Pillars to enhance play

From the Good News Network, “Science-Backed Tips for Maximizing Play Time With Kids“. Thankfully, I do try to incorporate all of these when playing with Fleur.

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Pillar One: Active

Stay “active” as you play and interact with your child, for example, by incorporating literary and STEM elements into your speech and interactions.

Zosh said this could mean counting the apples out loud as you put them in your basket at the grocery store or asking your child what letter each block starts with as you build a tower. She also said asking lots of questions — such as “What would happen if we mixed these blue and yellow paints together?” or “What might happen if we stack the red square block on top of the yellow triangle block?” — can be helpful, as well.

Pillar Two: Engaged

“Try to limit distractions as much as possible, including background television and your own smartphone use,” Hassinger-Das said. “These types of distractions are sometimes unavoidable, but they do have the potential to take away from these high-quality times with your child. Focusing and staying engaged during play can help you make the most of these interactions.”

Pillar Three: Meaningful

Try building on topics the child is already interested in during play. If they like dinosaurs, you could suggest a make-believe scenario where you dig for dinosaur fossils at the playground. Or, you can integrate information about dinosaurs like counting how many bones they have and what they ate.

“If you are reading a book set in a different state, get out a globe or a map app and explore where the state is and how the weather there is different from where you live,” Zosh said. “Helping children build connections helps them weave together a rich world of understanding.”

Pillar Four: Socially interactive

The researchers advised letting your child lead in play time while you offer support along the way. For example, let your child decide what to build with blocks while asking questions like, “What would happen if you placed that block in a different direction?” or “How many more blocks do you think it would take to build a tower as tall as you?”

Pillar Five: Iterative

Children are naturally scientific thinkers — they like to experiment, see what happens, and try again and again until something works. The researchers advised giving your children opportunities to guess what will happen, conduct “experiments,” make up new words to favorite songs, and make mistakes. Every mistake leads to learning.

Pillar Six: Joyful

Finally, making playtime joyful can be done in many ways, including incorporating elements of surprise.

“Playing with shadows and asking which one is bigger or how you can make your shadow grow or shrink is one way to foster surprise and joy,” Hassinger-Das said. “Similarly, think about what helps your child connect with whatever brings them joy, from construction with a cardboard box to playing vet with their stuffed animals.”

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Potential vs kinetic energy

As the swing reaches its highest point it has all potential energy. When it reaches the lowest, it is all kinetic energy. As it moves up, the pull of gravity changes the kinetic into potential.

Fleur is full of potential energy. She breaks into converting it into kinetic energy at a whim. Usually it is predictable:

• To get the cat
• To go play on the playset
• To pet a dog
• To be chased
• To get into the street

Tonight she caught me by surprise. After bath, she wanted to read the Pout-Pout Fish. And right before the kissy part she leaves the room and tells me to get up. I try to finish, but she is insistent. So, I do and she takes off. It was her favorite route in a circle.

Coefficient of friction

One of the considerations for letting Fleur go slide is the pants she wears. Something I didn’t know before being a parent was different pants have different coefficients of friction.

The force required to move two sliding surfaces over each other, divided by the force holding them together. It is reduced once the motion has started.

theFREEdictionary

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And drag.

Every time I let her go with the slicker pants, I chide myself for not having made the better physics choice. She flies down the slide.

It is one of those designs with a bump in the middle. She can go so fast she gets enough air to land just before careening off the end.

With pants providing enough friction, she doesn’t get too much speed. And I don’t feel the need to be too vigilant.

Valkyrie cry

Girls are princesses… and Knights by Danielle Pioli is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

Fleur now has what I can only describe as a war cry. She lets out this piercing cry just before charging at someone. Usually, she does this towards the cat who flees in terror. (Puffed up tail.) When we play chase, she will use it on me.

She just needs a sword and shield and a bigger flail.

The dolphin squeal

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The toddler enjoys playing with others. When she is excited, she lets out the cutest little high pitched stuttering squeal. It reminds me of the dolphin from Flipper. (I wrote in the bio that I am old.)

I first heard it in her excitement at learning the cat was near. For a while it was the cat’s warning sign the new walker was on her way.

It comes out while horseplaying. The best, is chasing her around the house saying, “I am going to tickle you!” She does her dolphin squeal and runs away. I had a proud dad moment when she paused to try and close a door behind her to impede my chase. Great tactic.

Over the weekend, we attended a baby shower. The hosts have a friendly dog who stands just under eye-level for the toddler. The dog licked Fleur’s face because, naturally, there was food still on it. That. THAT. Got the longest squeal I have heard yet. And a quarter hour of following the dog around trying to get in her face and receive another face lick.

I am finding the kiddo is a daredevil. Things I kind of expected to be shocking and make her scared don’t. She instead lets out a squeal and wants more. Greaaaaaaaaaaat. Dopamine addict.

 

We are being watched

I noticed a while back Fleur would track my own attention habits. She also lingered on things, even returned to them well after I stopped.

Yu and IU colleague Linda Smith evaluated attention span in infants at play. The team employed head-mounted cameras to track the eye movements and gazes of three dozen parents and infants aged 11 to 13 months, who were turned loose in a play space and asked to simply play as they would at home with brightly colored plastic objects.

This kind of “free play” data enabled Yu and Smith to chart childhood concentration and learning in ways that traditional experiments involving a single child at work on a computer or other task could not, notes cognitive neuroscientist Sam Wass, of Cambridge University and the University of East London. “They show that what the parent is paying attention to, minute by minute and second by second, actually influences what the child is paying attention to,” he notes. “These kinds of social influences on attention are potentially very important [and] most scientists tend to ignore them.”

When parents paid attention to a toy during play, the infants also continued to focus on it—even after the mom or dad had turned elsewhere. The authors likened this effect to the way a parent will initially hold the back of a bike while their child learns to peddle before letting go and sending them off on their own.

We also try to label things to which Fleur is paying attention. And have also noticed the problem the article describes of not having much success getting her to shift her attention to something.