8 reasons you should play with your child

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K ROK eBook Book No. 2 Playing Mr. Rokenbok has... Eight Reasons You Should Play with Your Child by Paul Eichen, Toymaker This is where fun and learning overlap... to Learn

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Eight Reasons Why You Should Play with Your Child Did you know that playing with your child could help determine whether your son or daughter will be successful later in life? If you need motivation to get down on the floor and start playing, here are eight powerful reasons:

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Page 1: 8 Reasons You Should Play with Your Child

K

ROKeBook

Book No. 2 Playing

Mr. Rokenbok has...

Eight Reasons You Should Play with Your Child

by Paul Eichen, Toymaker

“This is where fun and learning overlap...”

to Learn

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ROKeBook

Intro

Mr. Rokenbok has..

Eight Reasons You Should Play with Your Child

Published by

Rokenbok Toy Company215 US Highway 101, Suite 101Solana Beach, CA 92075(858) 259-4433

www.rokenbok.com

Follow us on Twitter

Join us on Facebook

See Rokenbok at YouTube

Write to us at: [email protected]

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It’s not just child’s playROK

eBook

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Eight Reasons Why You Should Play with Your Child

Did you know that playing with your child could help determine whether your son or daughter will be successful later in life? If you need motivation to get down on the floor and start playing, here are eight powerful reasons:

1. Playing can boost your child’s chances of succeeding in school.

The evidence is overwhelming that children’s experiences at home, including their playtime, are absolutely critical when they enter school. All those hours of fun and games play a crucial role in determining whether children are not only prepared for school, but also whether they will flourish in the classroom for many years to come.

Eight Reasons You Should Play with Your Child

Playing to Learn

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Research has shown that successful parents promote their children’s learning in these three ways:

They give their children age-appropriate toys and books.1. They respond to their children’s questions and explorations.2. They frequently join their child in learning activities such as reading, storytelling and 3. playing with toys.

2. Playing can enhance your child’s vocabulary and IQ.

Want your child to have a rich vocabulary? Studies have shown that the ideal way to develop a child’s vocabulary is through every-day conversations. Talking with your child while playing make-believe, for instance, or building a sand castle can be tremendously helpful to your child’s development and even her IQ.

Here’s why: Language is a key component of intelligence because it’s the chief way that children learn about the world around them. The size of a person’s vocabulary is a huge part of what IQ tests measure.

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3. Playing can boost your child’s emotional IQ. While you don’t hear as much about it, a child’s EQ (emotional quotient) is just as important as his or her IQ. Without emotional intelligence, a brilliant child could ace his SAT test, but fail in his personal and professional life.

So what fosters EQ? Playing. Through play, kids are rehearsing for their future lives by adopting roles whether it’s being a parent, a doctor, a paleontologist or a friend. Through play, kids explore societal roles, as well as the viewpoints of others, and ultimately this helps them deal with relationships and career choices as they move through life.

4. Playing can build a child’s confidence.

As any parent can tell you, a child’s abilities grow with age. A three-year-old, for instance, might be able to count three blocks, but if you add two more blocks to the pile, he will probably have to start over before he can appreciate that he now has five blocks. Rudimentary understanding of number lines and other math concepts won’t come until kindergarten.

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An excellent way to help your son or daughter develop their abilities is through play. To appreciate how this is possible, you first must understand a famous concept called the “zone of proximal development,” which was coined years ago by Lev Vygotsky, a highly celebrated developmental psychologist. The pioneering psychologist concluded that children face a range of tasks that they can’t quite accomplish on their own, but with the help of a parent or another adult, they can master the hurdles.

Here’s an example: You couldn’t expect a four-year-old to single handedly put together a Rokenbok monorail. But with your help, he could snap the pieces together and eventually he’d be able to construct the set himself.

Helping children navigate these oh-so-close development milestones through play can reduce a child’s frustration level and keep him on the developmental path of reaching his potential.

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Just be careful as you play that you don’t take over. Follow your child’s lead. If your son wants to line up all the orange and blue sticks in the Tinker Toy set don’t try to push him into building a windmill.

5. Playing can improve a child’s motivation and lead to greater performance in school.

Helping children make incremental progress in mastering such things as maneuvering a remote-control vehicle or painting can help them to become self motivated. Being internally motivated is far better for a child than being driven to perform through rewards (bribes) from parents.

