play ideas- for tiny tots

Keeping a 1 year old one busy is quite a task! Mothers have been known to have lost weight and patience, running around with and after the toddler the whole day. Toddlers, who have just skilled the art of walking and running, are best known for their ‘restlessness’. Parents often find themselves exhausted just keeping the young one busy with a suitable toy. A particular toy may become boring after a while. So parents end up emptying their wallets in keeping the toy-room full at home.

While there are many toys available in the market for this age group, there are many things you can do at home, without really draining out your salary into toy shop’s account. 

You should try with a rough routine to follow for your young one. You need not wait for the child to go to school for a routine to start. A little bit of routine helps the child to expect ‘what next’. This reduced restlessness. You may make a pictorial time table on a piece of paper and stick it on wall/fridge at a height where your toddler can see. It shouldn’t be very complicated. Just the time for major activities like brush teeth, bath, eat, nap, play, sleep. Pictures should be simple enough for your little one to understand. It may seem very daunting in the beginning, but a little bit of organized playtime definitely goes a long way in channelizing the toddler’s energy along with enhancing his cognitive skills. Not to mention, it also goes a long way in restoring the sanity of a frazzled mom!

Activities for your 1 year old one!

•  Reading stories to the child (the content of the story doesn’t matter as much as your intention to read)
•   Looking at board books/ cloth books/ pop-up books together
• Singing rhymes to the child
• Scribbling with big crayons or chalks (the size of adult-male thumb). You may use papers, or a lap-slate or an easel for the same.
•  Catching-throwing-kicking a soft large ball (a soft-plastic or cloth ball should do)
•  Traditional active-rhymes like “Simon says”, “now I see a”, “mulberry bush”, “ring-a-ring-o-roses” (initially while you sing and perform, the child may ‘perform’ with you. Later you may sing or put the CD and the child can dance to the songs)
•  Walking together in park (It’s a great source of information for your toddler, who is observing many things around as you are explaining.  It’s a great source of bonding too.)
•  Digging sand/soil in the garden or sand-area with plastic shovels
•  Playing with play-dough or natural-dough with food colors
•  Playing with shapes/size/color puzzles
• Throwing soft balls into a basket kept at a distance.
• Painting the walls of the shower area with old shampoo mixed with food color
• Making towers- of cushions, building blocks, empty DVD boxes, light-weight empty cartons (breaking the pile is more fun! This building, breaking, re-building can sufficiently engage him to give relaxed-cuppa-coffee-time to you) 
• Playing with water-balloons ( lightly filled, so that they don’t burst easily)
•  Playing traditional outdoor games indoor, like catch-me, hide and seek
• Matching cap-bottle (have lots of bottles and their caps. Mix them up. Have your toddler figure out which cap will fit which bottle)
• Thumb printing, vegetable dabbing on a sheet (make sure to spread lots of newspaper on floor for easy cleaning)
• Collecting all coins in a box ( you give few thick plastic coins/ small balls and ask the child to put all of them in an empty metal box. The ‘clink’ sound is very gratifying. Emptying the box out on floor is even more satisfying.)
•  Stacking spoons in a Styrofoam/thermocol slab (it should be thick enough to hold spoons. You get plenty of such pieces in the packing material when you buy some furniture or electronic item. Store them!)
•  Pouring water from one glass into another (if the weather permits). As children love to play with water, this can engage them for quite some time!

Toys(useful but not mandatory) for your 1 year old one!

• Push-along or pull-along toys
•  Large truck-toys that can carry smaller toys too
• Stacking cups
• Interlocking rings
• 2-4 piece(large) puzzles
• Light-weight balls
• Shape sorter with large pegs for easy grip
• Alphabet boards, where you press the alphabet and the sound comes
•  Musical toys (drums, 1 button-touch keyboard)
•  Board books/ cloth books/ Pop-up books
• Activity tables
• Rocking horse
• Soft toys/ Hand puppets
• Pretend-play toys like telephone, tea-set, dolls

What is mathematics for small kids?

When we think of mathematics, we think of numbers, addition, subtraction, tables etc. But maths is actually much more than that. we need to be sure that our child has mastered his pre-maths skills before getting his head deep into numbers. We must teach pre-maths skills to the child. Also, when we are teaching numbers or any computational skill to the child, we must explain to him the usefulness and need in our day to day life.

