Play has been recognized as an activity that helps parents to engage with their children as well as offering an opportunity for physical, cognitive, emotional and social well-being of the youth and children. The benefits derived by parents and children from play are enormous despite the reduced amount of time play often available to families (Barab, Gresalfi & Ingram-Goble, 2010). This paper addresses varied activities that my family can use to participate in as a family and thus make family time better. The purpose of this play quest is to describe each of the play activities and how the time allocated to each play activities can change our boring life and daily routines. This paper will offer guidelines for the play activities that will guarantee a balanced optimal family development. This play quest will evaluate what these activities mean to my family setting that is a typical family that consists of my husband, me and our child.
In a family set up, play allows children and adults to use their own creativity optimally in developing their physical imagination, handiness, and emotive strength. Play plays an important part in a healthy brain growth, and it’s a way through which young children learn to engage and interact with the environment around them. Sometimes, play makes it possible for children to explore and create the world that they can master, conquer their fears as they practice adult roles in conjunction with their parents and caregivers. As children and adults learn to master their own world they create in the plays, they gain additional competencies that eventually lead to resiliency, and enhanced confidence when handling other issues in life (Schwartz and Douglas, 1973). Undirected plays are especially important in giving children and parent a chance to work in groups, share, discuss, acquire self-advocacy expertise, discover their areas of interest, engage maximally with their passions and make decisions in their life that reflect family values. Ideally, a successful play activity in a family set up involves control by adults but when this happens, children need to be offered an allowance to develop creativity, group skills and leadership skills with relaxed rules and regulations.
Finger painting
This is simply painting pictures through finger paints. Modern-day finger painting activity was developed by Ruth Faison in the 1920’s during her school years. It is an easy game that can be enjoyed by kids of all ages with control and observation of their parents. Finger painting can be done using homemade or commercial finger paints. This activity is an imaginative way that children, as well as adults, can express themselves. Shaw developed a pain that can be washed off easily and feels like mud to touch, spread smoothly and does not quickly dry. Finger painting is not just limited to younger kids, but their parents can join to use their fingers to create images for fun.
Son: (picking the working paper) I will paint superman.
My Husband: The rules of the game are, create as many times as you can possibly want.
Me: And don’t be worried, the paint won’t stick; we will remove it as soon as we are through.
When my family wants to have a finger painting activity as part of our play quest, we must prepare a freezer paper which can either be dull or shiny, but a shiny one is easier to work with since it is smooth to paint slides on it. Additionally, when using a shiny one, it is easier to cover their work surface with plastic sheeting since finger painting is a wet and sloppy activity. These papers are available from school supplies shops. Both sides of the working paper are wet using a damp page, and the next step is to mix the colors. This can be done in commercial jars or mixing the colors in the starch of the paper. Using our own fingers, the participant we can now make various designs in the paint. This can happen multiple times where our son and we the parents can erase a design and start all over again. When the paint becomes dry, we can add a few drops of water and the work will continue going on. When the painting is done, the working paper is then lifted and dried. The goal of finger painting in the family is actually not the finished piece of work but to allow the family members to express their knowledge, ideas and thinking in the work. We are able to experiment with lines, colors, shapes, textures and designs and at the same time express their emotions and feelings. Family members will have the opportunity to help each other to develop mentally and socially as we participate in finger painting.
Shadow puppets
Shadow puppets are an interaction of light and objects. They are perfect games that can be incorporated during a sleepover in a camp. In a family set up, they can be introduced as the shadow-puppet theater where the shadow puppets are made to fit in the story, and poems being told in the family. Shadows are intriguing, fun and mysterious, and when they are cast on a wall, they can create different shapes and creatures. They have a poetic quality, fleeting and playing with the shadows make the imaginations of the children grow. They are also artistic, interactive, easy and scientific to use.
