| Make it (FAKE IT) fun! | As you play with toys or games, think to yourself "How can I make this as fun as possible for my child?". Being silly can make even the most boring exercise seem entertaining. If you're not actually enjoying yourself, just fake it. The goal is to make it look like you are having fun. After all, if learning isn't fun, who would want to do it all day long? Certainly not a child!
This approach has two major benefits: (1) Your child will be more willing to interact with you and to engage in play (work) mini sessions interspersed throughout the day, and (2) by pretending that you are having fun, somewhere along the line, these activities can actually become enjoyable. Ultimately, this can add happy moments to your day and help restore the joy of being a parent/teacher.
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Is This Spoiling? | Our family owns lots of toys and games. In fact, we not only have versions of most modern toys, but I also purchased toys from the 1970's on Ebay! Although this may look like spoiling to some, there is reason behind the "madness".
(1) Purpose: Most of our toys are educational, although this may not be apparent to someone who is not in the mindset of teaching through play. For example, a plastic ice cream set can be used to develop pretend play, identify colors ("Can I have a brown scoop?"), count ("Can I have two scoops?"), and increase vocabulary (spoon, bowl, ice cream, eat, cow, etc.). The remaining toys we have are reinforcers that are used to reward good behavior or completion of a less desirable activity.
(2) Duplicates: We own copies of similar toys to help our daughter generalize her play skills. Some people may think it's excessive to have a Little People toy farm and a Learning Resources toy farm. However, their children instinctively know that a cow can be black or brown and have spots or be plain. Our daughter had to play with all of these examples of toy cows for this concept to be understood and generalized. The same goes for games. We may have Candyland original and Candyland Dora - and playing both of them helped her to generalize her ability to play the Candyland game and board games in general.
(3) Parts not the Whole: Sometimes, I purchase games or toys for the parts (rather than the whole) and use them for purposes other than their intended use. For example, I may buy the game Scrabble because it comes with wooden letter squares. These are portable, more fun than flashcards, and can be used to help identify letters and make words. I could use them to work on pretend play and letter identification by pretending cows and cats like to eat the letter "c" and having my daughter find their "food" and feed it to them.
To help you identify some of these alternative uses, I have posted informational text boxes with some product descriptions on this website.
(4) Engagement: Most of our kids need repetition to learn. However, it is difficult to keep them engaged in the same activity over and over. By using a slightly different version of a toy or making a small change to a game (such as substituting a Spongebob figurine for the pawn that comes with it), the same activity can seem new and exciting. |
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