All that glitters is not gold...

Disclaimer: Amazon Toys department might get upset with this post.

During the early childhood, it is important to help your children manage and control their bodies.

While we think their life is easy, we do not realize that they are actually working harder then we do. Remember, they have to learn how to use a very complicated and rapidly growing tiny body! Coordination and balance, fine and gross motor skills, as well as processing the information obtained from tactile senses.

There are four different stages of child development (according to Jean Piaget):

I. Sensorimotor (Birth to 2 years old). Children learn the world through their senses and the manipulation of objects.

II. Preoperational (2-7 years old). Children develop memory and imagination. Understanding past and future.

III. Concrete (7-11 years old). Children develop understanding of the external world and that not everyone shares their own thoughts and believes.

IV. Formal (11+). Childeren start using logics to solve the problems and plan for future.

What’s the best game that teaches all the skills? It’s a game with you! You do not need to invest a fortune in toys or pay for expensive child-minding classes, like I did when I had Misch. Don't you dare blaming a first-time parent. They are not as thrifty...yet. With the second one, the budget become tighter and there comes an "aha" moment…just about anything from your daily life works:).

How do I know it works? I recently got to meet a community physiotherapist. She helps people settle back at home after their hospitalization. She helps her patient to find everyday life things to practice physio at home. For instance, she uses canned food instead of weights. She also suggest her patients to put salt and sugar further out of reach so that they would stretch their bodies as soon as they need the spice.

Ari doesn’t play many toys at home (his favourites are ride-ons and small cars). However, he loves to go through drawers taking everything out and putting it in. Sometimes even wearing a drushlyakJ (see below:D). My advice, don’t shut close your drawers, just remove any unsafe items that can hurt them. And yes, that creates a lot of mess, but it also teaches them a lot of things.

One of our favourite games is with fruit and vegetables. We love to take a bowl of apples and oranges (avocados etc). We then roll them to each other, balancing them on our hands, heads other objects. Not smart. I bet you different. This is what it will teach them:

- gross motor skills: picking up, dropping, sorting, carrying, throwing, rolling

- fine motor skills: use cardamom stems to push them into the apple and create a blow fish!

- coordination and balance: balancing it on the head while sitting, standing or walking or putting it on the plate and walking with it.

- tactile: touching the skin of an apple and an orange and comparing them, squeezing hard and soft fruit.

- cognitive: learning to count 1,2,3 and so on (3 fruit, 2 apples, 1 orange), learning fruit, learning colours and shapes, and, of course, smelling them!!!

…and the list is literally endless! And that’s just with an apple and an orange!

So here comes my so bad so good advice. Ditch all the fancy toys! The best gift you can give you kids is your time!

And if I am wrong…well, you are entitled to your own opinion;)