Studies have shown that kids who are self motivated are far more likely to excel in school because they believe they possess greater control over their academic success. 6. Playing with your child can connect you emotionally.

Some children are chatty and will happily talk until you’re exhausted from listening. Others, more often boys, will be reluctant to share much of anything. Ask how school went with

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one of these kids and he may typically reply, “Okay.” Playing may encourage a child to open up as the focus no longer seems trained on him, but rather on a LEGO spacecraft or a Rokenbok obstacle course. 7. Playing can make life less stressful.

Especially as kids grow older, they tend to be overbooked. On too many nights, dinner may be eaten in the car between scouts, soccer practice and piano lessons. While some highly scheduled children thrive from all the activities, studies show that many kids with more time for free play are better able to handle pressures and stress in their lives.

8. Playing can help put learning into context.

Academics have strongly questioned the effectiveness of young children memorizing facts and figures with flash cards, drills and videos. Sure you can put a young kid in front of a computer, for instance, and learn some Spanish words, but chances are the

knowledge will disappear fairly quickly.

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Parents naturally want their kids to be smart and even if they wonder about the wisdom of pushing a four-year-old to learn to read, it’s hard to resist when everybody else seems to be prepping their young children for Harvard.

Studies show, however, that learning is far more effective when a parent slips it into everyday activities such as playing. A child can absorb a great deal about measurements and shapes by helping a parent bake a chocolate cake. Building a log cabin out of Popsicle sticks will introduce a child to all sorts of mathematical and spatial concepts.

Watching an educational video can be fun, but it’s just not as powerful as playing with a pile of blocks, a menagerie of stuffed animals or a box brimming with buttons, felt and ribbon.

Building an ideal learning environment At Rokenbok, we’ve made it our mission to understand construction play. Good

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construction toys are easy to play with, capture the imagination, and offer increasing challenge over time. We’ve waded through an exhaustive amount of academic research that explains why construction toys should be in every child’s toy box. (see: The Science Behind the Benefits of Construction Toys). What our Rokenbok community tells us is the most unique feature of our construction system is that it gets the whole family playing together; older and younger siblings, friends, and parents (especially dads). We are proud that we have designed a family activity that captures the imagination of a three year while keeping Dad and Mom engaged and challenged too. The design of our system is sophisticated and carefully considered in every detail. We invite you to explore what we have to offer, because it takes awhile to see all the possibilities and benefits. The closer you look at our toys, the more you will see our values and our mission. We believe we have created the ideal learning environment for tomorrow’s engineers and architects, designers and technologists, managers and leaders.

Rokenbok is playtime well spent.

Paul Eichen, a.k.a. Mr. RokenbokFounder, Rokenbok Toy Company

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References

1. Parents’ Role in Fostering Young Children’s Learning and Language Development, Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda, Eileen T. Rodriquez, Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development, 2008. The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds, Kenneth R. Ginsburg MD, the Committee on Communications, Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health, American Academy of Pediatrics.

Playful Parenting, Lawrence J. Cohen, Random House, 2001.

2. Einstein Never Used Flash Cards, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Rodale, 2004.

3. Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ, Daniel Goleman, Bantam, 1997.

4. Mind in Society: Development of Higher Psychological Processes (14th edition), L.S. Vygotsky, Michael Cole, Vera John-Steiner, Sylvia Scribner, Ellen Souberman, Harvard University Press, 1978.

Lev Vygotsky,Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Vygotsky.

Scaffolding Children’s Learning: Vygotsky and Early Childhood Education, L.E. Berk and A. Winsler, National Association for the Education of Young Children, 1995.

Einstein Never Used Flash Cards, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Rodale, 2004.

5. Parental Predictors of Motivational Orientation in Early Adolescence: A Longitudinal Study, Phyllis Bronstein, Golde S. Ginsburg, Ingrid S. Herrera, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 2005.

7. The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds, Kenneth R. Ginsburg MD, the Committee on Communications, Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health, American Academy of Pediatrics.

8. Extreme Parenting, Aliss Quart, The Atlantic, July/August 2006.

Taking Play Seriously, Robin Marantz Henig, The New York Times, Feb. 17, 2008.