their work is play

Hubby and I was talking about umar's toys one day. Then he came out with this story on one of his friends whom decided not to buy any toys for his newborn son until the age of 3 years old and he planned to straight away buy books for him at that stage.

It is up to the parents how they wanna up-bring their children. It is undeniable that parents nowadays aiming high for their child especially with a lot of competitions out there.

mirror is a good 'gadget' to teach kids that they are an individual
and seperated from the image in the mirror;)

This is just my two cents opinion on this issue. Kids learn trough play. Even in Islam, Prophet Muhammad advised that for seven years of their life, parents are to play with their children, for the next seven (until the age 14) to teach them, and from the age of 14-21, to be their friend.They need stimulation through their senses. This process does not definitely needs expensive gadget or toys from the shops but provided that parents has the creativity, anything in the house maybe used to stimulate your child.

example of utilizing home stuff as toys- "matching lids"

Alhamdulillah, we are so lucky to have very good akhawat and friends while we were in Aussie, Umar had a lot of toys as a gifts from aunties and uncles. All the toys has educational values in them and are good qualities stuffs. They were kept in good condition for our future children.

The best thing is unstructured play where creativity plays a role. Anything can just be everything. E.g. a box can be a car, a washing machine etc. this type of play build confidence and form opinions on their own.

Here are some tips we can share on how to choose suitable toys for our kids:

• safety first: no small components for kids below 3 years old or perhaps older, no sharp, not containing toxic stuff (i believe many parents out there are very fluent on his issue)
  
• appropriate for the age and development milestone: may refer to many online information on our child development stage
  
• consider the gender: but never be too rigid e.g. if our son wanna play the cooking set let him be, this may spark his creativity as well
  
• educationa l values: identify the objective or areas the toys are intended to focus on e.g. motor skills, creativity etc. Avoid to buy toys that are lack of educational value and low quality.
  
• many function: build and create kind of toys e.g. lego, play dough, blogs, jigsaw puzzles
• recall our childhood: one need to think like a child to understand child completely
  

enjoy playing with your kids!