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Hitting the Road this Summer? 

Don’t forget to pack some play!

If you’re headed on an “are-we-there-yet?” road trip with the kids this summer, why not make good, playful use of those seemingly endless hours in the car? 

Bringing along some fun toys for the ride will give your kids the message that the journey is as much a part of the vacation as being on the beach or visiting Grandma or hopping on the rides at Great America.  In fact, if you’re willing to turn off your cell phones, it may be one of the few times all year you can count on the family being together without competition from television, computers, and phone calls.

Make the connection—family play is great for kids

“Don’t underestimate the importance of these family times together,” encourages Susan J. Oliver, Executive Director of Playing for Keeps (www.playingforkeeps.org), a national not-for-profit dedicated to better outcomes for kids through increasing their access to healthy play.

“One of the most comprehensive studies of American youth ever conducted, the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, has established the importance of children’s connectedness with their family as the most important predictor of whether their adolescence will be relatively healthy…or marked by negative choices such as violence behaviors, emotional distress, drug abuse, and early sexual activity,” reports Oliver. “Playing together while you travel can help create family-focused time and connectedness.”

First stop:  the Internet.

While you’re getting your trip organized, fire up your printer and make a visit to the Internet.  You’ll find dozens of downloadable travel games and activities—most for the cost of printing them out at home.

Where to start?  Run, don’t walk, to your computer and visit the mother of all travel game sites—appropriately titled Mom’s Minivan at http://www.momsminivan.com/.  Here you’ll find 101wonderful car travel games and ideas, organized by the age of the child (older kids, toddlers, and babies).  There is a whole section of printable game boards (bingo cards for up to four players to keep track of types of automobiles you see on the road, ditto on off-road sightings of signs, animals, buildings, etc.).  Don’t miss the scavenger hunt lists, lyrics for sing-along songs, and yes…remedies for car sickness.

Another worthwhile stop on the web is About.com, where you’ll find simple word games described along with several games you can print out, like Tic Tac Toe, Connect the Dots, and license plate games.  Go to http://travelwithkids.about.com/cs/printgames/a/simplewordgames.htm.  One fun thing about this site is the number of related travel articles for parents—and articles on parenting in general.  Careful—you might find yourself spending more time than you planned on this site!

You’re not done getting your in-car play organized if you haven’t visited http://www.kidsdomain.com/.  There is lots of fun stuff here that will work on the road.  The downloadable games you’ll find when you click on “Travel Games” are helpful because they rate the difficulty of actually making the game and list the materials you need to get it done so it’s playable.  (Idea:  involve the kids in making their own travel games.  Hmmm.  Now there’s a way to get your packing done without interference.)  While you’re on this site, click on “Print and Learn” for more games that can be used in the car.  Check out the crossword puzzles on various topics.  The clues are given in pictures rather than words—great for younger kids who want to practice writing letters of the alphabet but are still in the emergent literacy stage.  By the way, visit this site again when you get home for lots of fun crafts ideas organized by type of project, season, type of materials—including recycled materials—and more.

Looking for more?  Check out Earth Explorer Toys

Beyond all the great stuff you can download for free are good old classic games—and fresh new offerings—that you can buy to throw in your play bag for hours of fun in the car.  Many games come in travel versions that are easy to use en route thanks to magnets and redesign of game board pieces to stabilize them.

Lots of parents are asking about travel play this summer.  “It looks like there will be a good amount of family time in cars this summer At Earth Explorer Toys we take pride in getting to know families and helping parents find the travel games that will fit the ages of their kids—especially when the children span an age range and parents want something all siblings can enjoy.  The travel games that have been popular so far this summer are:  Hang Man (Melissa & Doug’s new wooden travel version), Bananagrams, Filo, Sticky Mosaic’s and Rukus.

Have fun!

Busting “Bounty Boredom”:

Choosing Toys that Keep Kids Interested and Engaged

If your family includes gift giving in your celebration of the holidays, you are probably familiar with the wildly enthusiastic reaction kids have when they see piles of brightly wrapped packages waiting to be opened.  Those moments of hyper-charged anticipation when excited children can barely contain themselves add to the holiday magic for many families.

Yet many of those same families experience a let-down after all the gifts are unwrapped and all the must-have toys are assembled and filled with the required number of size AA batteries.  The same child who asked over and over for that heavily advertised ultra-popular toy plays with it for a while, then quickly loses interest. 

Is there any antidote to this pattern?  How can we keep children from desperately wanting particular toys, only to get bored by them within hours or days of unwrapping them?

“Fortunately, there are ways to avoid what I call ‘bounty boredom’,” says Terri Bracken owner of Earth Explorer Toys, a toy store that specializes in personalized service and offers a staff highly knowledgeable about the developmental benefits of play.  “The solution starts with changing the focus when you are selecting toys for a child.  It’s not about what advertising has convinced the child he or she must have.  It’s about thoughtfully selecting a product that fits the child’s developmental level and true interests.  If the toy is a good fit with strong play value, it won’t end up in the flash-in-the-pan pile at the bottom of the toy box.”

Playing for Keeps, a national not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting healthy play, offers several suggestions for choosing toys that can hold a child’s attention.

• Focus on the play, not the toy.  Rather than evaluating the features of the toy, think about the features of the play that the toy will encourage.  Said another way, good play—and the likelihood that a child will maintain interest in a toy—is about what the child can do with the toy, not what the toy can do. 

• Find products that let kids make up the story.  Look for toys that leave room for the child to use her imagination.  Though it may seem to adults that electronic gadgetry in a toy or connection with a television character makes it more fun, often the opposite is true.  Toys with minimal “bells and whistles” engage a child more fully because she gets to make things up—the story, the play routine, the sounds, the movement and more.  What child doesn’t like that?

• Give gifts that foster different types of play.  When you are shopping for holiday gifts, think about assembling a group of toys that offer a “balanced diet of play” that will encourage a child to use and explore all parts of himself:  his developing muscles—both the large running around ones and climbing ones and the smaller, more refined hand muscles; his brain; his growing speech and language skills; and his ability to play well with others, to be compassionate, and to solve problems. 

• Consider limiting television, especially around the holidays.  Time for free play is a wonderful and healthy alternative to television and by avoiding its constant barrage of advertising, parents can help control the holiday “gimme’s.” Many communities have an array of fun family-oriented activities around the holidays that can also divert children from focusing on the toy of the moment—and keep them more open to more engaging play materials that fit their developmental levels.

At Earth Explorer Toys we encourage parents to be sensible about how they manage toys that come into the home.  “If kids have too many toys, of course they won’t play with all of them.  For starters, they won’t have time.  So consider giving them fewer this season…and perhaps diverting some of those dollars to buying toys for disadvantaged children.”

Another strategy,  is to put some of the holiday bounty away so kids can focus on fewer toys at a time.  “Pick out two or three toys to leave out, and stash the rest in storage,” recommends OWNER.  “Based on your child’s interest level, rotate the toys so that you put one or two away and bring out one or two fresh ones every couple of weeks.  It extends the play value of the toys…and you can make the holiday joy last for several months.”

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