Your son plays with dolls!

Boys play with dolls - some prefer to play with the dolls over trucks and dinosaurs – and that’s OK! In my opinion it makes boys more nurturing – gentler and compassionate towards others. They seem to have a better empathy for others, and they tend to be less aggressive during play. This does NOT mean they will be more feminine, nor have a different sexual preference when they reach maturity.

I understand that some may have a strong opinion against boys playing with dolls, however I see the developmental aspects of doll play, that transfer into everyday skill building. It’s not just the social / emotional facet of doll play that is a positive influence; it’s the practical life skills that are attained. Think about dressing skills. There is a lot of fine motor development in dressing and undressing dolls. There is a lot of role playing and dramatic play that goes with doll play. This takes a lot of cognitive ability to set the stage for pretending to be a Daddy. Speech and language skills are acquired and honed in. Dolls can be used to assist in expressing feelings. A sense of responsibility can also be reinforced through doll play.  This is just a sampling of the positive facet doll play offers.

Doll play is a realistic way to introduce the world in an empirical manner, to any child who is at a perceptive developmental stage. Young children – especially toddlers are like sponges and want to acquire knowledge of all things – dolls are a part of that. So whether the child playing with the doll is male or female should not be significant.

Leeanne A

Kreative Resources posts are seen here on the 21st of each month!

A Place of your own!

Sometimes being at school can be overwhelming - even a little tike needs to get away from things. Stealing a private moment requires the right space to stow away. Those places can be almost anywhere, seemingly hidden away for a toddler, but in safe view of the adults in care. Here are a few places my kids like to go!

Inside spaces!

The kids call this 'the orange chair' - the top comes down and then you feel all alone and hidden away!

The Library area with cushions.

On a large stuffed catapillar!

Some of the really little ones take their bottle there and lay quietly!

Outside spaces!

In the bus tent - sitting on a tire!

Sometimes sitting quitely in the covered cars give one a moment alone.

Stowing away under the slide.

Playing in the playhouse.

Under the mini slide.

So one may not think of these areas as private - but a little one sees these spaces as hidden and intimate - a place alone!

Emotions - We all have them!

We opened up the discussion of emotions with our toddlers by using a collection of pictures that I found on the internet. We selected a picture to show and asked the children how that person may have been feeling - and asked if they could make the same face they saw in the picture. We gave senarios of when that emotion may have been felt and examples from our classroom experiences. For instance some of us might cry when Mommy and Daddy drop us off in the morning, or we may be really happy when we see them again at pick up time. The children then started offering up their own examples. They got it - they were relating to the faces they viewed, then internalized it and expressed their own feelings about the picture and when they felt that way.
The photos were left out for the children to access independantly - they did so often, and talked about the emotions with their friends. It was interesting to see them discuss the pictures and relating with such detail.

An extension of that activity was for the children to use a hand mirror to look at themselves, and to make the faces that depicted some of the emotions we had discussed. Some found it easy to recreate an emotional expression - while others simply wanted to make faces that showed the emotion they were feeling at the time of the exercise.

We also have a set of laminated faces that can be interchanged on a figure, which can be used to open up a discussion of emotions as well.

Identifying emotions helps children to manage their feelings and to develop self control, while building a sense of self-esteem. This will result in children having the ability to handle difficult situations, easing frustrations.