Christmas Gifts That Promote Family Fun + Brain Development
Much focus is placed on giving during the Christmas season. As you plan gifts for the children in your life, consider options that support both family fun and brain development. While there are plenty of formal toys that help achieve these goals, gifts don’t need to be extravagant or expensive. Here are a few ideas to consider.
Children of all ages benefit from block play. Our youngest learners think about stacking and knocking things over. As they develop, they start to pay attention to patterns of color, size, and shape, which leads into building with design and purpose.
“The engineering play framework describes how children’s block building parallels the way adult engineers think and work to foster innovation, exchange different viewpoints, and compare alternative solutions to solve problems… engineering in early childhood includes essential components such as using language and actions during constructive play to set goals, brainstorm, test, and evaluate ideas (National Association for the Education of Young Children).”
If the block play involves other other children or adults, it also supports using language to talk aloud about those ideas and develop cooperative relationships as you work together. All of this play leads to early mathematical thinking and understanding the importance of sequences. And because it includes an element of emotion (joy, feeling proud), it is more likely to move to long-term memory.
Are your children sometimes more excited about the box gifts come in than what is inside? Traditional wooden blocks are great, but there are many alternatives (shoe boxes, cereal boxes, Amazon boxes, milk cartons, etc.) that promote the same skills with a different approach to problem-solving.
Adding “props” to block play can fuel imagination and allow children to see that the same items can be used for many purposes and projects. Props can be purchased items such as cars and dolls, or everyday items such as paper towel tubes and pictures cut from magazines, Christmas cards, or store ads. Just putting together a tub of random items sparks the imagination and engineering mind of children, too. In the early childhood world we call these “provocations”—random items put together to provoke children to use them in new and inventive ways!
As children get older, with set rules and a lot of parent supervision, together you can take broken items apart to discover “parts” and how they worked together to make a “whole.”
I pray that these gift ideas bring joy to your home this Christmas as you play and learn together!
Mrs. Brenda Bernard
Early Childhood Director & Elementary Principal, SFLS
Source:
https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/yc/may2020/learning-engineering-through-block-play
About Sioux Falls Lutheran School
At Sioux Falls Lutheran School, our mission is to develop capable, Christian servant-leaders in a complex world who are World Ready and Faith Secure. We are passionate about giving our students the tools they need to be successful academically, socially, emotionally, and spiritually. We strive to accomplish this goal by maintaining high academic standards, employing excellent teachers, and upholding a Christian worldview drawn from Scripture. Ultimately, we are committed to partnering with parents and the church to raise lifelong learners who use their gifts and the fruits of the Spirit, in faith, to touch a troubled world with God’s grace.