Housekeeping Mom Tips

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01/13/2011 16:49

Subject: Re:Housekeeping Mom Tips

Anonymous

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Our rule for putting away play-things. If he wants to move onto the next toy, he has to put away the one he was playing with first. At the end of the day, there is only one toy left to put away.

As a parent, I understand your desire to do this. As a teacher, though, I must discourage this. Creative play involves using toys in new and often unintended ways and creating imaginary adventures that involve multiple layers of action. That's hard to do if you can't use the dolls, trucks and blocks and little people animals at the same time. And often the ideas for that kind of play aren't worked out in their head beforehand. So its not until they see the doll next to the dump truck and the cow that the idea develop that the cow jumped on the garbage truck at the farm and fell off a the little girl's house and was hiding in the closet...etc. Not to say that shouldn't be ANY limits on dragging out every toy you own, but you might want to loosen up a bit.

I'm also a mom who requires toys to be put away. My child is not one bit short on creativity. You must know as a teacher that oodles of toys are not needed for creativity, no? We have very little toys in the house as a matter of fact, but I don't see a need for a huge pile of bristle blocks on top of legos, on top of lincoln logs. Often times the "toys" my kids chose to play with and be creative with are not even toys at all. They often put on "plays" unsing props such as blankets, chairs, and empty boxes. I think creativity is born from engaging with your child, taking them to places, and asking them questions-not necessarily a mountain of toys every where.

Teacher here again. I agree that kids can learn and have fun without lots of toys. Mine do, too, at times. And there are certainly different philosophies about how children learn best. My personal opinion is that, while kids can be quite unique and different from one another, but that most children do learn by playing with different kinds of toys and in different ways. They do not always need to be surrounded by tons of toys and noise. Indeed, it is good to have times with simple, quiet play. But toys are an essential part of healthy growth and development. Indeed, would you send your child to a daycare or preschool that was devoid of toys? I believe that a balance is best and that there is definitely a place for 'making a big mess' in the healthy development of children as there is a place for quiet exploration using things in the environment and practicing 'real life' play. Some kids do better with more of one style than another. If you look at early childhood educational settings, you will see that there is a range of educational approaches out there: Montessori, Reggio Emilia, play-based, academic, etc. that hopefully will match the range of learning styles out there. But just be careful that when you think about what style suits your child best, make sure you are really looking at your child and not projecting your learning/living preferences onto them or trying to make you child fit into the setting you want them to fit into. A square peg won't fit in a round hole no matter how much you like round holes nor how much you wish the square was round! So if you think that your child would be overwhelmed and upset by a cacophony of toys, ok. But be sure that's b/c its your child that would be overwhelmed, not you.

I implement cleaning up after themselves after they are done playing with each set of toys because that is what the school expects. I was amazed to see how the teachers ran such an organized, clean, and calm environment despite wrangling 12 children. From the school, I learned that it is possible for young children to put toys away before moving onto the next toy. I also noticed how few toys they did have out, but there of course was variety due to toy rotation.

In a classroom of 12 children, if each child chose 1 toy, then that would be 12 toys out at once. I imagine that he children play alongside and/or with each other and thus play with each other's toys as well. And in my child's classroom, while the impulsive dumping out of toys one after another w/ no purpose would be discouraged, there is not a rule that children can't play with more than one toy at a time. I will frequently see a city made of blocks, legos, cars, trucks, dolls, housekeeping items. Which of course would not be possible if the one toy at time rule was enforced. I do believe that there is a 'clean up time' when toys are cleaned up before moving on to say snack or outside time. I do the same at home. We clean up at logical times during the day or at the very least, before dinner. Sometimes, though, I'm rogue mom and let my kids leave a complicated play scene scene or fort, etc set up if its out of the way. But then I don't expect my house to look so put together all the time when young kids live in it. Its their house, too, after all.

The schools I've seen have stations. Art station, lego station, dolls, and so forth and so on. I have not seen classrooms full of chaos with toys all over the place-what a jumbled mess that would be at the end of the day. I don't expect a house to be 100% put together, but I do expect my children to learn values such cleaning up after themselves and treating the things they have been given with respect. It is amazing how much simpler and how much time you gain back when you just clean up after yourself.