“Today we are going to make a movie about King Lion and the Elephant”, suggests my husband. “I love lions, they are strong,” I tell my son. In creating shadow puppets, we need a book where we can find lion and elephant silhouettes that we will use for our shadow puppets cuts, tracing papers to trace the images, craft knives, cutting mat, optical bulbs or source of light, cardboard and white screen or clothing for display. When images have been cut, move the object around the light and let the family observe what happens to the shadow, get the shadow larger or smaller and meanwhile telling the family a story about the image cast. We will use musical instruments to produce sounds that make the story more interactive and real. This activity will make my family bond together and have fun because we all participate in cutting the pictures.
Sports, soccer, basketball, and swimming
These outdoor recreational activities are meant to bring our family together to strengthen the family foundation. Here the family members we are offered an opportunity to make new friends, learn new skills that they did not have and have a working healthy physical body. As parents will be the coaches of our child when he is swimming, playing basketball or playing soccer. “Today, dad you will be the referee,” I tell my husband, “And you will compete with the son,” He tells me during a swimming session we are attending. Outdoor activities cultivate values, skills and relationships with people whom my family members interact with in the course of the play time, and ultimately this leads to good behaviors. As family members, engaging in competitive, recreational and organized swimming, basketball games and spots of our choice, we learn how to compete fairly in real life ensuring that we can work collaboratively to achieve a goal (McKeown, Haase & Pratschke, 2014). We always make sure that when we want to engage in any game as a family, we have access to equipment, instructors, uniforms and facility and make an arrangement with local sports organization to participate in armature competitions that provide an opportunity to meet with other families and people who share in my family interests. Sports enhance connections and communication between the participants.
Sand box, sand- castle, and mud pies
In this activity, my family members take part in the baking process using sandboxes. Here, we create cakes using sand and blue marbles disguised as blueberries and yellow gems as bananas. “Let’s use sand to bake cakes using this sand”, my son suggests. “But we will get dirty?” my husband objects but I answer him, “It’s just a game, we will clean up later, follow the recipe and let see who does it perfectly” This activity enables us to test our memory, gauge direction-following, and practice vocabulary. We use a recipe book to create our own cakes using the sand and water following the illustrations and step-by-step instructions in the recipe. Still in this play activity, each family member can express his or her ideas through building sand castles, performing scientific experiments in the sand, and writing ideas down in the sand. This makes it very possible for my family members to share our scientific ideas with others as well as feel part of the family creativity. We also perform mud paintings as well as building models using the sand.
Playground activities - sliding, and swing
A playground is primarily designed as a natural outdoor environment where family members can meet to relax and enjoy. They are created to be accessible to both adults as well as kids where they can meet to have a variety of adult and children activities such as sliding, and swinging. Children and their parents and other families can interact with one another hence networking and collaboration is possible. In the playground, children learn different techniques that they can use to survive and keep physically fit. In particular, during swinging and sliding, my family members have the ability to relax from different hustles that we have engaged in the cause of our normal work environment. Swinging and sliding involves physical activity that is paramount in keep the body health. Parents and children in public playgrounds have an opportunity to interact with other families and develop friendships (Schwartz & Douglas, 1967). “Stay away from danger son,” my husband yells at my son, “Don’t remove the helmet you will get hurt” I add. The only caution for us as parents during this activity is to ensure that the equipment that we are using is secure and that our child is protected from aggressive children who have a tendency to teach other children bad behaviors.
Natural elements – stones and leave to make shape
In this activity, natural elements such as the stones and leaves are introduced in play quest. Pictures and real samples of the natural elements are shared in my family for review and touch. The child in the family will be required to use their sensory organs such as sight, touch, and smell to recognize the elements and later on they will be required to design a shape from them.
Me: We are to design a design our favorite pet with leaves and the small stones that we have
My Husband: But how do we do it?
Me: Let me show you (son and dad gather around, and I demonstrate how it is done)
This activity enables us to engage with the stones, sticks, and leaves at our own pace. They are then asked to discuss their views of the natural element by being asked to describe the color, shape, texture and smell of the natural element. The next activities I to sort different shapes and colors of the element, create other designs such as our favorite pet with those elements that can be displayed at home. The resulting shape can then be decorated and displayed at home. Our child our supervision is allowed to weigh natural elements and glue different pieces of marbles and leaves to create new designs. The natural elements are important tools that my family members can use to learn how to deal with the material we come across for innovation.
