You can add a lot of "academics" into your routine. I always sing the alphabet when washing my charge's hands and counted with her as well as asking "how many?" of something she wants or has. I point out letters on signs, and a repeated word in her books when we are reading.
Further it is important to develop an emotional IQ by giving words to her emotions and them talking about how others - in books or a doll - is feeling.

It is never one or the other. You can do it all fairly easily.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Knowing that stuff at this age is like a party trick. It's cute and it makes the parents feel good but there's really no evidence that it has any correlation to long-term academic success. What does have a long-term correlation to academic success is plenty of creative play and social play ( especially outdoors or sensory-based), since those build strong neural pathways, help with body integration and sensory organization and teach executive function.

They do a lot of play with their friends and outside. Is there anything in particular that we should be encouraging? What is creative play?

PP here. My twin charges are just over 2. Activities this week:

driving toy cars "to the store," and filling them with "food," (actually leaves), then driving them home and unloading the groceries--lots of turn-taking, language, memory work via listing, one-to-one correspondence, and symbolic thinking.

We made birdfeeders with prickly pinecones, sticky peanut butter and silky/grainy birdseed. They loved the birdseed texture so much that I dumped the rest of the bag into the kiddie pool so that they could sit and walk in it--sensory stimulation, cause-and-effect, body integration, crossing-the-midline, balance and proprioceptive input.

Practiced changing their baby dolls' diapers and preparing and serving baby food--motor planning, ordering steps, gross and fine-motor skills, lots and lots of language, emotion language and emotional response modeling.

We made muffins--sensory stimulation, logical reasoning and ordering of steps, one-to-one correspondence, early science (relative volume), gross and fine motor control and planning

Played memory--well, memory skills, duh!, language practice, sorting and comparing, turn-taking and sharing, emotional control

Obviously we did more than this but my point is that even for very simple activities, kids are learning a lot. I think there is a false dichotomy presented to parents that you can either "let kids be kids" and they won't learn much, or you can "focus on education" (which always seems to mean academics) and they will learn. The reality is that the majority of the academic skills in the early grades are things that you can painstakingly teach at 2 or 3 or 4, OR they can pickit up quite easily at 4/5/6/7. The big question is what are they missing if you are focused on making them learn these academic parlour tricks at the youngest possible age? Well, they are missing play--play is not a universal childhood trait because it's nice to have fun. Play is universal to human children across cultures because it is the way out brains and bodies are meant to develop. If you allow kids to mostly manifest their own interests and desires and needs during play, they will create a rich and varied sensory diet, a strong and healthy body (including the underlying brain structure) and a complex social understanding that are the basic building blocks of later knowledge.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Knowing that stuff at this age is like a party trick. It's cute and it makes the parents feel good but there's really no evidence that it has any correlation to long-term academic success. What does have a long-term correlation to academic success is plenty of creative play and social play ( especially outdoors or sensory-based), since those build strong neural pathways, help with body integration and sensory organization and teach executive function.

They do a lot of play with their friends and outside. Is there anything in particular that we should be encouraging? What is creative play?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Knowing that stuff at this age is like a party trick. It's cute and it makes the parents feel good but there's really no evidence that it has any correlation to long-term academic success. What does have a long-term correlation to academic success is plenty of creative play and social play ( especially outdoors or sensory-based), since those build strong neural pathways, help with body integration and sensory organization and teach executive function.

They do a lot of play with their friends and outside. Is there anything in particular that we should be encouraging? What is creative play?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Knowing that stuff at this age is like a party trick. It's cute and it makes the parents feel good but there's really no evidence that it has any correlation to long-term academic success. What does have a long-term correlation to academic success is plenty of creative play and social play ( especially outdoors or sensory-based), since those build strong neural pathways, help with body integration and sensory organization and teach executive function.

They do a lot of play with their friends and outside. Is there anything in particular that we should be encouraging? What is creative play?

Anonymous wrote: Knowing that stuff at this age is like a party trick. It's cute and it makes the parents feel good but there's really no evidence that it has any correlation to long-term academic success. What does have a long-term correlation to academic success is plenty of creative play and social play ( especially outdoors or sensory-based), since those build strong neural pathways, help with body integration and sensory organization and teach executive function.