce the concept of a treat being just that regardless of the time it is consumed.

Naughty snacking.

Snacking is what adults do all the time, just look at the success of the coffee shops!  And look around them at just how many children there are in them with their parents or grandparents.  Until we re-evaluate our own habits it’s going to be hard to install good ones into our children.

Change your routine and you will give your children a much better chance.  Don’t purchase snacks for the home, make yourself go out and get them.  Snacks are not suitable to conquer hunger and try to ensure you always have a few quick and easy foods to prepare for when you do get peckish.  If your children see you partaking in good routines they will become completely normal and natural for them without any effort on your part.

Bad associations

One of the biggest problems we have with food is associating it with our emotions.  A bumped knee is soothed with an ice-cream, a bad day equals a chocolate bar, a good report means a bag of sweets and a party means lots and lots of naughty goodies.  By installing a sense that bad foods are rewards, compensation and to make us feel special we are building a bad association that will last a lifetime and is virtually impossible to break.

The tricky bit.

The difficulty we have is not how do we solve our children’s problem but how do we solve ours.  The solution as with most tricky issues is slowly and one thing at a time.  Learn new routines and recognize when you are making some of these crucial mistakes, by understanding our own bad habits we can help prevent them in our own children.

Great Ormand Street Hospital has some encouraging ideas on how to introduce healthy snacks and treats.

“If your child wants a snack it can be hard to make a good choice for them in a world full of fast food and sweets. So here are some healthy alternatives.

•     Try and replace the unhealthy snacks with ones you don’t mind them eating, such as fruit, oatcakes and breadsticks.

•     Offer pure fruit juice instead of fizzy drinks. The fruit juice counts towards their five-a-day and will help satisfy their cravings for sweet things. But still only offer them one glass a day as their main drink should be water.

•     Swap chocolates and sweets for sweet fruits like bananas or strawberries.

•     Speak to other people who spoil your children such as grandparents. Try and suggest that they help you by offering them healthy treats too.

Vanessa Shaw, head of dietetics at Great Ormond Street Hospital offers some of her favourite healthy snacks:

•     Wholegrain pita bread filled with hummus and cherry tomatoes

•     Cheese spread on unsalted oatcakes with cucumber slices

•     Chopped up fruits

•     Sticks of carrot, pepper and celery with tomato salsa dip

•     Peanut butter and watercress on granary bread

•     Banana and berry smoothies”

References 

Great Ormond Street Hospital - http://www.childrenfirst.nhs.uk/families/features/healthy_child/spoiling_children.html

‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’ way to play

At Stork Gifts we’ve learnt that toys often offer a vast assortment of activities, games and educational opportunities that aren’t listed in the instructions. Understanding what they are unlocks the real potential of the toy, often making it more cost effective investing in one good toy you and your child will enjoy and care for.  The result is a single toy that can produce years of enjoyment,  instead of several that will be discarded in the bottom of a draw in just weeks or months.

Parents sometimes tell us their child gets bored of toys easily. We advise that with gentle encouragement and parental stimulation the same toys could initiate play in a multitude of new & exciting ways.  For example……

Try a little experiment.  Find a toy that hasn’t been played with for some time and think of a few potential ways in which it could be used.  Be as creative as you can and inspire yourself, find that inner child.  Begin a game by yourself in the same room as your child involving the toy and you should find that curiosity will draw them in to see what you are doing.  Allow the game to evolve with you making some play suggestions, by example not direction, and be led other times by what your child does.  Rewarding them by showing your enjoyment at their suggestions will build their confidence.  You can even do this with simple household items. 

Elizabeth Pantley author of Gentle Baby Care also agrees with us, saying ‘a puzzle is not always for “puzzling.” The pieces make great manipulative characters, can be sorted or put in boxes, and make interesting noises when banged together or against an empty pot. Children learn through play, so any toy they enjoy playing with is, by definition, educational.’

Through trying these new ways of playing with a toy you are getting so much more value for money from the toy at the same time as educating your child further and having fun in the process!

References

Elizabeth Pantley - Pantley.com

Excerpt Merbabies

The best ways for children to play

The belief and purpose of Stork Gifts is in promoting and supporting the raising of children and nurturing their development through interaction, we believe this is done predominantly through playing together.  When you play with children you learn about them and they learn about you and when this is done in a stress free environment it’s a powerful educational and social tool.

While there is already lots of detailed research in support for this theory what we’ve challenged ourselves to do is present this information to you with real play suggestions, hints and tips to help you make the best decisions for your family.

The Child & Family Web Guide produces some excellent tips to help you and your child get the most out of play. They highlight the importance the role of play has in your child’s development, as it teaches them new skills, explores their imagination, increases their creativity and helps them learn about relationships with other people. Some of their advice for you to make the most out of your child’s playtime is mentioned below.

Follow your child’s lead.

There is no ‘right’ way of playing with a toy. Every toy can be used in so many different ways, each bringing a different aspect to their learning and development. So when you give a toy to a child, baby or toddler let them show you how they want to play with it, even if it isn’t the ‘right’ way.

Go Slowly.

It can often be tempting to ‘do it for them’ when introducing a new toy to a child. But try not to do this every time. Instead offer the starting point, such as stacking one block on top of another, then encourage them to give it a try. As a parent you can offer just enough help to prevent frustration building and the blocks being thrown around the room, but instead keeping them motivated to increase their skills.

Play it again, and again, and again...?

Try to resist hiding that toy that you just can’t bare to play with one more time. Children are practicing so they can master the challenge. And when they can do it ‘all by myself’ they are rewarded with self confidence and assurance in themselves that they are smart and successful. This gives them confidence in the future to take on new challenges and therefore the learning continues.

Another article written by Ginsburg and the American Academy of Pediatrics says ‘Parents who have the opportunity to glimpse into their children’s world learn to communicate more effectively with their children and are given another setting to offer gentle, nurturing guidance.’

It is also stated that children are most likely to gain essential traits such as honesty, generosity, decency, tenacity and compassion in a home in which parents and children have time to be together and to look to each other for positive support and unconditional love.

Therefore, it seems that parent-child play is particularly important in the development of essential personality traits as well as teaching them essential life skills. There are so many different ways for parents to have this interaction with their children and you don’t need to spend a fortune on new toys to keep them interested in doing this. 

References

Child & Family Web Guide

Ginsburg. K,

Welcome to the Stork Gifts Blog

Welcome to the Stork Gifts Blog. Interesting articles and stories to appear here soon!