Dear Friends,
Recently, I have received a series of wonderful invitations from my two-year-old son, Bennett. “Come play with me, daddy,” he says each morning just after waking up. “What would you like to play,” I ask. While he frequently wants us to build trains together using his Duplo Lego bricks, he sometimes insists that we both wear hand puppets and pretend that they are eating “cake” (which is actually a collection of wooden blocks). Other times, he wants to play “chase” where either I chase him or he chases me around the kitchen table. I’m amazed at the diversity of activities that he, and certainly other kids I see at the Children’s Museum, define as play.
I try to keep this variety of playful activities in mind when parents ask for tips on what they can do to facilitate their children’s learning at the Children’s Museum. In response, the Museum staff began outlining age-appropriate objectives for each exhibit area. I’ve since decided that our effort was backwards. It really doesn’t matter if the Farm Stand exhibit was intended to promote numeracy or pattern recognition. Instead, we need to focus on what and how the child wants to learn. I’ve found three strategies that help me scaffold my own children’s play: 1) get on their level so I can look at them eye-to-eye, 2) ask lots of open-ended questions—Bennett is constantly asking me “what’s that?” and “why?”—and 3) repeating back the action or the vocabulary that Bennett initiated. That way, I’m letting Bennett be the sole creator of the play.
When we begin to play with puppets, I never think, “Oh, here’s a good lesson for Bennett to learn.” Instead, I’m always so surprised of the learning that emerges organically out of our interaction. For example, Bennett likes to have the puppets alternate “eating” cake and sometimes he wants one puppet to give a piece of cake to another. I never intended our puppet play to teach Bennett about turn taking and sharing, but I was delighted to reinforce these behaviors that grew out of his imaginative play.
I’d love to hear about strategies you’ve used successfully to foster your child’s play! Feel free to e-mail me or share them on our Facebook page or Twitter feed.
Sincerely,
Steve