I recently viewed a television commercial advertising the latest toy from Fisher Price or Play Skool or one of the other early years toy companies. Now don't get me wrong I LOVE children's toy makers! They are genius, at times, in their development of good toys. So, this is not so much an illustration of how companies make bad toys for children's learning (we'll leave that to Disney movies and another discussion), but more how we need not feel guilty if our children do not have the latest and greatest toys.Now, back to the commercial, which was depicting a mother and her crawling infant playing with a large, battery operated toy that had lights, bells, whistles, balls rolling and popping up, and all the fun colors you can imagine. All throughout the 15 or so seconds, the scene would go black and flash the words....How does....your baby....learn? Which is quite possibly one of the top 5 questions a parent, teacher, caregiver, doctor, and nurse should be asking themselves about children. The toy WAS cool and had a lot of fun things going on all at once, but what struck me as the real answer to the question is: By playing with mom (or dad, sister, brother, uncle, aunt, caregiver, etc). It didn't really matter what toy is sitting in front of the child, unless that toy is completely unsafe for him/her. What matters is the discovery of the object, and that the baby/child is WITH someone when they discover it.
So, baby Gabby and I were playing on the floor yesterday, when this commercial flashed back into my head. And, I realized I didn't need a lot of things with batteries and bells and whistles, rather I just needed to sit down with her and a clear plastic container (which used to hold all the colorful toys) and play a simple game of peek-a-boo for her to completely content, as well as learn concepts such as density, opaque, smooth and rough, object permanence, movement through space and a lot more. You'll see she's having so much fun, my camera could hardly catch those fast hands!
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