My child has so many toys that we play toy store. I come in the home and shop while she plays owner and helps me pick a toy. Then I pay and she hands me the bag. I go back out, come back home and give her the toy.
Read to them and make sure they see YOU reading.
One of the best moments in my life was when I walked into my younger daughters room and she looked up from a book she’d been reading with huge eyes of wonder and said “It’s like a movie in my head.”
She took off a bit slower then her older sister in this area, but once I got the eyes and that statement I knew she’d be fine.
Agreed about the Play-Doh (they call it Play-DOH for a reason). I always thought it was crap when I was a little kid.
You are completely wrong about Play-Doh. It’s been a successful brand name product for generations because kids love it. Can you name a brand name for clay? Clay is boring and kids hate it. Clay is the brussel sprouts of toys.
Ping
Nickelodeon has a show with gay characters.
You don't want kids to watch any TV that you do not control.
Grandma has bought a lot of toys, but my two grandsons favorite game is bank robber. I hold up the bank, steal play money, and run to my hideout, they, armed with toy guns, find me and put me in jail. I stay in jail a short time, break out and start again.
Teach your child to read using Phonics, and read read read together.
3 years old is not too young to start.
Blankets and boxes = tents and forts.
Beans and macaroni, Elmer’s glue and cardboard = beautiful mosaics!
Storebought toys: Whack-A-Mole was a favorite when my boy was 3.
I’ve got an 8 year old and one on the way. We rarely turn the TV on and when we do, it’s something like “The Waltons” or “Little House on the Prairie”. Today’s kid shows are trash. Trading is paramount in this house. At least 20 minutes a day. We started accumulating so many books we were running out of space so one Christmas, my daughter got a Kindle and now downloads as many books as she pleases. We keep the classics in traditional book form though. Did you realize most children’s classics are being or have been eliminated from the school’s due to Common Core? She attends a private school that still uses & believes in classic literature but for those whose children don’t, I highly recommend buying your kids all the classic kids books. Fiction helps them develop an imagination as well as the critical thinking skills that help them problem-solve later in life.
Netflix is worth it. My kids love the good old fashioned violence in the original Loony Toons and Disney movies.
card games. card games, card games. GoFish for the little ones and expand into war, hearts, rummy as they get older. there’s SO MUCH INTERACTION that goes on around the table when you play cards with the plus of working on counting and memory skills!
when they get older, if they are lucky, they’ll have a grandma who will teach them to play pinochle and poker!
I had grandsons visiting recently, and they had a great time with something new I had bought, “Amazin’ Marbles” by Ideal Toys. There are various types of blocks with channels and holes for building marble races.
The 3-year-old was more interested in just stacking the blocks, but the 7-year-old and especially the 5-year-old really got into it. The 10-month-old just wanted to eat everything. :)
In the 1970s, after all of the family Christmas packages were opened, etc., I noticed my 3-year-old niece was missing. I walked into the kitchen and found her. She was sitting in a corner of the room playing — not with the $$$ of toys she and the other kids got — but playing with the empty boxes stuff came in.
I thought — she is enjoying the boxes because she is only limited by her own imagination to create whatever she desired.
When I was a kid, Play-Doh was something that you extruded through a plastic device. Modeling clay was what you used when you wanted to create something.
But the Play-Doh smelled good!
We have budgies and the kids have a ton of fun designing and making little play houses with me for them. We use cardboard and construction paper. They love watching them play in them and then tear them up.