Studio3Music Blog

Posts Tagged ‘pretend play’

Jan
18

I am a Superhero

Posted in Bits and Pieces, Child Development, Education

Superhero play is inevitable. We see it all the time. A child runs around with a cape around his shoulders and says “I am shooting fireballs!” Sometimes, to adults, it can seem scary. Children are loud and are often enacting rough play with things that kill or destroy. However, superhero play is a powerful tool for parents and teachers by opening up the dialogue to teach children about helping others.

Superhero play helps children move their bodies by jumping, running, and trying new gross motor skills like climbing across the monkey bars. It also helps children feel powerful and in control when they are in a world that usually makes them feel just the opposite. Children engage in superhero play to feel as powerful as adults.

Although typically with less rough-and-tumble play, girls are superheroes just as often as boys. They may be less physical than boys, but they require just as much attention from adults. Just the other day, a child made a mask and cape at school during a craft project. She was using her “loving powers” to help people feel better who were sad or hurt. Later, she went home and with her mom, made hearts to bring to school the next day. Then she handed them out to other children at school.

That same week a 4 year old boy used his super brain powers to help others solve problems they can’t figure out. He could give them parts of his “super brain stuff” to help them “do hard stuff they can’t do by themselves.”

Superhero play in the classroom

When children play as superheroes, they learn how to respond to the needs and wants of others. They have to be able to operate in a group setting where everyone has different ideas about the game. Who has what super powers? How do they work? Are there bad guys and good guys? What’s fair in this game? Teachers and parents can help children distinguish between things that these characters do that hurt versus things that help. It’s important to open up the conversation that addresses qualities that superheroes have which help and benefit others.

Children who may find it difficult to voice their opinions are often empowered when pretending to be a superhero. It’s so wonderful and attractive to a child to be something strong and powerful. This is when a child who is quiet most often in play all of a sudden is shouting loudly with a big smile. By taking on another persona, a child can practice being brave or responding to difficult or stressful situations. Here is an anecdote from last week that illustrates how a child used his superhero game to help a classmate:

Kaveh: I can move so fast!
Me: Wow, I could really use your help.
Kaveh: I can do anything
Me: Can you help me rescue someone? She is in trouble.
Kaveh: I’ll help you
(he and I race off to a girl who is crying on the other side of the room)

We then helped her feel better about missing her mom. It was a wonderful lesson in empathy. They both played together later in the day as well, which was the first time at school the two of them ever played together. Kids engaged in superhero play use their imagination and learn to work well with others.

Setting limits

Superhero play, like other kinds of play, can become emotionally or physically harmful. So as parents and teachers, it is our job to guide play when it no longer solves problems or helps others. Children don’t know their physical limits and sometimes that means that they hurt others. We want to show them how to start play and how to be conscientious of others needs in the game.

Establish rules from the start. For example, no pointing sticks or other props used as weapons directly at another person. These rules may need to be discussed several times. Listen to feedback. Kids can find creative ways to satisfy their interests while following directions and being safe.
Be specific about what aggressive behavior is. Is it touching another person’s body? Is it using certain harmful words?
Respond accordingly either by interrupting the play to stop aggressive behavior or talking about it afterward. The discussion can also address the story created, children who felt excluded and interesting twists and turns in the plot.
Make sure there is an appropriate amount of space for safe play.
Talk to the kids about real-life heroes, both male and female, and focus on their positive characteristics — for example, helpfulness, perseverance and diligence.
Use this play as an opportunity to build problem-solving skills. When there is an issue, resist resolving it for the children. Ask for their ideas.
Be positive. Acknowledge children’s new accomplishments and skills. Help them feel powerful.

-posted by Teacher Aaron, who if he could have a super power, it would be getting up in the morning without coffee.

Tags: language development, physical development, preschoolers, pretend play, teacher aaron

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Oct
25

There’s no place like home.

