What Children Learn from Games
18 Months-3 Years
Younger children begin by learning the simple yet, vitally necessary keys to everyday life through play and games. This age group learns to explore through games such as; sandbox, child-size play furniture, play appliances and utensils, handmade materials, doll furniture. For example a simple jungle gym has so many aspects for these young minds to explore and learn from. This age group also learns:
- Symbolic Representation (something visible that represents something else that is invisible)-simple dress-up clothes, stuffed animals dolls, tea sets. Children are able to learn necessary life skills such as how to dress themselves by playing.
- Problem Solving-various size boxes, simple puzzles, games, stringing large beads, take-apart toys with parts that snap together, construction toys that snap together
- Creativity-clay and modeling dough, blocks, large crayons, non-electric trains, blackboard and chalk, simple musical instruments, finger paints, safety scissors, paper and pencils
- Language-picture books, children's magazines, tapes of stories
3-6 Years
- Social and Intellectual-additional dress-up outfits, bathing and feeding doll, puppets and theaters, store-keeping toys, toy phone and toy clock, playhouses, housekeeping toys, toy soldiers, dolls for dressing and undressing, large puzzles, outdoor play equipment, board games
- Form and Spacial Relationships-simple puzzles, set of plastic measuring cups, large tricycles, sleds, cookie cutters, wagons, scooters, swings, backyard gym sets and jungle gyms, empty cardboard boxes, seesaws, monkey bars, rope swings
6-9 Years
- Creative Problem Solving-costumes, doll houses, play villages, miniature people and vehicles, magic sets, art materials
- Spacial Relationships (moving confidently through space)-large bicycles, ice and roller skates, pogo stick, scooter
9-12 Years
- Physical and Intellectual-model kits, crafts, bicycles, rubber horseshoes, pogo sticks, ice and roller skates, grooming and housekeeping toys, rope, ladders, stilts, rackets, chemistry and other science kits, frisbees, magic sets, advanced construction sets and handicraft kits, toy models, puzzles, basketball equipment, building sets, jigsaw puzzles, books, tool benches, computers
- Exploration-compasses, magnifying glasses, microscopes and telescopes, magnets, bicycles