Mathematical concepts to be taught to a preschooler:

1. Shapes: a 3 year old can be easily taught to identify the various simple shapes like circle, squares, rectangle, triangle, star and oval. He can also be taught the 3-D shapes like cubes, cuboids, cylinders and pyramids. To teach 3-D shapes, it’s a good idea to stack up the 2-D shapes and show him how it forms the 3-D ones. Like how 10 circular cardboard pieces stacked tall would make a cylinder. He should be explained the number of sides each figure has and shown the related objects from around the house that he is familiar with. When we show the particular shaped object to him, he understands two things- the shape and the usefulness of its knowledge!
2. Counting: remembering numbers doesn’t make sense to any child. When we ask him to simply repeat 1-20 he cannot make head or tail out of it. But when we teach numbers through counting real objects to begin with, it does make a lot of sense to the child. So start counting right from the very early days. Count anything to everything, like spoons (when you setting table), stairs (when you are climbing up or down), balls (when you are arranging), toy-cars (when he is playing with them), vehicles on road (when you are travelling together), bogies of train (when you are waiting at the train crossing) etc. Later, move on to counting in print- both objects and number representations- upto 20.
3. Positions: the child should learn the positional concepts like above and below, inside and outside, left, middle and right, top and bottom, far and near etc. You should teach first using the real objects and people before moving to printed material.
4. Comparisons: learning maths requires the basic concept of comparisons very clear. For example, more and less, heavy and light, long and short, tall and short, wide and narrow, costly and cheap etc. Again use examples from everyday life before moving onto doing activities in books. Step up on the weighing scale and show him what the pointer indicates. Then tell him to step up and show him his weight. He will learn that 60 kg is heavier than 12 kg. Give him an inch tape and show him how the fridge is 50 cms away from the cupboard, while the oven is only 20 cms away. Thus oven is closer to the cupboard than the fridge is. This also teaches him the concept of measurement.
5. Patterns and balance: teach him how continuation of a design makes a pattern. Like many Vs put together make a zig-zag pattern. Similarly teach him balance through the concept of symmetrical versus asymmetrical shapes. Like how a pair of trousers is symmetrical and how a cloud is asymmetrical. Patterns and balance give him a very good idea of non-geometric designs.
6. Basic computation: give him two coins and ask him to return one. Ask him how many does he have remaining. Similarly, give him two biscuits and soon give him two more. Ask him how many he has now. These are some of the easiest ways of teaching that there is something called addition and subtraction.
7. Sorting and grouping: show him that pizza, chips, curd, rice are all edibles; TV, fridge, computer, oven are all appliances; chair, table, stool, and almirah are all furniture. So food, appliances, furniture etc are called groups and things belong to some group or the other. This will teach him to sort out a cluster of objects into various groups according to the similarity they hold in common.
8. Time and date: small children have a very vague idea of time. They cannot clearly understand how much is 2 minute or how long is 2 hours or 2 days and which one is shorter. It’s not a bad idea to show them the clock that has big and bold numbers written on it and explain that the short arm indicates the hour and long one indicates the minutes. To teach days and dates, it’s best to use calendars. Have one calendar for him, mark the important dates, teach him to count days before that date etc.

teaching the usefulness of maths:

We are using numbers day in and day out. But our children don’t ‘see’ us doing so. So they doubt the use of learning 1-2-3-4, odd number, even number, multiplication in their text books like crazy. They  need to be given some pre-maths skills first and then shown how we use numbers in our lives continuously.

Let the child feel that numbers are beyond the activity books too. And how numbers are used in our day-to-day life to make things easy for us, like

1. temperature setting in oven, fridge, AC
2. time setting in washing machine,
3. reaching a particular channel on TV
4. dialling someone’s number on phone
5. shopping for the correct size of the T-shirt 
6. measuring height and weight of the family members
7. measuring two things and understanding if one thing will fit into the other or not
8. number plates of cars
9. while ordering for a pizza how many people are there, so how many pizzas should be ordered, how much money should we keep for the delivery boy and so on.