News

May 29, 2020

Creating Play Rich Environments: Incorporating DAP at Home

About

As children’s first teachers, parents and caregivers play a vital role in children’s healthy development. While it may sound like a big task, the first step is simple: incorporate developmentally appropriate activities into your daily routines! Consider using the play activities listed below or create your own to turn your home into a play-rich early learning environment!

Everyday Play

If you are looking for opportunities to play every day, start by looking around your house and identifying items that can be playfully repurposed! Pots, cans, pillows, and curtains. The opportunities are endless! Continue reading below for a few guiding examples.

Infant: Household Item Play

While babies can’t feed themselves, that doesn’t mean they can’t practice! With supervision, give your baby their own spoon at meal time or give them a child-safe bowl and spoon to play with. You can also give your baby blocks and balls to strengthen their grip, practice their holding skills, and improve dexterity.

Preschool: Dramatic Play

Instead of getting rid of old clothes or household items, make a costume play box! Try collecting notepads, sleep masks, blankets, or other extra items and watch as your child brings a new character to life right in front of you! For extra fun, ask other household members to join or dress up yourself!

Kindergarten: Snack Time

During meal or snack time, invite your kindergartener into the kitchen to help you read a recipe, measure, mix, and pour ingredients. Ask your child to try reading the words on ingredient boxes or to try finding ingredients that start with a particular letter, like “e” for eggs! You can even incorporate science by exploring how solid ingredients mix together with liquid ingredients!

Outdoor and Nature Play

A healthy relationship with nature and the outdoors is important for lifelong physical, emotional, and mental health. To help build this relationship, find play opportunities that are outside, such as: puddle jumping, copying rain sounds, or making rock towers. Continue reading below for more outdoor play opportunities!

Infant: Outdoor Observations

As an infant, your child is taking in new sights, sounds, smells, and sensations. Broaden your child’s horizon by taking a stroll through nature, narrating what you see, smell, hear, and feel during the journey. This will expose your baby to new vocabulary through a positive outdoor experience.

Preschool: Muddy Maneuvers

Even though mud is messy and slippery, it provides a lot of great play opportunities for you and your child. Let your preschooler take off their shoes; squish mud between their toes and fingers; make handprints, footprints, and mudpies; and more! Just bring some water and towels to clean up after!

Kindergarten: Nature Hunt

Take a walk in nature with your child and try to find local animals, plants, and bugs. If you have them, bring binoculars to see how far away you can see and a magnifying glass to get a closer look at bugs and plants. You can research information online about local plantlife and wildlife to create a scavenger hunt and list of fun facts! For example, what type of animal is it? What does it eat?

More Information

To learn more about opportunities for play, visit the Playful Pittsburgh Collaborative website.

News

Early Learning: Myths vs. Facts

Did you know that 90 percent of the brain is developed by the age of five?

It is common knowledge that early childhood is an important period of each person’s life where children learn lifelong skills such as counting, reading, and writing. Although the brain continues to develop and change into adulthood, the first eight years of a child’s life build the foundation for future learning, development, and success.

However, there are many misconceptions about early learning, especially when it comes to what early learning looks like. To learn more, read through the following myths and facts.

Early Learning Myths

Myth 1:

Play is something that professionals and caregivers use to fill time. There aren’t any benefits to play, but children enjoy it.

Myth 2:

Academic skills are the most important element of early learning. At home and in early childhood programs, young children should be focusing on learning letters, shapes, and numbers.

Myth 3:

For it to be beneficial, play has to have a purpose. It would be best if a parent or educator guided the child through play and supervised the entire session.

Myth 4:

You should wait until your child is a bit older to start playing. Babies aren’t old enough to play.

Early Learning Facts

Fact 1:

Meaningful play experiences help your child build background knowledge, imagination, and rational thought that enables academic skill development. In fact, play is the primary way your child uses language and math concepts.

Fact 2:

In addition to learning academic skills, early childhood programs focus heavily on practicing social, emotional, and physical skills that support children’s success in and out of the classroom.

Fact 3:

While caregiver-child play is important, unsupervised child-led play helps children become independent and make decisions.

Fact 4:

Babies love to play and it’s a great way to bond! Even a simple game of peekaboo can leave your baby giggling and smiling.

News

May 27, 2020

Developmentally Appropriate Parenting Series

Creating high-quality learning experiences at the earliest stages of your child’s life

As an early childhood nonprofit, Trying Together recognizes that a child’s parent is their first and most important caregiver.

From the moment a caregiver meets their child, whether that is through birth, adoption, fostering, or guardianship, parents use their instincts and experiences to guide their personal caregiving style. Caregivers’ perspectives are valuable and can be especially powerful in supporting children’s long-term success when paired with research and science on the way that children learn and develop.

Evidence-based research shows that children’s brains develop rapidly from zero to age five. Through consistent and caring daily interactions with their children, parents and other caregivers are able to build healthy relationships with and best support the early development and learning of their children. When children grow up in safe environments with engaged, supportive caregivers, the positive effects are felt throughout their lifetime. But where do caregivers go to find information and resources that help them do this?

Through the family resource series Developmentally Appropriate Parenting, Trying Together assists parents and caregivers like you in creating high-quality learning experiences at the earliest stages of your child’s life.

About the Series

Developmentally Appropriate Parenting is a family resource content series developed by Trying Together as an effort to empower caregivers to create high-quality experiences at the earliest stages of their child’s life. To do this, we are developing digital and print content for families that covers critical early childhood topics.

To stay up-to-date on available materials, sign up to receive our newsletter.

Featured Content

Use the list below to navigate through each series topic:

Request free printed materials from our Developmentally Appropriate Parenting Series.

Available Languages

Caregivers viewing our online resources can use the “Select Language” button in the top right corner of the screen to access the information in their native language.

Printed Materials

Request free printed materials from our Developmentally Appropriate Parenting Series. Printed materials are available in English and Spanish.

More Information

For questions about the Developmentally Appropriate Parenting series, email Trying Together at: info@tryingtogether.org.