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Gift giving
Encourage your children to make age appropriate gifts. My favourite gifts, when I was teaching were the gifts I knew my students had thought about and made. It was exactly that they had taken the time and I could see the effort that touched me. I loved the imperfections and the spelling mistakes it matched them.
Choosing to give gifts with play in mind; open ended and evergreen gifts of craft boxes; books, imaginary play items.
Little kids can trace a letter or write a letters of their name.
Add a few thumbprint pictures ( with your help). Its easy to miss being grateful and pausing to acknowledge gifts. It is an easy thing to do at this time of year.
Making and giving gifts
Try a votive candle holder or use a baby food jar and make up a hot chocolate/coffee surprise with a candy cane stirrer.
Since we have so many toys already talk to the toy givers now while there’s time.
Share and discuss toy alternatives for your children.
Start a conversation about sponsoring a child; gifting a goat or a basketball.
Gift cards in small denominations for ice cream or dessert for family nights;
Family passes to local museums, parks, or zoos with family year round passes or Physical activities like swimming, dance, Mommy and Me, Kindermusic, Playing with clay classes. Even a partial payment goes a long way.
Buy the first few books in a book series, or a favourite author, and give a gift card to buy the next one.
What are you doing to scale back this holiday time? What’s on your alternative gift list than a physical toy?
Alternative Play Activities holiday gift guide 2009
With all the best plans there will be an influx of new toys and games if you have children every year around the holidays and around their birthdays.
To avoid being overrun by toys start sorting though your toys now and think about donating. It’s a great skill to develop giving.
This is the second year we have participated in Operation Christmas Child. The kids have fun packing their box and are excited to know that a little boy will receive the items they picked. We sponsor a World Vision child too and during the next week they’ll be drawing pictures to add to the Christmas gift and sending to her.
What gifts do you give away? Who do you support?
Alternative Play Activities holiday gift guide 2009
…………This is part 2. For the first alternative Play Activities Holiday Gift Guide #1 :Activity & time
There are so many more things to do in the day now more than ever. There are more toys and heavier marketing. The quality of toys are truly amazing. As a result there are so many more chances to buy toys and give kids things to do that ENTERTAIN them rather than engage them.
We all love a little entertainment and frankly so does your child but what their brains, bodies and muscles really crave is engagement.
From when they are lying on your lap and you are talking in that high pitched ‘I love you’ speak. You see their arms and legs moving about. They are engaging and trying to communicate. Their faces lights up when you appear. That same baby notices that you’ve moved the mobile from the left of the crib because it’s gone now as they lay there. The toddler pinches the bottle tops between fingers and tries to pick it up, again and again or the preschooler bites his lip while managing the scissors for the cut.These experiences are what truly impact your child’s learning. When they are engaging. The motivation is coming from them.
Another way of looking at it is Active vs passive learning. Kids need more active learning than the passive learning that most of them get. By active I don’t mean they have to be scheduled for classes but active that they are participating, using their bodies. Classes aren’t bad over scheduling our kids is the problem.
There are lots of engaging activities that calm and can be a very effective babysitter. Encouraging creativity and concentration without requiring them to be passive. Play like, playdough and clay, sticker books and puzzles, Magna Doodles, lacing and water play.
Here at Play Activities I talk about the natural and everyday play activities you can do together with your child. I offer a free weekly email of activities that take little or no money plus the bonus is most of the items used we find in our homes already. Check out the right sidebar.
Time
Make it priority for you to evaluate your play with your kids. In January I offered a play evaluation to help you look at what type of play and how much of benefit the play you are currently doing. If you didn’t I would suggest you pop back and look carefully at what changes you can make with your playtime.
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