Tag: playing to learn

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Playing Preschool Round ✌🏽

A few years ago I started Busy Toddler’s Playing Preschool curriculum with my oldest. She was about three years old at the time and I wrote my review on the curriculum here. 

And now I’m back in the same position with my second child, utilizing our Playing Preschool guide once again! We trekked down to our storage room in the basement and pulled out the tape, dot stickers, pipe cleaners, and paint. We even dedicated a little corner in our home and call it the preschool room! 

Our Melissa and Doug calendar is set up on the wall and we start off our preschool day with poems and songs just like we did in the past. 

This is my second time around with the Playing Preschool curriculum and I am impressed all over again! It truly is learning through playing. As Susie from Busy Toddler promises, there are no worksheets and nothing complicated. It’s just everyday supplies gathered and utilized to help little minds grow and learn. A few things I’ve learned the second time around: 

  • I’ve taken the pressure off of myself to accomplish every single activity outlined for the day. Some days we get through it all, other days I see that learning isn’t happening and we need to take a break for the day. 
  • The repetition of one unit for two weeks can feel really… redundant for adults. After the 7th day of the apple theme, I didn’t want to look at or talk about apples ever again! But the repetition for those preschool-aged minds truly is crucial for learning. 
  • One of my cons on my last review was the hard time I had finding books to use because the pandemic shut down a lot of resources for finding what I needed. However, this time around with libraries open, it’s been much easier. After going through each of these units a second time, I’m more aware of what the needs are with the books used and can change and adapt the books as needed. 
  • The most important part of the entire Playing Preschool curriculum is to have fun. If you’re not having fun, you’re doing it wrong! 

Have you purchased Playing Preschool? What are your thoughts on the curriculum? 

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A List Of Our Favorite Toys

Toys are an important part of childhood. They may create clutter and stress in our lives as parents and teachers, but the truth is, they can be essential to our kid’s childhood. They don’t have to be noisy and there doesn’t have to be a lot of them, as long as they are intentional. Here are our favorite toys we keep at our house. In fact, the less noisy and flashy they are, the better development wise. 

Magnet tiles- Learning more about magnets AND the ability to build various structures. They are also an easy add-to collection. Where we can continue to purchase more as gifts to my kids, but our abundance of toys doesn’t feel overrun. 

Wooden blocks- Again, building! Imagination! And sustainable materials. 

Kitchen set with food and dishes- More pretend play has happened in our play kitchen (both outdoor and indoor) than anywhere else in our house. 

Pop open tent- I’m a big fan of these because they fold flat for easy storage behind or under the couch. Our next purchase will be a pop up tunnel. 

Baby dolls- Both my son and daughter love playing pretend with our collection of baby dolls. None of them are very fancy and we’ve thrifted the majority of them. 

Outdoor kitchen with real pots and pans- I spent a weekend thrifting old pots, pans, silverware, and other kitchen dishes that we’ve put into our little playhouse in the backyard. These combined with some dirt and water seem to be our most popular toy! 

The toys you choose to have in your home for your kids don’t have to be extravagant and don’t have to be flashy. In fact, the less batteries required, the better! The more work your child has to do in order to play with the toy, the more learning and growing that is happening. 

What are some of the favorite toys in your house? 

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Look Past The Mess And See The Learning: Messy Play For Kids

Let’s have some real talk for a minute. 

Kids are messy. And that can be incredibly stressful. 

Messes mean things are out of control and someone has to clean it up (and it’s probably going to be YOU.)

Messy activities can be unpredictable and scary. 

But there’s a method to the madness when kids are building endless forts, dumping out all of the legos, and spreading paint in every corner. 

If you look past the mess, that’s where the learning lies. 

Take a second to look at the blocks scattered to every corner to notice the tiny houses built high, and the toy cars driving between them. Realize that this means they are practicing and learning about their own sense of community, using their fine motor skills AND gross motor skills as they move blocks and cars while also crawling around from home to home. 

When the paint is dripping from the paper take a second to remember that your child just learned important spatial awareness skills, got in some practice holding a paintbrush (which can later translate into holding a pencil), took in information on colors and the reaction they’ll get when colors are mixed, and more. 

In all of the messy play, there is learning buried deep under it, essential learning they will need for the rest of their life. 

Sometimes the learning includes boundaries, such as keeping the blocks in a certain room and not throwing them. Sometimes the learning means how to be responsible with the paint and not get it all over the walls and doors. Read more about setting up kids for success here. 

And part of messy play is the aspect of learning to be clean. Kids cannot learn the responsibility of being clean until they are given the chance to be messy. Kids are smart! When you have an ice bin full of paints and paintbrushes and the activity comes to a close, they are going to learn that the paint tray needs to be put in the sink and rinsed out. That their paintbrushes need to be washed, and the ice needs to be properly disposed of, with the bin wiped clean, before any more play can happen. 

If clean up also includes changing their clothes because they got them wet or covered in paint, that adds time. If they also need to wipe up the floor because they spilled so much, that adds time. 

They want to be able to go from painting an ice bin to playing on the slide as fast as possible, to they will learn how to be responsible playing with messy activities. And they will learn how to clean up and handle a mess when it inevitably happens. It takes time and practice, but it comes eventually.

You’ll see this translate to real-life applicable skills when your child spills their water and instinctively grabs a rag to clean up the mess, without you asking! Because they know what it means to clean up after themselves, and they learned how they learn best- through play! 

Did you catch how many times I mentioned the words “mess” and “learn” in this article? About the same amount of times! Because those two go hand in hand! Let the kids be messy, they are learning.