outside the (toy) box

(scroll to the bottom for specific ideas) 

The best news I have read in years is that the best thing we can do for young children is to let them play!  For those of you who, like myself, do not have training in early childhood education, you may be surprised to learn that play is not only fun, it is the key to success in school once children enter the classroom.  The bad news is that much that we do as well intentioned parents gets in the way of kids’ play.  Showing educational videos, enrolling our children in adult organized activities (e.g., gymnastics, soccer, dance classes), promoting early computer proficiency, even buying them (certain) toys can interfere with what kids most need — creative, exploratory, tactile play.  But don’t fret — supporting kids play is easy, it’s inexpensive and it’s incredibly fun.  It’s playing imaginary games, building things, using playgrounds, exploring nature, creating food concoctions, getting dirty, and making art and music — how can you go wrong?! 

Here a couple great resources to get us all started thinking about play in a new way:

Alliance on Childhood has a nice 2 page handout on the Benefits of Play, with many resources listed:

http://www.allianceforchildhood.org/projects/play/pdf_files/play_fact_sheet.pdf

There is also an International Play Association!  Check out their website, which has some good information:

http://www.ipausa.org/

 There is also a new book (2006) by child psychologist David Elkind (author of The Hurried Child), entitled, The Power of Play: How Spontaneous, Imaginative Activities Lead to Happier, Healthier Children

I haven’t had a chance to read all of it, but I love the sections I have had a chance to explore. I hope to read the remainder soon. Here’s the blurb from amazon:

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In this fascinating look at the importance of letting kids be kids, Elkind argues that “Play is being silenced.” According to Elkind, a child psychologist and author of All Grown Up and No Place to Go, important, unstructured play is too often replaced in modern times by organized activities, academics or passive leisure activities such as watching television and playing video games. Elkind explains how even toys have changed: “toys once served to socialize children into social roles, vocations, and academic tool skills. Today, they are more likely to encourage brand loyalties, fashion consciousness, and group think.” Elkind acknowledges that technology has its place in the classroom, but debunks computer programs marketed toward babies and preschoolers whose young brains are not yet able to fully comprehend two-dimensional representations. “Parent peer pressure” is often to blame, causing parents to engage in “hyperparenting, overprotection, and overprogramming.” Media-spread fears about everything from kidnapping and molestation to school shootings and SIDS can cause parents to forget that “children can play safely without adult organization; they have done so as long as people have been on earth.” With clarity and insight, Elkind calls for society to bring back long recesses, encourage imagination and let children develop their minds at a natural pace.

In the coming weeks, I will compile creative ideas we can all try to help spark play!  Here is a start, but check back every so often for additions. In the meantime — send YOURS!

I D E A S   F O R   P L A Y! 

Unconventional Paint Play

Suggested Ages: 3-12

Time Needed: 15 minute set up, 45 minutes of, 30 minutes clean up

Misc: Great for groups of kids and works with multi-age groups

You can surprise your child/children by changing the tools used for painting and the place where the painting transpires.  Tape down plenty of newspaper on a patio or basement floor to cover a large area (or use drop cloths, if you have leftovers from home improvement).  Put out several colors of paint in large flat containers — maybe paper plates or painting trays from home improvement (can you tell we do a lot of this?).  Offer unusual items to paint ON — old jeans? old oxford shirts? tote bags? plain white cheapie sneakers? big pieces of cardboard? an old door?  an old window?  a garage sale chair or stool? Whatever you can think of! OR offer big inviting pieces of posterboard or paper and unusual items to paint WITH — old toy cars can be rolled trough paint to leave neat trails (thanks AB), sliced fruits and potatoes, sponges cut into shapes, crumpled up pieces of news paper or aluminum foil, old toothbrushes, you name it. And, of course, if you are feeling adventurous, try both.  Great fun, especially if you can let go and allow the mess to happen.  Hints: put them in old clothes that you don’t care about, make sure the camera is handy.

