<\/a>The young toddler may be feeding his doll or telling the truck driver how to load the blocks. A three-year-old may play alongside a friend, happy with the company, but not interacting a lot. Cooperative play will happen as children mature, so there is no need to force it. Let your children take the lead.<\/p>\nWhen you play with your children, make it fun! Let your child choose the activity and make the rules. Games that require following the rules are appropriate for children over five or six years of age. Play in a non-competitive way where everyone feels like a winner.<\/p>\n
Relax and Keep Playing<\/p>\n
Allowing time for free play is not just one more thing to do in order to be a “good parent.” Free time gives everyone time to refuel, think, and figure things out. The truth is that your child will grow, learn, and thrive without the constant organized frenzy. Choose to have a day or two with planned free time, eliminating just one violin lesson or tutoring session each week. What if you didn’t spend every day chauffeuring and cheering your children on at the latest event or game? There would be much less stress for your whole family, more time to relax and play.<\/p>\n
Pursue your own play: do artwork, knit, or make something in your workshop. If your child is interested, let him watch, but continue on your own path, not succumbing to the temptation to be interrupted. You are modeling for your child, as you make your own discoveries and enjoy doing that which interests you.<\/p>\n
You need not write the script for your child’s life. Your child has within herself remarkable individual talents that will surprise you as she learns to play and become a master of playful learning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In this era of goal-oriented and scheduled activities, have we lost sight of our children’s need for free play? What happened to the carefree days of “just playing” until it was time for dinner or bed? As parents, do we know how to let go of providing our children with endless activities and opportunities? Joy …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":960,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[47],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yycmontessori.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yycmontessori.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yycmontessori.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yycmontessori.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yycmontessori.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yycmontessori.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yycmontessori.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yycmontessori.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yycmontessori.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yycmontessori.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}