Play Activities

Play Activities

Transportation Activities #2: Toy Cars Help Categorizing Skills

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Did you know cars and trucks can help kids develop categorizing skills? This is an important brain strategy for coping with lots of information.

helping kids learn to play with cars and trucks

Have you ever felt brain overload, especially at the end of the day or when trying to learn something new? Just think of all that’s new for a child to learn. No wonder kids get cranky. To deal with vast amounts of information the brain sorts it and categorizes it. Categorizing shrinks information into more brain-friendly chunks.

Making groups is one of the early strategies kids develop. We’ve seen kids sort their toys into things they think go together, or families. You can also facilitate it by asking questions or making comments. For instance, when your child is playing with cars and trucks you may notice, “I see 2 cars that are red. Are there any other red cars? All these cars are kind of the same because they are red.” Your child may help you find other red vehicles or make a group of another color.

categorizing skills with cars and trucks

Some groups or categories may seem mixed up to us, but kids have their own ideas. A bunch of cars may be mixed up with trains because they are all the bumpy ones. It’s not always obvious but kids are usually happy to explain. When they are making groups, we can ask if another toy belongs to that family. As kids play, we can occasionally interact and extend their play.

The following quote is from the website Autism Journeys that when teaching kids to categorize, “you are not just teaching a single skill but a system for learning, problem solving and organizing.  You are also teaching the foundation for processing, remembering and integrating new information.”

Cars and trucks and other transportation toys are more than toys. They are vehicles for helping kids play and learn categorizing skills.

Play Activities

Bubble Fun and Learning #24: Giant Bubbles

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Have you ever noticed that very simple items can create really awesome fun and learning? Giant bubbles use basic kitchen ingredients and are amazing!

giant-bubbles-1This bubble recipe is adapted from PBS Parents Really Big Bubble Maker. Here’s what we used and mixed together:

6 cups of water
1 Tablespoon of glycerine
1/3 to 1/2 cup of dishwashing liquid soap

Many recipes recommend blue Dawn and advise letting the solution sit overnight. Which we did. Once we had the jug outside, we poured the soapy water into a wide shallow dish,

giant bubble fun

To make the bubble wand, use 2 straws for the sides. Some sites show huge long strings. Ours was about 32″. Thread the string through 2 straws and tie the ends together. Now, spread the strings apart like a window and slide the knot into one of the strings. The straws need some sort of handle. Two juice straws worked to slide into the larger straws. The handles make it much easier to dip in and out of the soapy water. We also made another set with more string but it was trickier.

giant bubble fun

Not all our efforts made big, giant bubbles but some did and it was exciting. Dipping the straw and string wand made a shimmering window and only a very soft breath made it bulge and grow. The bubbles weren’t round, they were all sorts of lumpy, irregular shapes. They seemed to wave through the air.

giant bubble fun

Although there were doing the same activity, the kids played in very different ways. Both kids were able to blow a few giant bubbles. Too strong and the shimmery window popped. Big Sister was able to blow lightly but Little Sister just kept blowing even if there was no soapy film. She liked playing in the solution though. With the glycerine in it, it felt quite slippery. She liked to rub it between her fingers and on her hands and mostly just swished her straw loop in a pan. Being younger, the sensory aspect was more interesting while for Big Sister, the product was important.

giant bubble fun

One recipe, lots of ways to play. How does your child play?

Play Activities

Bubble Fun and Learning #23: Bubble Sock Snake

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Never again be sad about a sock that gets lost in the wash. It just means you have another one to make a bubble sock snake. These are really very cool!

To make a bubble sock snake, first cut the bottom end off a plastic water bottle. Big hands need to do that part. Stretch a sock over the end, pushing the bottle all the way into the toe. It will look like a drum.

bubble sock snake

Squirt some soap onto a shallow dish and add a little water. It’s perfectly fine to use fingers to mix these, but Little Sister didn’t want to get hers all yucky. This was news because she has no difficulty putting her hand into paint and making hand prints of every color. She wanted a spoon instead.

bubble sock snake

Once done, kids dip the bubble sock into the soapy water. This is why a low dish is better than a tall, thin one, so kids don’t immerse the whole bubble sock. It’s easier to hold onto a dry sock than a dripping wet one.

bubble sock snake

Now for the fun. Lightly blow into the bottle and watch a soap snake appear. There was a wind here in the afternoon so Little Sister’s snake bent. Big Sister could hardly wait to try and her’s got so long it did go down. The wind took off a chunk at the end and it floated away like a miniature white cloud. While we can’t see the wind, we could easily see which way it was blowing from the way the bubbles moved.

bubble sock snake

We talked how these bubbles were different from the kind the kids usually blow. The bubble sock snake makes only small bubbles but lots and lots of them. The bubbles are both different and the same. They look like the soap suds in the sink. Comparing is an important thinking skill and we did that with bubbles.

bubble sock snake

What fun and learning might bubble up in your child’s day?

Play Activities

Bubble Activities #12: Imaginary Stories about Bubbles

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Besides books, you and your child can make up imaginary stories about bubbles. Adults might think it’s hard but kids don’t. Great ideas are often silly. After consistent exposure to books, kids will use a similar format in their own stories of beginning, middle, and end. They will have a problem and a resolution, and … Continue reading Bubble Activities #12: Imaginary Stories about Bubbles →

Play Activities

Kids Play with Anything #24: Child’s Play with Imagination

The ultimate in playing with anything other than toys, is child’s play with imagination. Imaginative play not only doesn’t need toys, it can happen with nothing. About 18 to 24 months, we can see children engaging in pretend or imaginative play. This might be talking on a phone, using a spoon to feed a stuffie, … Continue reading Kids Play with Anything #24: Child’s Play with Imagination →