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So, when the house looks like a bomb went off with toys everywhere, it is time to create systems and rules to help your little ones learn to clean up. This starts with us as parents. The children can’t do it on their own. Today most families have an abundance of toys. Start with cleaning out the ones they no longer play with or are broken. Then create a place for every toy. If there is not enough room within the environment, or there are just too many toys, consider a toy rotation. Put the other toys in totes at the top of the closet or in the attic and make a plan to rotate them. In my home with a childcare program, we rotate the toys by season and theme. Every family needs to figure out what works for them. 
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One of the most difficult things to figure out when planning a play space for our littles is how many objects go into a basket at one time. For instance, should the car basket have 25 cars or 10 cars? This again depends on the ages of the children. With my littles in childcare, ten small cars are plenty, but when my grandchildren who are four and six years old come over, we end up getting more cars out. We have the same issue with the magnet tiles. The older children want to create more elaborate creations which need more tiles. It may require a little time and adjustments to figure out what works in your environment. 
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Next, decide on several times of the day when everyone will stop and pick up. In our house, we pick up before we go outside {midmorning}, before lunch, before nap, before dinner, and at the end of the day. Include rules for projects that are in process, possibly a safe shelf, this becomes more important with kids five and older. Labeling shelves, and baskets or boxes with pictures is helpful for little ones to be able to figure out where things belong.
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Don’t expect young children to be able to clean up independently the first time. It is a learning process. Making it a game by beating a song, is a fun way to motivate the children. Ask each child to pick up one type of toy, such as “Jonny pick up all the cars”, “Carl pick up the story books and put them on the shelf”, and “Suzy pick up all the puppets.”  When an adult can break the mess down into categories it is quickly conquered. After working together for several weeks, the kids should be able to be started on cleaning up and the adult should be able to walk away but stay close and redirect if necessary. Over time it will get easier, and the children will need less and less direction. 
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What kinds of homes do toys need? Toy boxes and large baskets only lead to dumping everything to find the missing toy on the bottom of the basket or box, I encourage parents and providers to not use this type of storage. Cube storage is better as is shelving with baskets. The number of toys out at one time is going to depend on the ages of the children. But it comes down to the number of toys need to be a manageable amount for the child/children to put away independently. In our program, we currently have six children under three. We have an eight-cube shelf with four medium-sized baskets that hold Magna tiles, cars, puppets, and blocks, and another smaller basket holds infant explorations activities. The other cubes hold three larger trucks, a shape sorter, a ring stacker, stacking cups, a mirror, a bottle with wooden objects to put in it, and a tray with a wooden balance toy and objects to balance on it. We also have a slightly larger basket with some dress-up materials and scarves in it. A baby doll bed and two dolls. It does get messy while they are all playing but they all know where the toys belong and can clean up when the time comes. We have found that at times when the kids don’t want to clean up it is usually because there is too much out, and they are overwhelmed. These toys are rotated monthly. All current toys do not necessarily get put away when we rotate toys. We watch their play for a few days before the toy rotation making mental notes of what they are playing with and what they aren’t using. 
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But why is it so important to teach this skill? Let’s look at all the skills they are learning when they are cleaning up and putting those toys away. They are learning to match like objects, all the cars go in this basket. They are learning associations; all the baby doll stuff goes in the left bottom cube. They are learning if they want to find the toys the next time, they need to put them away correctly. They are learning cooperation as they work together. The children learn very early on that when they don’t clean up toys get broken, and they trip on them and get hurt. So, by cleaning up they are taking care of the materials they play with, and they are keeping everyone safe.  
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By definition, heuristic means allowing a person to discover or learn something for themselves. Heuristic play, which is often referred to as loose parts play, allows children to learn by exploring everyday objects placed in the environment. This exploration allows children to develop in many areas from building language skills and vocabulary to development of fine motor skills, to learning about basic scientific and math concepts to gross motor skills. Children can explore objects, and concepts creatively with no preconceived ideas of the right or wrong way. As they work together, they build language skills and social skills. Heuristic play is often referred to as Loose-parts play. Loose parts are great for exploring early math concepts such as counting, size, shape, and balance. They allow for the exploration of new scientific concepts from physics to technology, to life science. Basic skills of observation, comparison, classification, measurement, inference, and prediction can easily be included in play. By changing a variable children can experiment with the materials. They learn to understand the world around them while increasing self-sufficiency and building confidence.

