I love reading articles from Childcare Exchange and the May/June 2011 issue had an article by Deb Curtis (one of my favorite article writers) entitled "Seeing children do more with less". It was an article that spoke about children playing with toys and the Pikler Institute in Budapest, Hungary view on how children play. In America, parents spend thousands of dollars each year on children's toys (especially at Christmas) but the Pickler Institute has documented 75 way that babies use their hands for play. American parents and early childhood programs think that children have to have toys in their hands to play with or educational toys to manipulate but in the article, Deb Curtis gives two scenerios of children playing with boxes - a fourteen-month-old and a five-year old found more enjoyment out of boxes than a $20 toy.
This brought to my mind when my son was three and at Christmas I bought him a Hot Wheel race set with the loops and long roads. I set it up and he played with it for about 5 minutes and then took the race cars and went and played with them with his old race cars in an old Easter egg bucket. He enjoyed that old bucket better than the race car set. I tell toddler teachers that young children enjoy big boxes better than anything else in the room. This past week they got a box from the kitchen and made a car out of it and the children had the best time with it. It did not cost a lot of money to make them happy.
With the Pickler Institute research, they found that children learn by using their hands, a teacher just have to understand the importance of providing activities that children can manipulate on their own and usually it is the less instead of the more. I hope my colleagues will enjoy the article also.
Reference:
Curtis, D. (2011). Seeing children do more with less. Exchange, 33(3). pp84-87.
The Pickler Institute. www.pickler.org
I loved having big boxes in my classroom! Last month I was in charge of the family group night at work and we had a room full of boxes of every size. The preschool children loved the huge refridgerator box, and the parents of the older infants put them inside smaller boxes and drove them around the room. Boxes can be used as walking tools, dramatic play objects and art canvases!
ReplyDeleteBarbara,
ReplyDeleteI have met Deb Curtis numerous times and have take lots of workshops with her--I too enjoy her insight. It is amazing that giving children simple tools, rocks, boxes, sea shells and allowing them to unlock a wonderful world of play. Using such items can in fact teach them content; they learn how to count, they learn about science and they also learn social emotional skills by learning about themselves.