Ideas from Your Child At Play: Three to Five Years, Part One

I got this great book from the library based on someone's recommendation: Your Child At Play: Three to Five Years, by Marilyn Segal, Ph.D. I want to list some of the ideas that would work well for Xander so I have a better chance of actually doing them.

Section 1: Playing With Ideas

1. Watch movies or shows about faraway places. A show like Sesame Street may have segments on other cultures, or a documentary or nature show. (Our kids have really enjoyed the animal, plant, and music segments of Wonder Pets, Little Einsteins, Dora the Explorer, Go, Diego, Go!, and Sesame Street.)

2. When you see a plane flying overhead, talk about the direction it's heading and where it might be going. Show an aerial photo of where we live.

3. Go to a museum exhibit about China or another culture (maybe for Chinese New Year).

4. Packing for a trip: Together choose clothes according to the climate where you're going and the activities you'll be doing. You can even pack for an imaginary trip, like for a mountain-climbing expedition.

5. While he watches, draw a map from our front door to the bedroom. Walk along the path with him and let him find the lines on the paper that relate to the walk he is taking.

6. Go through family photo albums together and talk about trips we went on, things we did, and holidays we celebrated.

7. After a holiday is over, talk about the next one coming up and how it will be different. Preschool children may think that the next holiday will be similar; e.g., will wonder what costume he will wear at Christmas.

8. At the end of the day, talk to him about what he did. Help him remember details. Ask him to guess what is going to happen tomorrow.

9. Create a weekly calendar out of train shapes for each day of the week and glue magnets to the backs. Let him add a new car to the refrigerator every day until he has completed the week. (I may make a train shape to stick to the Spanish calendar I made as we talk about what day it is in Spanish.)

10. This is not a preschool idea, but I found it fascinating. The book says that a child who has just learned to walk will step on a stone but walk around a turtle.

11. If someone close to him dies, do not talk about it as being like going to sleep. That can make children afraid to go to sleep. Instead, emphasize that a dead person does not hurt in any way.

12. Talk about the similarities and differences we have with animals. What would it be like to be hatched out of an egg, to live in a nest until one day you started to fly? You could fly over fences, streets, rivers, wherever you wanted. You'd have to sleep in a tree and eat worms. You would have to make sure a cat didn't catch you and eat you for dinner.

(This goes up to p. 52.)

Note to self: Also re-read the Mister Rogers book on play that Mom gave me. He has similar suggestions.