Another play object the children enjoy is a wooden tissue box I bought at Micheals Arts and Crafts years ago. We fill it with scarves, which they love to pull out and throw. We have placed fabric letters inside which they pull out and name and we discuss what starts with the letters sound.  We have added different types of fabric inside the box for new sensory experiences. We build on their vocabulary by discussing how each fabric feels and what other things feel the same way. In the fall we fill it with silk leaves which are pulled out, thrown, raked, picked up, counted, sorted, and felt offering a sensory experience too.

Young Children benefit from the use of “exploration baskets”. These are baskets a caregiver fills with objects from around the house. A shiny basket might include a plastic silver Christmas ball, a silver bell, a metal cup, a small metal pitcher, a small metal bowl, a metal spoon, and a plastic mirror. Even a ball of crinkled tin foil is an interesting object to explore. Sit the basket of objects out on a blanket free for them to interact with as they choose. Another type of baskets, I routinely create are various color baskets with different objects all the same color. A blue basket might include a cup, a piece of blue patterned fabric, a blue ball, a pair of blue mittens, a blue cap, and a pretend person in a blue shirt. A cleaning basket might have a small dustpan and broom, a cleaning rag, a scrub brush, and a lint roller or a small feather duster. A younger child would explore and play with the items, but a two or three-year-old might just find it fun to help clean the house.  A cooking basket can be several cooking utensils in a bowl, measuring spoons, and measuring cups. Infants like to taste and touch the objects presented. An older child would benefit from including a pan of dry rice or other sensory filler to be able to mix pour and measure. A pet basket might include a cleaned dog feeding bowl, a few cat or dog toys a collar, a bandana, and a dog brush (I buy new ones to use for the basket and give them to the animals when we are done with the basket.) Including a stuffed cat or dog allows the basket to become a springboard for imaginative dramatic play for the three or four-year-old.  Children love nature baskets with seed pods, pinecones, sticks, rocks, shells, and anything else fun that is available depending on the season. Older children love nature baskets with magnifying glasses to explore the contents.  Just be sure to supervise children with small objects and objects that break into pieces. Use your imagination. Parents are a child’s first teacher. Every parent knows what their child likes.​

Older children can explore more difficult concepts with the materials. Several milk crates and flat boards allow for making structures, bridges, and ramps. Add cars and balls to allow for a different direction of play. Drainage tubing pieces and gutters are also fun to experiment with balls, water, boats, and other small objects. The children learn about gravity, balance, and simple tools.  By experimentation, children learn more advanced concepts often ones they do not fully understand yet.  Sticks, ribbons, boxes, pool noodles, old tires, logs, and stumps or all great loose parts for play.​

Both large and small objects can be used. By making an obstacle course out of found objects children learn about the bodies in space and develop their Proprioceptive system and the Vestibular system. They are known as the 6th and 7th senses. The proprioceptive system is the body's feedback system. It helps us move our arms and legs in a coordinating efficient manner so we can run and play without having to look around all the time. The vestibular system tells our brains about the body's balance, how it moves against gravity, speed of movement, size, and head position. These skills are learned by walking a balance beam, stepping from log to log, climbing a ladder or rope, climbing on a rock, or crawling under a table or chair.

