5 Top Tips to Help Children Learn Through Play From Green Bean Studios
Green Bean Collection
An award-winning series of collectable books, ECO toys and games for children.
Creating Precious Moments Through Fun Adventures!
Green Bean is a fictional character from the Green Bean Collection , a series of collectable children’s books, toys, music, and entertainment productions created by author Anita Frost.
Green Bean is a household friend for children from birth, to preschool, and to primary school age. Green Bean teaches learning through play, supporting social and emotional development, and promoting healthy and sustainable living. Green Bean lives in the beautiful lands of Adventure Dales with five unique friends who love learning and playing together.
5 Top Tips to Enable Children to Learn Through Play
1.) Child Led Play Makes a Peaceful Day?
Child-led play has many benefits; one key area is developing problem-solving skills. Play is a child's first exposure to making decisions and a building block for the world of education and work. Play allows children to exercise leadership skills, experiment, make mistakes and learn from them. If adults always control all elements of a child's day and processes, then children don't have a chance to practise making good decisions by themselves.
Child-led play allows the child to have full control over the direction and outcome of their play and is vital in boosting children's confidence, creativity, and innovation.
Add child-led play into your every day routine for at least 15 minutes and you will see a significant increase in the child's positive behaviour throughout the day. Consistency is key to seeing these results. Let the child know a few minutes beforehand e.g. when the timer goes off it’s our time to play.?
For babies up to 18 months old, you can select three toys, place? in front of them, and let them lead with which one they want to pick and play with.
For children aged 18 months onwards, use a timer, or set a time in the day that is dedicated to child-led play, e.g. after tea.
2.) Fun Space
Having a safe, welcoming, and fun space helps children to enjoy play and reap the benefits of exploring toys to develop important skills. For younger children, you can suggest where they are going to play, and for older children who are gaining more independence you can let them choose an area they prefer to play in, provided the area is safe, clean, and enables them to play freely.
Outdoor Benefits?
Playing outside allows children to develop more advanced motor skills than children who spend most of their time indoors, including agility, balance and coordination. Children who spend time playing outdoors are more likely to move in ways that challenge their muscles, bones, and physical endurance.
Outdoor play also brings many other benefits such as encouraging healthy habits, developing focus, building confidence, reducing stress, and improving a child's social skills.
Lounge or Playroom
For children who are easily distracted, it can be useful to have a space that is clean and clear, as the child may go from one thing to another if the home space is cluttered with other toys.??
Bedroom?
A couple of toys in the bedroom are great for young children to? self-occupy themselves in the morning or on weekends, giving parents the chance to rest a little longer after a busy week.?
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However, too many toys in a child's bedroom can be overwhelming with the choice of what to play with, causing restlessness or the child deciding not to play and seek parents' attention instead. Too many toys in a child's bedroom can also distract your child from sleeping at night as they can get an urge to play for 'just a bit more'? which is common among children.
3.) Choices, Choices, Choices?
Less is more a world where the pressure for more and more is pushed through many channels. This is very overstimulating for children, increasing negative behaviours. Having a few different toys per development stage is key. Think of it this way – if you went to work and your boss left you two or three years of workload on a desk and said “there you go”, you would be overwhelmed.?
Collectable ranges are great for children's development progress. Growing up playing with toys and action figures, and then collecting these items, allows space to create childhood memories and builds on appreciation and loyalty potential. The toys children play with during their formative years often hold sentimental value, and when they become adults they give us a positive reconnect with our past.
4.) Imaginative play
Imaginative play boosts children's development and creativity by allowing them to explore their imagination and develop unique ideas. It also enhances their social development by encouraging interaction with others and strengthening communication and language skills.
Through imaginative play, children learn critical thinking skills, such as how to follow simple directions, build expressive and receptive language, increase social skills and learn how to manage their emotions.
If you are budgeting as a family, consider making spaces e.g. a corner of the room or in the garden for building dens, stages,? a house, a school, or a shop and provide suitable recycled materials for customising it, such as curtains, mats, wood, plant pots.
5.) Praise Raises The Next Generation
Praise is an effective tool when encouraging a child to recognise their achievements and motivate them to positively approach their tasks. It will boost their curiosity and support their self-esteem. It nurtures their sense of self, demonstrating how to think and talk about themselves positively. Children will then go on and encourage others in their family and friendship circles.
Children can become self-motivated when their natural curiosity is encouraged and supported and tend to do things simply because they enjoy doing them. Children who are self-motivated have better mental health and well-being than those who rely on being rewarded by others to feel good about themselves.
Praise is pretty important for developing our little one's confidence. Without it, a child could go in two different ways. Extreme self-esteem and self-worth/value issues may develop, or they might go to extreme lengths to get praise. They may even go on to develop narcissistic traits or depression later in life.
'Descriptive Commentary' is a different way of interacting with a child at play. It makes no demands on the child to perform to the adult's agenda. It simply provides a gentle running commentary on what the child is doing and what is happening. This method can encourage children to lead play in a positive direction and expand the child’s range of vocabulary.
6.) Next Time??
In a world with lots of cancel culture and passiveness there are some simple yet important things to remember. Eye contact and pausing at the end of your playtime to just say? “I enjoyed playing with you today” and highlighting two things that they did well or that were fun. Finish your playtime with affirming and loving words and actions such as “I am looking forward to playing with you again”, or “I love you”? along with a hug or a kiss as a positive way to close your quality time together.
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