Dr. Toy's Vacation
Playtime Pointers
By Stevanne Auerbach, PhD

When children play, they are learning about themselves and the world around them. Play encourages social growth, language growth, physical conditioning, and problem solving. Here are tips for making sure that the learning process continues all summer.

Summertime provides a good energy balance for children. They work hard in school and need playtime for healthy development: activity for physical growth, creativity for expanding imagination, and learning to keep minds alert. School requires concentration and energy, so does playtime. Play is the ‘work’ of children. They learn essential skills from playtime.

A good portion of time should be spent outdoors in age-appropriate play. Outdoor activities can take the form of skating, jump rope, bike riding, pretend and adventure play, ball throwing, tennis, golf, basketball, and other activities that allow for the development of physical skills and the coordination of minds and bodies. Exercise is more important than ever before given the latest statistics on childhood obesity. Varied playtime outof- doors is important for all children every day. Being safe and having outdoor fun gives essential balance needed for everything else they’re doing.

Indoor play can involve creative arts with painting, on a flat surface or with large sheets of paper on an easel, making things, simple but fun cut-ups, cut-out sticker fun like Colorform sets, paper dolls, simple craft activities and hobbies. Many creative activities can be combined with listening to music for added value. Building projects are always fun and an extension of creative play. Consider some of the new suggested construction products.

Playing helps to support children’s outlook, imagination and expand their interests. Children thrive if given a chance to develop stories with puppets and dolls, learn to make things, figure out new puzzles such as “Scramble Squares,” discover the fun of reading di. erent books, playing games, or constructing something new. Children have plenty of questions; they want to have conversations; and, most of all, they want to play, discover and explore to their fullest potential.
Here are some guidelines from Dr. Toy for wholesome vacation playtime to help you to make the time even more interesting and fun for your children:

• Locate a good variety of challenging products appropriate for age and interests.
• Arrange toys and playthings to be easily accessible and easy to store away.
• Have a variety of interesting and balanced activities available for children.
• Be sure to create a good balance of indoor and outdoor play.
• Children need rest, healthy snacks and safe play.
• Learning to prepare a simple recipe is practical fun for children including making sandwiches, scrambled eggs, snacks or preparation of a simple meal.
• Encourage children to learn how to make something useful like a craft project, or to learn to assemble a puzzle, something they can enjoy doing at home or in transit.
• Encourage and express recognition and accomplishment.
• Gather an assortment of creative projects and various materials in a storage box along with easy to follow directions. Take time to do a creative project with your child.
• Arrange an assortment of paper, glue, safety scissors, and magazines to easily cut pictures for collage and scrapbooks in an accessible box.

Plenty of great play ideas and products are available for all ages, interests and skills. Th e product assortment included below gives you a number of good suggestions available from many excellent companies that are examples of recent Dr. Toy’s Award winners. See Dr. Toy’s Guide (www.drtoy.com) for more details.