Dr. Toy’s Tips for More Valuable Playtime

by Stevanne Auerbach, Dr. Toy

Dr. Toy offers these suggestions for getting even more value from play. These guidelines are good anytime of the year to enrich your child’s experiences with toys and games and other products and will help you to make the time even more balanced and fun for your child:

1. Locate a good variety of challenging toys games puzzles and other products appropriate for age and interests.

2. Arrange toys and playthings to be easily accessible and easy to store away.

3. Create a variety of interesting and varied activities for your child to be engaged in so they are not bored or sit in front of TV.

4. Be sure to create a good mix of indoor and outdoor play.

5. Children should play with age appropriate products and have your supervision so they do not have accidents.

6. Encourage children to learn how to make something useful like a craft project, or to learn to assemble a puzzle, something to enjoy at home or in transit.

7. Encourage and express recognition and accomplishment. Children thrive when their talents are recognized and nurtured.

8. Gather an assortment of creative projects and various materials in a storage box along with easy to follow directions. Arrange an assortment of paper, glue, safety scissors, and magazines to easily cut pictures for collage and scrapbooks in an accessible box. Another box can be dress up clothes. Add a table and chairs and a teddy bear for a fun tea party.

9. Take time to do creative and fun projects with your child and spend the time focused with your child and not watching TV or talking on the cell phone. Time together is precious so make the most of it.

10. Create projects that result in planting, making or learning things have extra long lasting value.

11. Take time to read aloud each day with your child and add a hand or finger puppet to enrich the experience and make it even more fun.

12. Read the directions carefully before you play a game so everyone knows the rules.

Let’s play!

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 1st, 2011 at 10:17 pm. It is filed under Blog, Dr. Toy's Rx. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.