The Mystery Space

Suggested Ages: 2-8

Time Needed: 20 minutes each week

Misc: You can have a mystery space for each child or one space for the kids to play together

Choose a space in the house that can be devoted to playthings.  The space doesn’t need to be very big - even 4 feet by 4 feet will work.  If you have an odd nook in the house - a bay window or a pantry or an interesting corner, even better, but this is much more fun if the space is NOT in the playroom or the child’s bedroom.  Every week place a new surprise creativity booster in that space.  My daughter used to love coming home from preschool on Mondays to see what would be there.  You can simply put out a toy the child hasn’t played with in a long time, or you can create a scenario that you think will spark some imagination.  Combining toys that aren’t usually use together can generate new excitement. Once I brought down lots of wooden blocks and all the finger puppets (a new combo for our house), another time I brought down the kid sized table and chairs from the playroom and set the table like a restaurant - with a table cloth, dishes, take out menus, salt and pepper shakers and a little vase with a flower in it.  I set up some of her stuffed animals in the chairs and laid her pretend food and dishes etc. off to the side with a notepad and pen (presuming she might like to play waitress).  Another time I just brought down a doll house with all the accessories. that had been away a while.  A costume box here is great.  A kid’s desk combined with an easel can be set up to make a school.  A train table that goes unused might generate new interest here.  You could also build a fort here and put books and a flashlight inside.  Set up the same kid table with a started jigsaw puzzle on top.  There is no end to what you can do, but when you run out of ideas, you can start over.  If its been 10 weeks - it’s new again!  You’ll be surprised how just spotlighting something they walk by every day can pique their interest.  Hint: The key is to make sure that you change the space frequently so that it remains exciting.  And, though you do have to take the 20 minutes or so to set it up, you get the time back, as kids often disappear in the space.

Cardboard Community

Suggested Ages: 5-12

Time Needed: This is an ongoing project that you can work on an hour or two 2-3 times until it’s ready

Misc: A great creative project for a parent and a child to work on together or for two older children

The idea here is to construct you own community — out of materials in your house.  You’ll need a large piece of cardboard or or plywood for a base, plenty of recycle items (milk cartons, egg cartons, boxes from oatmeal, aluminum cans), paint, cardboard, tape, and glue/glue gun.  Then, you and your child can talk about what kind of things you think belong in your community — a school, maybe a library, a church, a play ground, houses, etc.  And then, go crazy.  When you cover an old box from instant oatmeal with construction paper — it can become a skyscraper.  You can make streets, cars, even trees, and traffic signs if you feel so inclined.  Aluminum foil makes great windows!

Bubble Soup Test Kitchen

Suggested Ages: 1-4

Time Needed: 10 minutes to set up, 30 -45 minutes to play, 15 minutes clean up

Misc: Super for summer or a warm spring/fall day…

Gather whatever tub like things you have that you can use outside — we use a large 3 foot diameter galvanized bucket, regular beach buckets, and the baby bathtub, but a kiddie pool would be a great addition too — and fill them with water and dishsoap bubbles.  Then take out all kinds of kitchen things — tupperware, spatulas, a couple pots and pans, plastic cups, ladles, a wisk… and let the fun begin.   Kids love just moving the water from point a to point b, adding grass and sticks to the mix, and “cooking.”  If it’s a warm day, by all means, go for the swim suit, if you have a big enough container, they will certainly make themselves part of the stew.  My mother used to do a modified version of this up at the kitchen sink and let my dd make “bubble soup”  on a step stool.  She just loved it. 

