Free Play: 5 Healthy Benefits for your Toddler

Today’s toddler is typically busy with structured activities and strict schedules. Unfortunately, this method of play and learning only gets worse the older they get. Experts believe that by adding free play to your child’s life, you can build strong parental bonds and promote a developmentally sound and happy child.

 

 

1. Creativity and Imagination

Children are under such tight time constraints due to their parents work and personal schedules that it can make them into stressed individuals. Parents also utilize electronics and other forms of structured academics to raise their child’s IQs. What many don’t know is that in order for your child to progress both socially and emotionally, you need to incorporate free play into their daily lives.

 

Free play can allow a child to use their imagination with items you have around your home. A block can transform into a car or boat. Your child can even take simple kitchen utensils such as pots and spoons and turn them into a musical forum.

 

 

2. Toys and Objects

Toys and objects that support free play can be as simple as bean bag toss, blocks, balls, blankets, pop tops or dancing to music played on the radio. You can even purchase age appropriate toddler toys that are inexpensive but will encourage them to play individually or with others. These simplistic toys can bring the element of entertainment, fun and surprise into their day. This unstructured play should be their idea, and you can do your best to quietly supervise from the sidelines.

 

 

3. Games and Play Dates

Children in a structured setting typically learn to play on their own. However, you can provide your toddler with a social setting by arranging play dates with children similar in age. Free play can build social skills such as problem-solving and learning to share. You can boost your child’s play by adding games and fort building activities. As your child gets older, they’ll be able to schedule their own play time such as soccer games without a coach or adult supervision.

 

 

4. Outdoor Recreation

Going to the park with your toddler and allowing them to play randomly with the swings, slide, monkey bars and other obstacles is another form of free play that is beneficial to your child. Because you’re not teaching them what they need to do and how to do it, giving them the freedom to play with their friends without instruction can be fun.

 

While it’s still important to set part of their day for academic activities that encourage their growth and development, making time for outdoor recreational activities such as hitting the baseball around outside, swimming in a pool, running after lightning bugs and riding their bike can be just as important.

 

 

5. Play with Your Child

Playing with your child can help you bond and develop a strong and trusting relationship as a parent and child. Instead of offering suggestions on games and activities, you can incorporate free play into your afternoon of fun by allowing them to lead. If they want to pretend to play chef or teacher, you can go along with the game of pretend.

 

A hurried life for your toddler can be harmful to their health and cause stress, anxiety and depression. Free play allows your child to utilize their imagination and improve on skills that are useful to their everyday lives. Involving yourself in their daily free play will help you to maintain and enrich that special bond already shared.

 

 

As a mother of 4, Lisa Coleman understands and shares the importance of encouraging free play in our children’s lives early on for many beneficial reasons. She recently viewed online, some toddler toys at http://www.kidsii.com/c-142-toddler-toys.aspx that are sure to entertain and help a toddler enjoy their free play time.

 

 

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/schofields/495061203/

Categories: Child, child bonding, Child Wellness, free play, healthy child, incorporate free, nbsp, nbsp nbsp, Play, play dates, play time, toddler toys, toddlers

Effects of Listening to Stimulating Music Early in Life

At four months in the womb, a baby can be soothed by the rhythmic sounds of her mother’s heartbeat, blood flow and digestive organs. By seven months, (s)he can hear everything that her mother does. Some parents chose to sing their unborn child songs in the womb, and there is even a set a speakers available that look like large headphones that fit over the belly to expose the unborn child to music. Some people may raise their eyebrows at the practice of singing to unborn children, or exposing them to classical music before they even see sunlight, but many parents find that the very same songs heard in the womb will sooth the newborns when they are fussy. There is certainly no denying the power of music!

Toddlers love to sing and there are countless YouTube videos made by parents who were shocked to discover their small child who barely talks, is singing along to the radio word for word in the back seat. Nursery rhymes, lullabies, hymns or listening along in the car to popular radio, it is clear that children absorb the music they hear like a sponge and enjoy it.

 

Listening to a classical song one time will not make much of a difference any more than being accidentally exposed to inappropriate music will really harm a child once. Repetitiveness is key when attempting to gain benefits from enriching music for a child. Play upbeat music in the background during playtime to set a tone for the moment, play a relaxing refrain during nap-time, and if the same songs are used over and over a three positive things will happen.

 

First, your child will recognize the chords of the classical music that sets the tone and, after a while, the child may know exactly what a song from Mozart sounds like compared to Chopin or Bach. Second, the songs that set a tone will help your child understand what to expect. If you play a certain type of music at nap time, then when the music comes on they will begin to subconsciously calm down. The same is true of the upbeat tunes during playtime. The third and greatest benefit of repetitively exposing your child to music is the things you cannot be seen immediately; when a person listens to music, his or her brain tries to predict the coming chords. In many popular songs the chords and lyrics are easy to predict and rewarding for the brain, and therefor they are somewhat addictive. Classical music does have chords that are predictable by the brain, and can certainly have the same addictive qualities as popular music, but the payoff in the synapses of the brain is higher because the brain has to work a little harder to build the connections that enable the prediction of the coming chords. These connections are like muscles, they can be worked repetitively and help your child have more brain connections due to simply finding joy in complex music.

 

Choosing appropriate music for your toddler and encouraging play with sounds will help brain development in young children. Preschoolers and elementary school kids should be encouraged to practice self-expression, whether it is through singing or dancing. Having a toy chest full of different children’s musical instruments found at vendors like West Music and Making Friends will allow your child to use their imagination and perhaps forge the beginnings of a valuable new skill. In a day and age in which electronic handhelds and videogames run rampant through many households, your kids will benefit from fun activities that encourage socializing, creativity, dexterity and more.

 

** This article has been contributed to www.yourwellness.com by Amanda Harris.

Categories: Brain, Child, chords, classical music, coming chords, music, nap time, songs, Stimulating, toddlers, unborn child