This concept of heuristic play is far from a new idea. Children have played with loose parts and objects from around the house up until the 1940s and 1950s when it became a norm for children to have a lot of toys. In the US our children have more toys than in any other country. Do they need all the toys? It has been proven that children play better and longer when they have fewer toys.  With a little help from Mom or Dad, kids can learn and explore with everyday objects becoming creative, innovative, out-of-the-box thinkers who adapt and change with our changing world.  ​

Foundational Skills Every Child Needs to Learn for Life

Every parent wants to give their child a great start to life. So….. the questions parents often think about is how do I do this? What does my child need to know before they go off to school? How can I make sure they succeed academically?

Amazingly this doesn’t begin when a child is three or even four years old. It has nothing to do with A, B, C’s, or 1,2, 3, or even shapes and colors. Parents begin teaching skills which help their children succeed in school and later in life from the moment they are born!! Let’s take a look at what foundational skills children need to learn in early childhood which many parents have never even thought about.

Self Regulation

The largest most important set of skills is emotional regulation. This begins when a child is very young. As we build a relationship with our child, they learn to trust us to meet their needs. For young babies, all their needs are met by Mom or Dad. By having these needs met, the child learns that the world is a safe place. They love reaching for their parent’s face and touching it. The parent responds with facial expressions.

Young children will often mimic a parent's facial expression. If a parent or trusted caregiver sticks out their tongue a baby will mimic them. This is a child’s first exposure to learning about emotions. Young children often cry when a caregiver is upset or yelling. The  adult who is their anchor is unregulated and this causes the child to become unregulated. Let’s face it, we all have bad days. The child is learning about negative emotions during this time. As a caring adult, we don’t leave the child upset, we pick her up and talk calmly to her and she calms down. The child is beginning to learn the skill of self-regulation through co-regulation with their caring adult. By watching peers, or siblings a child learns more about emotions and self-regulation. Parents can support the child by reading books and bringing the characters' facial expressions to their child’s attention or talking about characters in television shows. Talking about other people's feelings is often less intense and easier for a young child, than examining their feelings. It takes several years of co-regulating with a caring adult until a child learns how to fully self-regulate independently.  Self-regulation is a primary skill needed for school success.

Social Skills
Young children see the world as revolving around them and their own needs. It takes a lot of practice to learn that other people have needs and feelings too. This skill set is learned through playing with friends, taking turns, sharing, and helping others. Parents can work on these skills at home by taking turns playing with their child and explaining that they need to go load the dishwasher and they will be back in a few minutes. If a child wants to go to the park they can say “Sure we can go to the park, but first Mommy needs to put the clean clothes away.” Using a timer also helps with teaching this skill.  The parent can say we will go after the timer goes off. Keep in mind it is really necessary to follow through and go after the timer goes off. Teaching a child to wait for a turn to do something they want to do, is referred to as teaching delayed gratification. Timers also help when children are learning to share toys. Each child needs to get an equal amount of time. It also might require an adult distracting the child who has to wait the first few times until they begin to understand that they will get a turn soon. 

​Listening to your child and making sure they listen to others is an important skill to work on. Hand in hand with listening is following directions. Young children need to be able to be given a one or two-step direction and they follow it. This becomes very important for safety when out around town or in a group of children.  Give directions verbally and ask your child to follow them. This can be as simple as “Please get me the baby’s bottle.”, or “Can you bring me a book?”, to more difficult directions like, “Put your shoes on and come here. Another fun way to work on following directions is to play games like Simon Says. First, have the adult give the child silly directions, then switch and let the child give the parent silly directions to follow. Parents can take a child for a walk and play Red Light, Green Light. When the parent calls out Red Light the child must stop walking or running. When the parent says Green Light , the child can run again. This is a wonderful, fun to help children learn self control.

Another skill we want to build in our child is learning empathy. If someone close to a child is hurt or sick the child can do something nice for the hurt or sick child. It could be drawing a picture on a card, helping mom make cookies, or even just bringing a friend a Band-Aid for a boo-boo. By working together with others, the child can learn that he matters, and he can make a difference while gaining an understanding of other people. 