The Nature Basket

Suggested Ages: 2-8

Time Needed: flexible

Misc: The simplest thing imaginable to inspire exploration and a connection with nature

When my dd was a toddler she loved nature — she would stop and look at everything and eventually began collecting pine cones and rocks, etc. from our walks around the block.  One day, I went into the basement and found a handled basket that was good sized, but very light and easy for her to carry, and I told her it was her “nature basket” for our walks.  I had no idea how something so small could be such a big deal, but it altered her view of our little walks around the block, because she was on a mission to find interesting “nature things.”  She would collect them and put them in her basket and bring her bounty home.  It made her very excited to go on walks, and prompted us to take her on more trail like hikes (we’re urban dwellers afterall — we realized if the city block was exciting, a forest would blow her mind, it did.  Many of my friends will remember world’s slowest hike in NH - she stopped nearly every step and had to be carried part way to keep the rest of the group from losing their minds).  Anyway, the basket connected her to nature in an interesting way.  We eventually decorated it with nature-y things from a craft store, and made it “special.”  And now that she’s four, we also have added a magnifying glass that she received as a gift to the outings so that she can examine things. 

The Kidstream Media

Suggested Ages: 7-12

Time Needed: flexible

Misc: You need to have a camcorder to do this one, or at least one you can borrow

Whether your kids are camera shy or irrepressible hams, all can enjoy this project.  It’s nice for media literacy too.  You can frame this in a million ways, but the basic idea is to give the kids the camera and the licence to create. That thing isn’t just for recording birthday parties and dance recitals!  Sit down and take a few minutes to teach the child about how to use the camera before you begin, if they don’t already know how to use it.  Then give them a blank tape (you don’t want them to accidentally tape over little Shelly’s kindergarten graduation) and possibly an idea.  Some kids may just sprint out of the room ecstatic at the idea of making the video, others may want some hints.  A few ideas: Why don’t you make a video that shows far-away-relative-X what a day in your life is like?  Or, why don’t you go around and interview your friends/family about their favorite Christmas/Hanukkah/Thanksgiving traditions and memories (or any other topic — What they would do with a million dollars? If they could travel anywhere - where would they go?  Most embarrassing moment?  Favorite things about Grandma who is having her 65th birthday (and who will adore this gift!)?  Best advice anyone ever gave them?)?  If you are looking to do some media literacy, see if they want to make some advertisement parodies - how would someone try to sell kids used gum?  If you want it to be educational, ask them to use the newspaper to create their own newscast!  Whatever strikes your fancy.  This is a project one child can do or a large group of kids can do. Shy kids can direct.  And, needless to say, the product of this play will likely become a family treasure.

Thespians

Suggested Ages: 6-12

Time Needed: a long stretch and many play sessions - a week or more with 1-3 hours a day for the project.

Misc: This is something you can do with your kids or older kids can do on their own.

The idea here is to have the kid(s) create and put on their own performance.  I did this once with a then-six year old, my little sister (I was in my 20s — she’s muuuch younger, but I digress…) and we had a ball.  I hung up an old shower curtain in a double width doorway and we ran from there.  We roped in dh and 2 great adult friends and did a variety show: a dance number (she choreographed it), some silly tongue twisters, a monologue, some stand up comedy, and perhaps most memorable, a scene from Romeo and Juliet where dh played Romeo and my Jack Russell Terrier was Juliet.  We dressed him up, put his bed up high (the balcony, get it?), and I read his lines from behind the curtain — doggie even kissed dh on cue.  A riot.  But, what is great about this idea is all the elements you can (or can not) choose to add.  Obviously there is preparing the script/material and learning your parts, but we also did choreography, made costumes, chose/made props, made a program, and even made tickets (the seats were “couch A” and “couch B” since we only had 2 audience members - my parents) and had ushers.  We had music for some parts and even intermission.  You can do none or all of these things and to any level of seriousness (my husband’s Romeo costume was a cheesy handlebar moustache drawn on with eyeliner and a dramatic red scarf, but we made really nice programs with great fonts and paper we handpicked at an art supply store).  And, as with the idea above, the video we made of the performance is something I can’t get enough of and this was a decade ago!  You can make it educational in the traditional sense by having them pick/perform a scene from a classic play or to create a performance of a particular book or to ask them to do something on historical events or people (If Abe Lincoln, Rosa Parks, and Hillary Clinton went camping together - how might that play out?).  No end to the fun.