Posted in Bits and Pieces, Family, Our Time, parenting, Things to do

I recently did an Internet search for the words “+home +quote”. HOLY SHEETROCK BATMAN! I’m surprised my computer didn’t melt. Here are some of the ones that struck a chord with me-

“Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes.

“Peace- that was the other name for home.” Kathleen Norris “Where thou art- that- is home.” – Emily Dickinson.

“There is nothing like staying home for real comfort” Jane Austen. “There’s nothing half so pleasant as coming home again”- Margaret Sangster

“I long…. To be at home wherever I find myself” – Maya Angelou.

“Snoopy, come home” – Charley Brown

“Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam…” (Sing that one)

There are so many famous thoughts and poems and quotes about the four walls we call a home- there must be something more to those four walls than just 2×4’s, windows and doors.

My kids love to be at home. Even now that they are teenagers they will insist occasionally on a jammy day. We wear our pajamas all day. (Well, now that they are older, we wear our lounge clothes.) These days are full of book reading, movie watching, and game playing. We might make cookies or milk shakes. But we relish our time together, cocooned in the haven that is our home.

We had jammy days when my boys were little, too. I would come down on a Saturday morning to find them showered and in clean jammies, usually the footed zip-up kind (they wore them for jammy days up until about a year ago). They would wait for me at the bottom of the stairs. I knew that meant I should back upstairs and put on my yoga pants and prepare to spend the day at home, regardless of what I had planned or needed to do.

We’ve always had a busy life. So when my boys were little, home was where we decompressed from our many adventures, and the daily events that every family has to do. Home was where we connected those adventures to the emotional framework that holds our world together.

Not that home wasn’t a great adventure, too. We built many a tent for camping in the family room. We battled space aliens in our yard, and constructed a rocket ship, complete with a light up control panel that beeped, bopped, flashed and wailed when you hit the buttons on the outside (That toy, built by Boppa in an old suitcase, is a whole other blog… what a great toy!) We constructed train tracks that ran the whole length of the downstairs, and then ran our trains around and around. We hunted dinosaurs, and scaled Mount Everest. We built metropolises out of blocks and demolished them with Tonka trucks, without ever leaving the comfort of our house.

My boys had favorite activities they loved to do on jammy days. Hammering endless nails into scrap lumber, planting flowers in the yard, or planting anything, including Star Wars guys, Lego, Hot Wheel Cars. (I still dig up an occasional gem from their earlier years.) They’d make a pot and pan band on the floor in the kitchen and sing at the top of their lungs

As they got older a jammy day was a time to play the never-ending board games that they liked so much, and for Michael and I to show them movies we’d always loved and that they were finally old enough to watch.

For a child, home really is where the heart is; there is no place like home. It is their safe place, the place they can just “be” in. It’s where they are most connected to you, and their siblings. Their whole life revolves around home.

So it’s only fitting that the current Our Time semester is all about loving being at home. It combines a variety of music, poems, and finger plays about the kitchen, the market, the food we get at the market, what we do with when we get it home, games we can play, the sights and smells and sounds and tastes and textures that make our own home the best place in the world. We even get to build the house.

A good portion of the music could even be considered home-grown. There’s lots of jazz, mostly New Orleans style, but other styles as well. Jazz is truly an American musical genre, one of our unique musical contributions to the world. And party songs from the early days of our country become dances and games that can be played with your child at home. Even the music that is not uniquely American is all about home. Two piano works from Schuman’s Children’s Corner Suite grace CD number one. This beautiful music was written for his beloved wife to play while their children played around her piano.

I love Away We Go, and Wiggles and Giggles and Fiddle Dee. They are the adventures we have when we are out and about in the world. But Milk and Cookies is the foundation on which those adventures take place. Our home is place we return to after dancing in Arkansas, where we are most likely to find Liza Jane and where Lukey’s boat is in dry dock.

This semester offers us a way to make our home more exciting and meaningful, and to make the adventures we have within those beloved four walls deeper and full of learning, and to discover how significant home is to our children’s development. They can’t get excited about a train trip if they aren’t fully immersed and attached to home. Because that’s where their hearts are, and yours, too.

