CreativePlay Plus: Ideas in Play and Child Development

As the holiday season draws to a close, the final celebration on the calendar before New Year’s is Kwanzaa.  Kwanzaa is not a religious holiday; instead, it was established in 1966 to celebrate the African-American heritage and to reinforce positive values within the community.  It is celebrated over the course of seven days, beginning on December 26th, and ending on January 1st.  December 31st is the major feast day, when a festive meal is prepared for family and friends.

There are plenty of ways to help kids learn about Kwanzaa.  One way for them to gain a better understanding of the holiday is to have them make a traditional candle holder, known as a kinara, which holds a candle for each of the seven days of Kwanzaa.  Each station on the kinara can then be labeled with one of the seven principles of the holiday, and a candle lit on each day, leading up to January 1st (with an adult’s supervision, of course!).

Next, get children excited to learn about Kwanzaa by having them help out in the kitchen while preparing several traditional Kwanzaa recipes.  This is the perfect way to have your own mini-feast! Dishes such as Salmon Croquettes and Sweet Potato Pecan Bars are fun foods that kids can enjoy helping you make, and enjoy eating even more.

Finally, help kids learn about Kwanzaa and internalize the seven principles through a variety of activities which engage them in the learning process.  Simple printable Kwanzaa coloring pages detailing the lessons of the holiday are one way to do just that.  Or, try helping them make a Kwanzaa handprint wreath – an enduring way to preserve memories of the holiday and see how kids have grown throughout the years.

No matter how you choose to learn about Kwanzaa, with so many fun things to do, it’s sure to be an exciting and educational time for everyone!

The holiday season is made up of several major holidays, of which Hanukkah is first. If you follow the Jewish faith, this is a great time to commemorate the holiday with children through creative play, while allowing them to take part in important family and religious traditions.  Even if you don’t traditionally celebrate Hanukkah, but are interested in exposing kids to religious diversity, there are plenty of ways to do that, too.

One way to get kids involved in celebrating and understanding Hanukkah is by grabbing your prop box and encouraging them to act out the Hanukkah story.

For the less theatrical group, crafting may be more your thing.  There are a variety of different ways to use creative crafts to celebrate Hanukkah.  Anything from the traditional menorah to a fun dreidel can be crafted easily and inexpensively out of things you have on hand or even in your own backyard!

Another fun (and yummy!) way to celebrate Hanukkah is by making specific traditional foods.  Delicious Hanukkah recipes for dishes such as potato latkes, kugel, and apple fritters are widely available, and often simple to make.  Just be sure that an adult is on hand to help supervise the cooking!  If you sit down for a special meal of Hanukkah favorites, you may want to include a special holiday blessing.

Lastly, there are many games and activities which can make what is often known as the “Festival of Lights” into an educational but fun time for the whole family.  From coloring pages, to puzzles, to the traditional dreidel game, there are many ways to celebrate Hanukkah, while honoring the ancient traditions of the holiday.

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.

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Halloween is a great time to have some fun combining a learning activity — shape identification — with one of the best-loved activities of the season – pumpkin carving!

Shape identification is an important skill for children to practice and learn, starting as early as nursery and pre-school.  When children recognize, identify, and become able to name different shapes, they are learning to tie words (such as “Square” or “Circle”) to mathematical concepts, forming a foundation for later learning in this area.

If you plan on integrating shape identification lessons into your evening of pumpkin carving, your best bet is to have more than one pumpkin on hand, because as with all creative play

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-related activities, you want to let your kids direct the activity themselves.  This will likely result in lots of fun and creative ideas, but also a great big mess, so it’s good to have more than one “subject” to carve on (with an adult’s help and safety knives, of course!).

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Starting out, let your kids draw on the pumpkin with a marker (you can always help them if they’re too young for drawing) in order to create whatever face or scene they want on the pumpkin.  Have them name the shapes they’re drawing as they go.  Then, go back and carve the shapes into the pumpkin, again having them give names to the shapes as the pumpkin carving progresses.

