CreativePlay Plus: Ideas in Play and Child Development

The holidays are here, and if you’re a parent or caregiver to children, it’s a great time to start thinking about winter break activities that will keep kids busy and having fun.  As an added bonus, if the activities result in a little learning, well then, all the better!

Some of the best winter break activities are fairly traditional, like making snowmen in colder climates when weather permits.  But how about taking that outdoor fun to a new level by creating different kinds of snow creatures, from snowdogs to snowmonsters?  Don’t forget to utilize your creative play prop box during this activity – you’ll be amazed at what kids will find to “dress up” their creations!

Another great winter break activity for a frosty day is baking or cooking (with an adult’s supervision, of course!).  Have a book of child-friendly recipes on hand and let them choose what they want to make (make sure it’s age-appropriate – even kids’ cookbooks generally span a range of ages).  Then take them to the grocery store with a list of needed ingredients.  For older children, this is a great time to start shaping skills such as selecting produce or even budgeting.  Let them pick out what’s on the list, and only guide them when they get off track.  Once you get everything home, make a production out of it!  Tie on aprons, make chefs hats out of napkins, and get cooking!

For a simpler take on baking, buy refrigerated sugar cookie dough, and let kids of all ages have a chance to shape, bake, and decorate the final product.  Don’t feel limited to traditional holiday themes –a little cookie dough and a lot of creative energy will produce hours of incredible, edible art in all shapes and sizes.

Finally, the holidays are a time when many children receive gifts from various friends and relatives, and the perfect winter break activity to thank others for their generosity is making homemade thank you cards.  This is an excellent way to let kids get creative, while making a lasting and much-appreciated memento for the gift giver.  Gather up whatever art supplies you have on hand, a list of recipients and you’re ready to go!  This is the ideal opportunity to have a little messy, crafty fun, while learning the art of expressing gratitude to those around us at a very special time of year.

Mother of Tears: The Third Mother dvdrip Lie to Me movie download The holiday season is wonderful time of year that for some can mean a lot of stress and restless children. Often, families have to travel to see one other, normal routines that children follow may be thrown out the window, and it is sometimes the case that children are coming together with relatives or other children who they don’t know well.

When children become “bored” or feel out of their element, a lot of parents find that their kids tend to get into trouble or become clingy and demanding. So how do you keep children happy during holiday gatherings so you can also socialize and catch up with relatives? One way is to try to come up with activities that children can get involved in regardless of age or ability.

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• Have supplies available for a craft project and have children make decorative napkin holders, place cards, or center pieces for the table.  Check out enchanted learning to get some wonderful, easy craft projects for children preschool-elementary school aged.

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• Children can also draw pictures of what they are thankful for and have older children write down their stories with the picture. During dinner or dessert have everyone share what they are thankful for this Thanksgiving!

What are some of the ways you encourage the children at your holiday gatherings to get along and do something together?

With winter beginning to bear down on us, and the holiday season just around the corner, there have been some interesting blog posts lately involving creative play and activities. In particular, the highly entertaining blog No Time for Flash Cards features great activities and craft projects for young children to promote play and learning.  Along with most activities, there is often a suggested book that offers another way of talking about the activity with your child!

With so many families finding they need to fly during the holidays playing air travel can be a wonderful way to role play expectations for traveling and prepare children for this experience.   ”Air travel” requires little as far as supplies – just a couple of chairs, some construction paper and markers.  It can really be as simple or as complex as you want to make it!

Another fun activity is Weatherman.  This one requires a little more preparation and a few more materials, but is likely to be a huge hit in your home.  Out of foam board (or really any material that can stand up to a young child playing with it often) create some simple props, such as clouds, a sun, snow, etc. and attach  them to magnets. Grabbing the nearest magnetic surface (anything from a cookie sheet to a good-sized area on your refrigerator will do), you’ll be well on your way to teaching kids about the weather!  And what better time of year for engaging indoor activities like this than when winter storms (and potentially snow days!) could start popping up at any moment?

The final batches of leaves are falling from trees everywhere, creating spectacular piles (and messes!) for adults to clean up.  However, as time consuming as it can be to get lawns ready for winter, there are also some fun uses for all of those fall leaves during this time of year.  One of those is to teach color recognition to children.

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Color recognition is an important part of early childhood knowledge, in that learning to identify colors early on helps create a mental link between visual clues (in this case, the leaves) and words (or actual color names).

Incorporating the teaching of color recognition can be as simple as taking a fall walk Cheri dvdrip .  There is little young children enjoy more than stomping down a tree-lined path in a pair of boots, listening to the leaves crunch.  So why not use this time to engage them in a little learning at the same time?  With leaves truly running the gamut of the color spectrum this time of year there are plenty of easy opportunities to enhance children’s color recognition skills right in your own backyard

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Another fun way to teach color recognition with fall leaves is by having children pick up their favorite leaf specimens, either from your yard or from a nature walk (or even the local playground!), and then assisting them in their preservation and identification by doing a wax paper leaf pressing The Iron Giant Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey move .  This definitely needs an adult’s supervision, but is a very simple way to engage children in a fun color recognition exercise that will not only increase their knowledge, but also provide a great memory for both of you well into the future.

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Here are some other games for your children utilizing nature.

I know this isn’t an original thought, but it recently occurred to me that children at play and scientists at work have a lot in common.  Both seem to start with the same question, What if?  What if I put this big block on top of this little one?  What if I’m the mommy and you’re the baby?  What if I drop a heavy ball and a light ball? Which one hits the ground first?

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Attack Force move What If is the starting point for almost any problem solving.

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• The baby seems fussier than usual.  What if you try dancing to Roy Orbison while holding her over your shoulder?  How about Madonna?

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What If also drives art. In fact, very little that is new comes into existence without a What If first.

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• Impressionism was largely an answer to the question, “What if you paint the feeling of things, instead of their surfaces?”
• Mozart asked, “What if I play it softer; louder; faster; fancier; slower; in ¾ time?” And there you have it: theme and variations.

For What If to work its magic, the player-solver-artist needs a space, some objects, tools to work on them, and most important the assurance that not too much can go wrong.

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I don’t think you need to teach your child to play.  But you can set an example by taking a playful approach to life.

• What if you turn left, instead of right the way you normally go? What if you take the contents of your junk drawer and make something? What if you put a carrot top in a bowl of grape juice? Will it sprout? Will you get a blue carrot?

Being a playful parent yourself may help your child feel comfortable wondering What If and feel secure exploring their growing curiosities.

Jump Out Boys aka Lords Of The Street buy Sir Ken Robinson recently published an opinion piece on CNN titled How schools stifle creativity. We first began this conversation on creativity in the schools in a previous post on our blog

, highlighting his TED talk from 2006.

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What are some of your thoughts about his talk and newest article? Are you optimistic that specific changes to our educational system may actually bring about a societal change and greater well-being? Do you believe that schools are actually killing creativity? How important is it to you that a school fosters rather than stifles creativity?