Caring for the Environment and Materials

​As an early childhood educator for thirty years, one of the most difficult things to teach young children, when it is not being taught at home, is cleaning up after themselves and caring for the classroom and materials. When parents start early with helping children learn to clean up, it becomes a lifelong skill that benefits them in school and beyond. In our culture in the United States, this is sometimes very difficult because young children have so many toys. My encouragement to all parents would be to clean out the toys they no longer play with and rotate the toys so that they have a manageable number of toys available that they can clean up based on their age. Young children can not clean up on their own, but when toys are sorted into bins with labels, they can choose one type of toy, with parental help, and clean up all that type of toy, such as picking up all the trucks and then picking up the baby dolls. When the environment around them is neat and orderly children are calmer and play better for longer periods of time. This increases independent play and builds concentration which they will need when entering school. The benefit to mom and dad is more peace and happier kiddos. 

Fine Motor Skills

​Before a child learns to write or even hold a pencil they need to develop the small muscles in their hands. Fine motor development is a complex process that includes awareness, cognitive planning, coordination, muscle strength, and normal sensation of movement of the fingers and toes, along with, precision of movement. Simple activities such as play dough and clay are great at developing these muscles. Games that use pinching clothespins, moving heavier objects such as rocks, placing objects in a hole in a container, sewing cards, and drawing with a stick in the dirt are all great examples of play-based activities that help develop fine motor control. Coloring inside the lines in a coloring book is also a great way to build hand muscle and finger control. Peeling tape off objects, using stickers, and ripping paper are also good ways to get young children to develop fine motor skills. Long before a child writes their name, they need to develop finger muscles, cognitive planning, and coordination. These are all easily worked on through fun activities caregivers can find on Pinterest and share with their child at home. 

Gross Motor Skills

​Gross motor skills are the movement of large muscles in the arms, legs, and torso. They require the coordination of muscles, bones, and nerves for proper coordination, body awareness, spatial awareness, balance, and reaction time. Examples are walking, jumping, waving, swinging, bike riding, or playing catch with a ball. Young children have to learn how their bodies move in space in relation to their surrounding environment. As children grow this is constantly changing as they get older and the size of their body and the strength of their muscles change. This means young children need a lot of opportunities for large body movements throughout the day.  Different opportunities to use different muscles from different perspectives in different ways offer young children the chance to build neurological connections which help strengthen gross motor development. As a parent take time to lay down with your infant while they do tummy time, strengthening their core muscles, create an obstacle course for your toddler to practice new skills working with their body in space, and strengthen their muscles, or play catch with your preschooler or help them learn to skip. The amount of time a child spends outdoors in natural environments is directly related to the development of gross motor skills in children. As children become more coordinated and have more control over their bodies they become more self-assured and confident in their abilities. 

Building Vocabulary and New Experiences

​Take your child out to explore the world around them. Stop by the police station or firehouse and donate a box of individually wrapped treats, thanking  them for their service. Ask to see the fire truck and name different tools. Stop by a construction site down the street and talk about the different types of trucks. Visit the grocery store, and name the different fruits and vegetables.  Visit the library, borrow a few books and learn about something new. A walk in the park or around the neighborhood provides the opportunity to listen for the different sounds. Name the things that make the sounds. Walk around the neighborhood and look for signs of the season. New flowers,

changing leaves, insects, and anything different you find on your trip. A moving truck or and delivery truck bringing a large box can be a great opportunity to guess where the people are moving to or what is in the box. Make homemade ice cream or bake a cake. All experiences help children build vocabulary. Knowledge is built one piece at a time and the more experiences a child has the more he becomes interested and inquisitive about the world outside the front door.

As a child’s first teacher, every parent can help their child have a great beginning. All children develop at different rates, but all children get a better start when they have  parents who spend time daily interacting with their children. Children need to know they are safe and have caring people around them, they need parents who will talk to them, read to them, and play with them. This isn’t difficult or challenging. It doesn’t cost a lot of money.  It can make a significant difference in your child’s ability to succeed in school and later in life.