Create new crafts
This activity involves all kinds of play that allow us as parents and our child to express our ideas through modeling, music, dance and drama. In this activity, we give our child physical materials and pictures of what they are to develop. They will then be used to model such an object using the materials that they have been provided with. We start by drawing the object on a piece of material, cutting it and then sticking the parts to make it real.
Dad: (passing the photo to the son) what is drawn on that picture?
Son: It’s a zebra
Mom: You are right Son; could you make a zebra using this mold?
Dad: You can do it, son, let’s go!
This activity has the responsibility of increasing the creativity of the children and parents can reinforce the creativity of their kids by encouraging them and not commenting negatively on the work that has been done by their children (Roskos & Christie, 2011). Also, parents can give their children puzzles so that they can solve them. Through creating new crafts, children are capable of realizing who they are, their abilities and talents. This happens as they explore different designs and make decisions on what looks better than the other designs.
Implications
Art helps the family members to build self-confidence and teaches the family members to contribute in group tasks as well as work alone. We develop the ability to be analytical in the tasks we engage in. The point is, when family members are participating in the play, they must avoid coloring book drawings. As Parents, we show our child that we have faith in his artwork and let them know it explicitly (Tyler, 1983). We also have to refrain from doing the work by themselves and offering excessive help for him. We make sure to be careful to accept the creative product of other family members by not placing a value judgment on the work. If anyone has to make a note or a comment, it must be positive and state that the efforts of the other member of the family are unique and better.
In building self-confidence, our child and my husband pretend, imagine, inventive and fantasize to be someone or something else, and thus are able to relate easily to the world that we live in. These skills aid us in problem-solving and associating well with others (Kellogg, 1969). Displaying the final product of the play quest to extended family members and friends greatly enhances the motivation of us as family members.
When we engage in swimming and playing soccer, we develop from being egocentric individuals to people that work and play cooperatively. This is because these activities offer an opportunity to work actively with others. In other activities such as associative plays which involve the use of clay, family members, sit and work near others and can easily borrow and lend their pieces of clay to others (Brittain, 1979).
Conclusion
In summation, play develops active and healthy bodies. Encouraging unstructured play in a family set up is an exceptional way that increases physical activities in families alleviating possibilities of obesity, depression and disjoints in the family. On the side of our child’s development curve, an effective way through which effective relationships can be established with us as parents is through play. When we as parents join or observe our child play, we have a unique opportunity of seeing our children navigate the world that he has perfectly created to fit his needs. When we as parents pay attention to our kids’ emotions, progress, and conversations, we gain insights into building enduring relations, offering gentle and nurturing relationships as well as communicating effectively with our children and spouses. During plays, children and parents have the ability to express our experiences, views and frustrations allowing other members of the family to gain a full understanding of perspectives that they hold. This makes it possible to have quality, consistent family play time which reduces pressure and stress incidents in families (McKeown, Haase, & Pratschke, 2014).
References
Barab, S. A., Gresalfi, M., & Ingram-Goble, A. (2010). Transformational play using games to position person, content, and context. Educational Researcher, 39(7), 525-536.
Brittain, W. Lambert (1979). Creativity, Art, and the Young Child. Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.
Kellogg, R. (1969). Analyzing children's art. Mayfield Pub Co.
McKeown, K., Haase, T., & Pratschke, J. (2014). Evaluation of National Early Years Access Initiative & Síolta Quality Assurance Programme.
Roskos, K., & Christie, J. (2011). The Play-Literacy Nexus and the Importance of Evidence-Based Techniques in the Classroom. American Journal of Play, 4(2), 204-224.
Schwartz, J.B., & Douglas, N.J. (1967). Increasing the Awareness of Art Ideas of Culturally Deprived Kindergarten Children Through Experiences With Ceramics. Final Report Project Number 6-8647 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Heath, Education and Welfare.
Tyler, Leona E. (1983). Thinking Creatively. Jossey-Bass. p. 200
