Series Part #16: Hands-on Play Suggestions
There is no doubt that kids need hands-on play, but did you know that children need this play to help them get ready to start school in kindergarten? Hands-on fun stimulates all kinds of brain-connections for powerful thinking and learning.
No matter if your child is at home or at a child care center, there will be countless opportunities for hands-on play, such as blocks and construction sets, painting, puzzles, and play-dough. Sand and water can keep kids busy and happy day after day. Hands can turn pages in a book and make the actions to go with favorite songs. Helping put away the groceries or wash vegetables is a different kind of hands-on learning. Kids love to help when cooking and their hands can help stir, roll, and cut out cookies. Outside, hands can turn over rocks and play in the mud.
Why are these activities so important? The human brain takes in information from the senses. Just as hands learn to manipulate objects, the brain learns to manipulate information. As kids touch a variety of objects, the hands and the brain notice what is the same and what is different. The sand and rocks at the beach feel very different from the seaweed and seashells.
Children use their hands to discover and explore. What happens to slime when we lift it up? It stretches and stretches until it finally all pulls apart. It feels cool and slippery but not wet. How about playdough? What does paint do?
As children play hands-on they solve problems and come up with their own creative ideas. What happens when several blocks are piled up higher and higher? Is there any way to make a block tower so they do not fall down?
Discovering, solving problems, observing, and manipulating are only a few of the skills and strategies that children learn and practice during hands-on play. These form a basis for even more thinking and learning when kids start school so help them get ready for kindergarten.
What hands-on activities does your child enjoy?