-posted by Miss Allison, who leaves you with her favorite home quote: “There’s no place like home” – Dorothy Gale (Click your heels together, and be sure you say it three times.)

Tags: kindermusik, Miss Allison, music, parenting, pretend play

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Oct
19

The Disappearing Act(ing)

Posted in Child Development, parenting

If you step into a classroom, especially pre-K through 1^st grade, you’ll find that pretend play is disappearing. Where you find it, the time allowed for uninhibited, undirected fantasy play is limited.

Why? Many parents and teachers have become so concerned with “the coming academics”, they put aside the very thing that will naturally and beautifully nourish and develop the skills needed for the math, reading, literature, history and positive social interaction. Pretend play is not valued as it was in the past.

Vivian Gussin-Paley was the guest on a podcast I recently listened to on BAM Radio Network. She believes that eventually we will be cognizant of society’s pressuring of young children to, as she says, “learn everything perfectly by the age of 5”. She hopes we will return to a time in which early childhood is about acquiring the language of play, which in turn teaches children the language of learning.

For instance, analytical thinking skills are acquired through fantasy play. Questions like – How do we show our relationship to each other?, What are we feeling?, How do we express that?, What conflict are our characters in? How do we resolve the conflict? Where are we?

Watch your kids. You’ll hear things like “Okay. So say we’re on planet Endor in the forest. And we each have a power. Mine’s invincibility. But you can’t have the same power. What’s yours? And the clone troopers have found our ship and are searching for us. We’re scared. And we only have one weapon between us. Let’s go!”

In order to explain circumstances in a fantasy, children must step outside of the “situation” and look at the circumstances through another perspective. That requires developing a whole host of skills – language, analytical, cognitive, social and emotional.

The child development experts are becoming increasingly concerned, and rightly so. We are getting rid of something that has done its job for 1000’s of years – pretend play.

Where is all this “pressure” for academic performance at an early age coming from? I’m not sure. I’ve yet to find a single recognized, true expert in the field who promotes preschool (I’m not talking daycare here) for 2 year olds. (This wouldn’t include early intervention for disadvantaged children, or those with special needs. Real, ordinary preschool.)

I’ve never seen a single study that shows that “early structured academic instruction” creates children who can produce significantly more than their peers by third grade. I have read stories about children who are burned out by the second grade, and have lost their natural love of learning.

So why is it that we want our children to be able to spout their ABC’s by 3? Which by the way, have absolutely no meaning to children. Until the letters are associated with their sounds, and children begin to put those sounds together, this “skill” is useless. And until this association happens, letters are likely to get pushed out of the brain and forgotten as more information gets stuffed in there. Just because a child knows something, doesn’t mean he comprehends it.

I’ll admit it. My oldest knew all of his letters by the age of two. He was reading simple words by 2 ½. And really, I was really proud of that fact. Looking back, even though he wanted to read, I’m the one who put the letters in front of him and drilled him. It was truly all about me. How Nathan’s “skill” somehow reflected my “good parenting”. Luckily for me, he is an avid reader as a 6^th grader. But there were 3 or 4 years I struggled to find reading material for him. He may have been reading on an 9^th grade level in the 3^rd grade, but 9^th grade reading level had things I didn’t want him reading about yet. He had the skill to read the books, but not the comprehension level to understand the sophisticated subject matter.

By the time I got to my youngest, I went, “Whatever”. She’ll be interested when she is ready. And to my slight horror (cause I still want to feel like an “accomplished” parent), she was completely uninterested in letters until she was 4. But then within a month, she taught herself to read. At almost 5, she reads in fits and spurts, but only when she suggests.

How can parents promote fantasy play?

