Toys "R" Us and Save the Children Launch Fundraising Campaign to Help Kids in Need

Toys R Us' Play with Purpose campaign is supporting Save the Children's early childhood development programs such as Early Steps to School Success, Literacy/Healthy Choices and the Summer Boost Initiative. These programs help children in some of America's most underprivileged areas grow. Toys R Us will provide "play packs" filled with toys that build and encourage socialization skills. Additionally, the pack includes materials to educate parents on the benefits of engaging the children during play. Play can help children create developmental skills, build confidence, and bring out the imagination, which are considered the building blocks to success. This aids in overcoming behavioral issues and improves independent learning. Play is the foundation for learning throughout life. When children pretend play from 8 to 17 months old, they are more likely to a higher intellect at age 5 than those who do not. Young children benefit from interaction, talking, facial expressions and hand gestures, and a childhood without them can lead to disparities in learning and behavior. Even ten minutes of play a day can improve a child’s performance and encourage thinking and successfully control behavior. Toys R Us provides toys because of the multitude of benefits that they cause including helping children reach a higher level of intellect later in life.

Reference:

Toys"R"us(R) and save the children launch fundraising campaign to help kids in need #PlayWithPurpose. (2016, Feb 17). PR Newswire Retrieved from http://ezproxy.lib.uconn.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/1765564210?accountid=14518

Playing number board games supports 5-year-old children’s early mathematical development

Children begin to develop mathematical skills at a young age. In doing this, they have a better chance of having knowledge once they begin school. Systems were created to test out whether or not playing board games helped children. The ability of a child to be able to combine magnitudes of real numbers is important for the numeric development, which can be represented in two ways: logarithmic and linear representation. Change in logarithm to linear representation occurred with increasing age and experience with numbers, although children at an early age may only demonstrate a nonlinear magnitude. Many board games were created that would involve shapes and numbers of all sorts, which would indicate how advanced a child was mathematically. The results of these board games establish that playing numbered board games does support a child’s development of basic number knowledge and arithmetical skills. Although, depending on what game is played, the results may vary and support different skills.

Reference

Elofsson, Gustafson, Samuelsson, & Träff. (2016). Playing number board games supports 5-year-old children’s early mathematical development. Journal of Mathematical Behavior, 43, 134-147.

Space to play

This article is about how there are many ways to play in the children’s new permanent exhibit Beyond Spaceship earth. Kids that are starters, stuff a flight bag. You can do space suit. You can use to horse to clean up floating droplets of spilled grape juice. If you are younger or shorter, you can crawl into a confined area and tightened some bolts. There are also plenty of interesting artifacts to contemplate as well: notebooks, a NASA selection letter, a flag from the Gemini 8, and everyday items they use. Of course, pop culture is also given its due, with displays featuring an actual Chris Pine/”Star Trek”. The international Space Station in kid friendly form is at its most   impactful in a subtle pairing that beautifully captures humanity’s desire for flight, our ongoing quest to reach out to what’s next and the appeal of both science and art that should be fostered in young people. It is impressive enough to have astronaut Roger Chaffee Apollo inflight suit behind glass. There is a simple airplane with wings, clearly not fight ready and a colorful star surrounded by ripples of color. In the Children’s museum, “Beyond Spaceship Earth there is a display in the Schaefer planetarium and space object theater. It shows that combines planetarium projected images and video footage a live actor, and the capsule itself on a rotating/rising stage. It’s one of two shows performed throughout the day. Kids and adults were both confused by a not-very intuitive Bioreactive interactive area. The exhibit also includes an Indiana Astronaut wall of fame with interactive screens to learn more about these local connections that it makes an effective advertisement for Purdue University where many studied. 

Harry, L. (2016). Space to play. Indianapolis Business Journal, 37(22), 37-38.

