Anna and I created a Child's Corner at home yesterday thinking of the interests of a pre-school child. We remembered the visit of our grand children in October and thought of the different indoor and outdoor activities they chose .
They used the lawn to play ball games, badminton, cricket, and spent time in the tree house, water pool, swing, sand pit, playing with our dogs and going for nature walks. They found a different set of activities for each day.
They did not gravitate towards the Television or playing in the mobile phone.
We are in the final stage of editing the book, Engage Your Child, a manual of ideas for parents to engage the pre-school children. During the preparation of this book in the last six months, Anna and I gathered our thoughts about the play process that pre-school children engage in at home. We recalled our own experiences of the interactions and conversations of such times with our children and recently with our grandchildren to trace how they make developmental progress in different domains during home based play activities. The reading times, art and craft work, designing and creating structures with building blocks, singing, dramatising, make believe play and doing simple house hold chores, card games, joining in for cooking and going for walks and picnics create the variety that pre-school children needed.
The play based engagement of children help parents to get to know the developing process and thought world, emotional milieu, and relational attitudes of pre-school children.
The play is the process parents can use to become present to pre-school children. That creates the ambience for pre-schoolers to have an endearing attitude towards parents.
Parents become child centred in thinking and behaving and pre-school children develop attachment process to parents which forms the fabric of relationship !
Making a home pre-school child friendly is a calling for parents !
M.C.Mathew (text and photo)
No comments:
Post a Comment