Vivian Gussin-Paley has a fabulous idea:

Help the children become little playwrights and actors. When you walk by your child’s bedroom and you hear a couple of lines of pretend play, get a piece of paper and ask your child to share the story with you so you can write it down. And then have Daddy and sister or brother and Mommy and child all take a part and act out the story.
Finger plays, moving to music poetry and fantasy, providing a well-stocked dress-up box.
Reading wordless books (like the ones about Carl the Rottweiler) are great for language development and story telling skills. A non-verbal child can point out objects in the pictures. A verbal child can be encouraged to tell the story.
Lots of unstructured, unscheduled time!

Time is the most important element for effective pretend play. Children develop the most incredible stories. They just need extended periods of time to create them fully.

We’re in a world that increasingly wants quick results. We often fuss and complain about our children growing up too fast. Are we unknowingly pressuring our children to do so from a very young age, by focusing on the “product”, rather than the “process”? I do believe if we give our children space and time to grow and develop as they were naturally intended to do, the world will be a very different place in 20 years. For the better.

Vivian Gussin Paley is the author of “A Child’s Work: The Importance of Fantasy Play.” A kindergarten teacher for 37 years, Mrs. Paley brings her storytelling/story acting and discussion techniques to children, teachers, and parents throughout the world. In 2004 was she was named Outstanding Educator in the Language Arts by the National Council of Teachers in English. You can hear the podcast in its entirety here.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, whose 11 year old still occasionally still engages in fantasy play with the 8 and 4 year old. The younger ones love him for it!

Tags: brain, language development, learning, Miss Analiisa, physical development, preschoolers, pretend play, Things to do, toddlers

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Sep
14

Science in the Shower

Posted in Child Development, parenting, Things to do

I am a teacher by profession, and a home schooling mom by trade. (Or is it the other way around?) In any case, I spend most of my waking hours teaching somebody something. If you are a parent, your “other job” is being a teacher, too.

Your child’s job? (I’m talking about children newborn to 7 specifically, here.) Your child’s job is to play. Play IS work for a child’s brain. The brain is designed for the first seven years of life to simply organize things. And organizing play is how the brain does just that. I don’t mean organized play. Organized play is something that adults do to children. Telling them how and what to play.

So why are their rooms so messy? Well, it’s not THAT kind of organization either. The brain’s job is to organize all the sensory input it is receiving. Done well, and your child will be a happy and eager learner when they enter elementary school.

Way back in 1949, N.A. Alessandrini defined play as, “A child’s way of learning and an outlet for his innate need of activity. It is his business or career. In it he engages himself with the same attitude and energy that we engage ourselves in our regular work. For each child it is a serious undertaking not to be confused with diversion or idle use of time. Play is not folly. It is purposeful activity.”

This is still true today. The “occupation” of play for a child serves as a foundation for the development of future occupations (the kind they earn money for!) when your child grows up.

This day, everyone was in "family circles".

Now for your job… As teachers of our children, what can we do that allows them to organize their play? By providing them with open ended toys like blocks, cars, dress-up clothes, art supplies, dolls (for boys, too!) legos, a sand box or water table, kid-friendly pans, utensils and pretend food.

Do sit down and play alongside your child. As well, give them room to play as they wish. Remember, there really is no wrong way to play with a toy. (I don’t consider breaking toys or eating sand playing.) Your child will play with the toys the way the brain needs to in order to organize itself.

Case in point. Science in the shower. We have an accumulation of foamie shapes left over from various craft projects. Big and little animals, cars, etc. A couple of months ago, I took a big handful of them and gave them to my 4 year old Natalie in the shower. The only thing I had to do was demonstrate that they “stuck” to the wall when wet. And then I stepped back and observed her.

It’s been months now, and they are still in the shower. She doesn’t want to take a bath because she wants to still play with those foamie pieces. What have I observed? Natalie organized her own play. Literally – Everytime I go to take a shower, all those animals will be arranged in a different pattern. Sometimes by color, by habitat, by size. That’s science in the shower.

And then I get to see the outward manifestation of the internal organization that is going on. Because sometimes, Natalie takes two of the animals, and one is “bad”, and one is “good”, or one won’t let the other play with it, so she practices making friends, and works through social situations that are typical at this age.