Socio-economic Enviroment, Area Facilities and Obesity and Physical Inactivity among Children

There are many risk factors that cause chronic diseases that occur in a persons adult life that were present as a child. Obesity that is present during childhood increases several processes such as type 2 diabetes, chronic back pain, cardiovascular diseases. There seems to be a association between
obesity and absence of physical activity in childhood to the socio-economic context of neighbourhood of residence. The article evaluated whether socio-economic environment and obesity and physical inactivity in children factors are related causes of  household socio-economic position and area facilities. They had two indicators of the socio-economic context of neighborhood of residence based on wealth and deprivation. They were estimated in a sample of 727 children and adolescents residents in Madrid. The results were that the obesity prevalence was 3.79 times higher in areas of living in deprived areas than among those living in non-deprived areas and 2.38 higher among subjects living in less wealthy areas than in those living in wealthier areas. The availability of retail shops in subjects’ neighborhood of residence were not related to the inactivity.Neither neighborhood socio-economic context nor availability of sports facilities was related to physical inactivity.  In Madrid socio-economic context of neighborhood of residence shows a relationship with obesity but not with physical inactivity among children.

Reference

"The European Journal of Public Health." Socio-economic Environment, Area Facilities and Obesity and Physical Inactivity among Children | European Journal of Public Health. Oxford University, 16 Nov. 2015. Web. 08 Dec. 2016.

Climate Change: Child's Play?

Climate change: Child’s play? Is about how climate can affect the opportunity for children to play outdoors. Playing outside is very important for the physical and mental development of children. If children have a lack of playing outside than they won’t be as active and healthy as the kids that do experience playing outside. Climate can be affected by many different factors including, increasing air pollution, and extreme temperatures. Children will become less active and are limited to ways to play if they are indoors. Overall I concluded that outdoor play equals a better life. This is why it’s extremely important to keep our outside environments as clean as possible. Climate change affects many different every day resources to keep children happy and healthy.  Climate can affect infrastructure such as healthcare, education, food and water security, and housing. We need to make a change now in order to prevent decreasing outdoor play for future generations to come. What would you think about your kids not being able to play outside like you did as a child? It wouldn’t be fair. Playing outside is essential to child development and is a necessity for a child to grow and have fun. Climate change is dangerous for our children and we now know that climate change is a big factor of allowing kids to play outside.

Reference

Prasad, T. (2016). Climate change: Child's play? Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, 52(4), 471-472.

Supporting Child Play

Child play is very essential for brain, physical, and social development.  It does not matter whether the child plays independently, with other children, or with a parent.  Play helps build stronger relationships and teaches young children necessary life skills.  They can learn how to work together, negotiate, and resolve conflicts while playing.  Playing especially helps with language development involving the amount and frequency of language used.  The exposure of television has an opposite effect that playing has.  Television leads to the decreased amount and frequency of language spoken by parents with their kids.  A study found in JAMA Pediatrics, had researchers test kids on the impact of using electronic toys versus non-electronic toys for children to play with.  The researchers found that when playing with electronic toys, children had a decreased amount and frequency of language used between children and parents.  That being said if children continue to play with electronic toys they will decrease the quantity and quality of the language they speaks.  In my opinion it is much better to use and rely on traditional toys rather than the new electronic toys. Next time you go purchasing toys for children to play with consider buying traditional non-electronic toys including blocks, puzzles, dolls, train sets, etc.  Playing with toys is essential in order to help children develop learning skills, language and communication in order to develop.

Reference

Moreno, M. (2016). Supporting Child Play. JAMA Pediatrics, 170(2), 184.

Young Children Learning from Touch Screens: Taking a Wider View

Touch screen devices have become very common in American children’s lives. Areas of focus where existing research shares issues among children under the age of three are how well children use information learned from screens to reason about events off-screen, using object retrieval and word learning tasks. Another area measures the impact of interactive screens on parent-child interactions and story comprehension during reading time. Touch screens exist everywhere and many parents turn to them for distraction purposes. Infants are able to learn new objects and actions  from the information on the screen. They even are able to learn from the words they already know. Most households own smartphones with children. Studies show that 96.6% of children use devices before their first birthday. Research also found that children respond better with interaction. Young children were more successful in learning words and locations of hidden toys from screens when they were involved in specific contingent interactions, opposed to passively watching events unfold. Other research focused on learning during story time and identified the effects of screens and social interaction. It was found that children’s comprehension from the book was significantly higher than from the iPad. As one gets older, book advantages fade however. The individual is able to use the iPad in other ways that they may have not been able to do as a child. Their knowledge grows as age and experience do.

Reference

Lovato, S., & Waxman, S. (2016). Young Children Learning from Touch Screens: Taking a Wider View. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1078.