CreativePlay Plus: Ideas in Play and Child Development

All children are born with music aptitude, or the potential to learn music. As you watch and listen to your young child sing and dance her way through the day, it’s obvious that there is music inside! You can help support musical development by:

1. Encouraging your child to be expressive musically
• Give your child special time to make music. Lay out some empty Tupperware and a selection of items like dried beans, rice, or salt to put inside. Let your child practice making new sounds with these “shakers.”
• Take your child’s lead and make music using just your bodies. Make popping noises with your mouth, clicking with your tongue, clap your hands, and shuffle your feet in a creative, fun way to make sounds.
• Play echo games with movements as well as sounds, taking turns as leader and follower.
2. Refraining from judgment if your child uses materials in unusual ways to create music (as long as safety is not compromised)
3. Expressing enjoyment and excitement for the musical creativity they share with you.
• “It’s great to hear you hum songs to yourself while drawing!”
• “That’s so fun you changed the words and made your very own song!”
• You look so happy when drumming and clapping to different songs!”

The next time your child creates a little song or drums a beat on a pail, stop and enjoy the moment together and appreciate the way your child is expressing her/his musical ideas!

Lay down a white sheet of paper or cloth under a bush. Gently shake the vegetation and watch the insects and small invertebrates that fall on to the sheet.

Make observations with your child about the many kinds of bugs you see.
- Notice how things move: do they hop; fly; or wiggle?
- How many different colors do you see?
- Try to count the number of legs, wings, and antennae on each insect.

Look under other nearby plants.
- Are there different insects on other plants or the same?
- Do certain bugs prefer to be close to the ground and others up high?

When you are done, gently shake the sheet so the animals can safely return to their homes. Remember, this is also an opportunity to model for your child the importance of not harming insects and respecting their homes.

With older children, keep a journal of the insects you see! Kids can write down key features and draw their observations to help them identify what they have found later in a guidebook. This is also a wonderful activity to do with a group of children, who can then compare what they found and talk about their coolest bug!

Here’s a fun idea—put your kids in photos:

Sometimes the most simple things can ignite amazing learning opportunities. A great geography ’spark’ is to make a picture of your children next to a famous landmark, or in an exotic location.

The picture can be made simply by cutting up copies of photographs of your children and pasting it to a travel picture. Travel brochures are great for this, or old copies of National Geographic…

Click through for several activities to do with the photos once they’ve been created!

Travel the World Without Leaving Home! | Blissfully Domestic

With your child, pretend to shrink to the size of ants and have some fun looking at the world from a different perspective.  Ask your child to lead an ant-sized nature walk and find four things along the way that are interesting. Use a stone, small stick, or toothpick to mark these special spots.

After the walk, talk about the spots they marked and what makes them interesting. Talk about how these areas look to a person and compare it to an ant’s perspective. Feel free to pretend to be other animals like a bird flying high or squirrel jumping through the trees! Encourage your child to use his or her imagination and have fun role playing together!

Your voice is music to your child’s ears, even if you don’t think of yourself as the next American Idol.  Singing to your child and with your child is a special form of communication!

Many parents naturally sing in a range lower than what infants and toddlers can best hear and imitate vocally.  When singing to your child, listen to the vocal sounds they are making and try to match your pitch to theirs.  This will enable your child to “sing back” – at first coos and hums, years later with more accuracy.  (For those readers who have studied music, the ideal range for vocalizing with young children is D to A above middle C.)

Also, when singing, make eye contact with your child.  Enjoy this special form of communication!

With summer winding down it’s important to take the opportunity to go outside while the weather is nice and explore nature with your child! This month, we will be posting activities to help engage you and your child in nature that can be done anywhere, at anytime, with anyone. Be on the lookout for new posts each Thursday to encourage outdoor playtime and sparking your child’s interest in nature!

A great tip:

Today’s ‘make life easier’ tip is a time-saver and boredom cure - art projects at your kids’ fingertips. Our kids love doing projects. I finally hit on a really great art-supply-tool that keeps us all a little happier; the art box. I put all of the kids’ art supplies into one box that they could reach on their own. I seperate art supply by type w/ little boxes inside of a bigger box (all plastic). The big box holds the paper and the smaller boxes…

Time-saving tip: An art box for the kids

Parent coach Karen Deerwester writes:

Your child wants to be singing and dancing his way through every day with the people who love him full-time, all-the-time. And so, this is your reminder to pick a few of your favorite rhymes, songs, and games and add them to your baby-play repertoire on a regular basis…

She lists the Garden Snail Palm Rhyme, the Shoe a Little Horse Foot Rhyme, and the Magic Hat game as example.

Besides the Eensy Weensy Spider, what songs do you sing with your kids?

See her post Family Time: Pocketful of Tricks for the lyrics.

Here’s a tip from ToddlersToday.com: Recycle Leftover Bottles into Fun Crafts.

Projects include a Baby Bottle Birdfeeder, an Aquarium in a Bottle, and a Baby Bottle Rattle. Click the link above for details and more fun recycling projects for kids (and adults)!

Grocery shopping often begins as an exciting adventure and ends in tears, for both parent and child. Taking the nightmare out of the check-out aisle can often be accomplished by planning ahead.

• Discuss the check-out aisle and the temptations that await your child. Be concrete about your expectations – no whining or grabbing candy.
• Talk about the importance of abiding by the rules and purchasing only items on the list.
• Ask your child to check the list against the contents of the cart. This activity can serve as a great distracter.
• Rewards for a successful and efficient store trip should be spelled out in advance, with healthy snacks, small prizes, or special privileges used depending on the age and interests of the child.
• Negative consequences should also be explained clearly, with specific instances of negative behavior highlighted. Negative consequences should be used sparingly and parents need to plan to “catch their children being good”.

If your child understands the expectations for the grocery trip and has special tasks to preoccupy themselves, they may be better able to deal with a “long-drawn out” grocery store trip. Moreover, they can learn a great deal about planning, practice their language skills, and develop routines for activities they commonly experience. In addition, exposure to these ideas can help children develop a rich and complex narrative for future play activities like “grocery store” at home.