You see, her brain knows what it needs. Your child’s does, too. We just have to provide the “tools” and the space to allow that to happen.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who got in the shower recently only to be told that the particular arrangement of the foamies was because they had “gotten married and had babies.” And that, I suppose, is science in the shower as well.

Tags: brain, Miss Analiisa, parenting, pretend play, Things to do

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Jul
23

Free Outdoor Activities

Posted in Bits and Pieces, Family, parenting, Things to do

We’ve had this gorgeous summer weather for the past two weeks yet all I seem to hear from my kids is “Can I play a video game?”

I realized that when my kids start asking to play electronics too often, it just means they need a little motivation to go outside. So I have come up with a little list of things that occupy their time, entice them outdoors and entertain for hours (okay, so maybe only thirty minutes, but happily playing children for thirty minutes can feel like hours to a mom in need of reprieve.)

Here are a few free or next-to-nothing activities to get the kids playing outside:

Piles of wood. I pick it up at construction sites (there’s usually a dump bin that you can pull wood out of for free) or I go to the back of the local hardware store, to their lumber department, where there is “clearance” wood…usually 50 cents for a 2 x 4. Here are some things we’ve done with our wood collection:

Leave it in the dirt in the back yard: they’ll build construction sites, cities, and forts simply by piling the wood up. The older two will make roads for The Little Mister to drive his cars on. Once we used the wood to build an obstacle course.
Buy some cheap paint and let them paint the wood.
Give them some nails and a hammer (adult supervision if they’re young) and let them pound away.

Cardboard: We go to our local Costco and get these sheets of free cardboard that we turn into all sorts of things. You find this cardboard in between the “cases” of toilet paper. Their warehouse-brand toilet paper comes in on a pallet and between each row is a sturdy layer of cardboard that is approximately 4 ft x 2.5 ft (other brands of toilet paper have a less-study cardboard layer that I don’t recommend for fort making). Anyway, every time we go to Costco, we get a few pieces of cardboard sheets. Give them to your kids with some tape, some markers, and a knife if your kids are old enough, and the ideas are endless. We’ve built boats, forts, fire engines, houses…the list goes on. They even invented a game that transformed the pieces into imaginary “islands” that we had to jump to.

Cardboard boxes: Another freebie from our warehouse store. After we check out, we check out the supply of boxes that are kept near the cash registers. Last week we snagged a few boxes that are now serving as homes for two dogs (stuffed) and a Zuzu pet. With a few markers, cardboard boxes can also transform into fire engines, barns or houses.

Rocks: One of our all time favorite outdoor projects: coloring rocks. When they’re young (say The Little Mister’s age), we use chalk. As they get older, they graduate to watercolor paints and then tempura paints. Keep a small box of paint supplies handy and when the kids need something to do outside, bring out the box and let ‘em go. If you play your cards right and collected a box on your last trip to the warehouse store, you will also have a place to store these painted rocks. Incidentally, if you don’t have rocks in your yard you can buy them at a gardening store or, even better and cheaper, pick some up next time you’re at a park or beach that does have rocks.

Play Picnic: Grab a couple boxes of crackers, cheese, water and pickles (or whatever your kids like to eat) and have them set up a picnic for themselves (and you.) I have a plastic tub that contains an old tablecloth, misc plastic silverware and plates and a few odds and ends Adrienne has added to the box. I ask them to please set up a picnic for our afternoon snack anywhere they choose. Once you head out to the picnic they’ve prepared, be sure to bring a read aloud book with you; it’s a nice way to spend the afternoon and reading outside just has this fun feeling to it that can’t be topped.

My point in all these ideas is that sometimes your kids just need a little boost to get their imaginations going. A few easy to find (and inexpensive to obtain) items are all you need to make your summer afternoons times of adventure and exploration.

-posted by Donna Venning, whose children are setting up an outside picnic as she writes this article. Now it’s time to go enjoy the fruits of their labor….