Learning through play
Bring learning into your child's games in a relaxed way. Ask her to count her toy figures or dolls as she plays with them and maybe give them simple names she can spell out with you.
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There's no time in your young child's life when play does not contribute to her development. Quite often your child's needs and desires can be fulfilled in play when they cannot satisfactorily be met in any other way. For instance, a child who's unable to be a leader in real life may gain great satisfaction from being the leader of her collection of play people or bossing her stuffed animals around.
For most children, play involves experimentation. Through trial and error, your children can discover that creating something new, something that they haven't met or done before, can be very satisfying. Once they have fulfilled their creative interests in play, they can then transfer them to the real world as they grow and mature.
At home and in school children learn what the generally accepted roles of the different sexes are. Knowing what they are, accepting them and taking up the relevant role are different things. Soon after joining a playgroup your child learns that she must play that role if she wants to become an accepted member of the group. It may be in this group that your child meets the most rigid enforcement of moral standards that she'll ever experience. There is nothing like a group of children at play for encouraging the development of desirable personality traits. By contact with friends, your child will be given lessons every day in how to be generous, truthful and co-operative, how to be a good sport and pleasant to be with. These lessons are especially forceful, because your child is constantly seeking the approval of friends and peers, and the playgroup in general.
Learning about colours
Always mention the colour of something that you are using or looking for. For instance, “I'm looking for the green packet”, “Where's that red tin gone?”, “Oh, I've found the jar with the blue label” or “I'm going to use this yellow pencil”. Always describe the colour of your child's clothes: “That's a pretty pink dress”. “What a nice red jumper”. Always point out the colour of flowers, in your garden, your windowbox or in the park, and show your child the different colours that animals, and birds especially, can have. Show your child how colours are made, “Look, if we mix a little bit of red with white we get pink; yellow mixed with blue makes green”. Teach her the colours of the rainbow; rainbows are magical to children.
Learning about numbers
Always take the chance to count while you are doing routine things. For instance, count one, two and three as you do up the buttons on your child's dungarees or jacket, or when you're washing her hands or feet. Help with number learning by counting things as you shop. Ask your child to fetch you two oranges or three carrots.
Count bottles and jars and arrange them into groups such as two bottles, three cans and four packets. Draw numbers on small sheets of paper and help your child to number little groups of her toys, for instance, three balls, five blocks, seven farmyard animals. When you go for walks count the number of houses or gates, trees in a garden or ducks in a pond.
Learning about letters
Take every opportunity to help your toddler become familiar with letters. Teach your child the alphabet song so that remembering it is all the easier. Serve alphabet soup or alphabet spaghetti and help your child to spell out her name with the letters. Alternatively, buy your child some magnetic letters that she can play with on the refrigerator door. Children love moving the words around.
My children liked us to spell out words by drawing the letters in the palms of their hands while their eyes were closed, and they tried to recognize the letters and build up the word. Play word games when you read a story. As you read a sentence, leave out a word and get your child to say what it is. “The cat was sitting warming itself by the … ”. As you point to the fire in the picture your child can shout out “fire”.
New Babycare
Copyright © 2009 Dorling Kindersley
Text copyright © 2009 Miriam Stoppard
Posted 03.11.2010
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