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Remember, this should be fun – don’t feel like the design on the pumpkin needs to look like anything in particular.  Pumpkin carving is an act of creativity for your kids, so let them do what they’d like with their pumpkin, even if it may not look exactly like something you’d generally want on your front porch!  In this case, shape identification skills are simply a helpful by-product of a wonderful opportunity to spend some quality time with your children.

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Of course, pumpkin carving isn’t the only way to help your children enhance their shape identification skills.  Try a 20-minute shape walk on one of these last beautiful days of fall, and help your kids get active while learning at the same time!

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“The Power to Play- From Trash to Treasure” is a traveling toy exhibit featuring toys handcrafted by children in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The Power to Play exhibit recognizes that play is an essential part of a healthy childhood and appreciates the creativity and resourcefulness of children in developing countries.

If you’re unable to visit the exhibition in person I highly recommend browsing the Childfund International* website and reading about the featured children. You’ll experience firsthand how each child made their toy and the pride and joy they felt through their creation.  Perhaps your child will be inspired to make their own toy!  Or maybe they will have fun learning to make a toy made by a child from across the world!

We would love to hear how your child creates toys. What ways have you noticed your child recycling materials to make a new toy?

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The “The Power to Play- From Trash to Treasure” is currently in Los Angeles, California at The Museum of Tolerance through December 31, 2009 and at the Breman Museum in Atlanta, Georgia October 18, 2009-January 10, 2010.

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*Childfund International is an organization inspire d by the potential in all children and seeks to support children not only to survive but to thrive.

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With Halloween “creep”-ing up fast, it’s a great time to let your kids’ imaginations run wild with their Halloween costumes.  Rather than purchasing store-bought costumes off the rack, why not spend some time with your kids brainstorming different ideas for homemade Halloween costumes?  You don’t have to be the Queen or King of Crafting to make something wonderful at home, and it’s a great way to involve your kids in the creation of their own Halloween costumes.  Kaboose.com has some excellent directions on how to make your own homemade Halloween costumes

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and Funny Food costumes.

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Once you have the costume dilemma under control, and you’ve successfully navigated yet another Halloween night, you may find yourself wondering what to do with the costumes you’ve made.  Well, don’t forget to repurpose those costumes by putting them away in your dress-up box!  Kids love costumes no matter what the reason or the season, so recycling old costumes for later creative play is a great way to make sure all of your hard work doesn’t go to waste.  Although the general guidelines for creative play don’t generally endorse the use of full costumes for creative playtime, you’ll be amazed at how pieces and parts of what you’ve made for Halloween finds new life in your kids’ imagination later on.  A pirate sword could become a walking stick, or a set of angel wings the perfect way to lift a butterfly off the ground.  The beauty of creative play is that truly, anything is possible!

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One of the primary benefits of creative play is the development of specific important skills in children.  However, the introduction of so many narrowly-focused toys and games since the 1950s has actually shown to impede the growth of children’s cognitive abilities, most specifically in an area called executive function.  This is truly one of the most important skill sets children can acquire during their formative years. голова болит секс голова болит секс

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are much like other cognitive skills in that they must be learned. These skills include planning, cognitive flexibility, abstract thinking, and self regulation. However, the way executive functions develop is a bit more complex than with other learned abilities. Research is increasingly showing the way kids play now, versus how they played earlier in the century (directed play versus creative play), could very well be the leading cause of the overall decrease in executive functioning in children.

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Because poor executive function is associated with negative outcomes such as high drop-out rates, drug use, and crime, getting back to a style of play that encourages the development of these “higher skills” is extremely important for putting kids on the right track early in life.  One of the best ways to do this is through the introduction of creative play early and often.

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Although play had been relegated to the margins of childhood development training during the last part of the century in large part to the emphasis on standardized testing, a push from researchers in the area of creative play has put it back in the spotlight as an invaluable tool, both in the classroom, and at home.  As these researchers continue to push forward, creative play will likely be even more widely accepted as a natural way to teach kids the skills they need in order to succeed both now, and later in life.

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