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Preschool Activities – No Toys for a Day!
By Lara | March 17, 2008
By Mary Green
If you have little children, chances are your house is packed to the brim with hundreds, if not thousands of dollars of toys. It seems like everyone you know just has to buy them something for Christmas, their birthday and every other holiday under the sun, and of course as a parent you have to top what everyone else does for your kids. By the time they are 3 years old the house is packed with no end in site.
Finally some parents are getting sick of it, and even fewer of those are the parents who are walking away from toys altogether. As great as toys are, maybe, just maybe they are too much. One mom has this to say about what happens when toys are taken away:
“It was nice not to have anything the for the kids to fight over, instead they used their imaginations a lot more and played together a lot more. We only did it for a couple of days, and it actually started because of behavioral problems, but after the first day it was just more relaxing.”
What makes toys so great anyways? Often times you hear people say, “my kids are so spoiled, they have everything” but in all honesty does that really make them spoiled or over materialistic? If you think about it, there might actually be a point to all this non toy stuff. Imagine, spending time as a family, without the kids fighting over who’s turn it is to play with the toy train. Now of course kids will still fight, but you won’t know how much less, unless you try it out.
Another mom says: “we took toys away a little at a time, until there weren’t any left, it was only at this time we noticed the kids had nothing left to fight about, and finally starting working together to have fun”.
Now with the huge investment, and everything that toys do add to your lives it might just be crazy to get rid of them altogether. But maybe we could all do one day a month or something close to that, to teach our kids what it is like to have no toys, to have to play together to have fun, and what it would be like if they were like children from third world countries who have no toys.
We might actually encourage them to empathize with others and give some of their toys away.
In no way do I mean to criticize the existence of toys. They are wonderful tools that can be a great part of teaching your children, as well as interacting with them and spending time together doing something you and your child love. The recommendation here is periodically take a step back from toys and enjoy the other side of the fence, because who knows the grass might be greener!
If you do decide to give up toys for a day or even more, let us know at http://www.earlychildhoodfun.com/blog or come check us out and get more great tips for Early Childhood Fun.
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Topics: Activities, Family & Kids, Homeschooling, Life with Toddlers, Mommie Stuff, Parenting, Preschoolers | No Comments »
