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Possibly one of the most remarkable qualities in many children is their imagination and creativity. As parents, we can encourage our child’s creativity on a regular basis through play.
Dr. Roberta Golinkoff, author of the best-selling book “Becoming Brilliant: What Science Tells Us about Raising Successful Children”, explained in a recent New York Magazine article that great toys for toddlers emphasize the “six C’s”—collaboration, communication, content, creative innovation, critical thinking, and confidence. Open-ended toys that encourage make believe, spark kids’ innate sense of wonder, and include details that cultivate curiosity can foster these values.
The Piaget “Stages of development” is a timeline that sets out the average intellectual development of people from infancy through adulthood. Piaget’s second stage, the preoperational stage, indicates children develop their imagination and memory from ages three through seven. Open-ended play is essential in these early stages of development cause while children develop imagination, it needs to be engaged.
Research also tells us that open-ended play experiences offer important brain development opportunities by giving them time -to be in charge, -to feel empowered, -to feel free to take chances, try out new ideas and make mistakes, to give them feeling of success even in failure.
Play and in particular creative play has been identified as a key component of building children’s resilience, ability to focus and the ability to act intentionally even when the outcome is unknown. These skills translate into competence and capability in adults thus creating a stable foundation for a successful future.
It is often spoken about in early years as an approach or part of a larger way of teaching, but it is simply play that has no perceived boundaries. It allows children to investigate and explore freely, directing their play in whichever way they wish to, with little adult intervention.
Open ended means not having a fixed answer, no pre-defined structure to the play pattern. This type of play allows children to have no fear of doing it wrong, since there is no correct method or outcome. It's all about free play – the freedom to invent and discover. The child is the master of their own play destiny, and an undefined object or material presents limitless possibilities.
When you decide to complete a puzzle, there is only one way to do it or when the child plays with known characters with assigned names, gender and personalities from an existing universe (which they are likely to have experienced in other places like TV and digital). The play might go to new places but the palace cannot be manipulated and re-imagined so the story is more likely to unfold within the context it started from.
There is enormous learning value to such activities - many require great skills to complete and you also learn how to finish tasks, follow rules and take turns. But these activities are closed-ended as there in an end to it when you accomplish a set of target.
In fact as parents and educators, there is a frequent desire to have children simply do as their told, without questioning commands. However, as adults, we value different skills in our colleagues. We appreciate those with qualities like resilience, think out of box and competent to act intentionally. These can be developed through open-ended play.
In open-ended play children use shapes to make a tower/house (or whatever they are imagining) and adds wooden figures inside, which have no assigned gender or personality. In this play, the story is created from the child’s imagination with very few prompts; their imagination has a lot of work to do to fill in the gaps! What is in front of them doesn’t look like the story they are playing out. The play can move on in multiple directions as the objects can be moved and re-imagined in new ways to change with the story.
A set of blocks challenges them to use their imagination, to explore and to problem-solve. They learn to play independently, without the safety-net of instructions to follow. Their confidence grows. Child becomes more patient and more resilient.
In this sense, open-ended play is more far-reaching and profound in its impact, than play where toys and games with only fixed outcomes are featured.
‘Open-ended play is the journey, not the destination.’
Benefit of open-ended play
Let’s say your daughter received an electronic doll toy that can talk and sing on a press of button. It is entertaining and also teaches her cause-and-effect of what happens when she presses the buttons.
But that’s the only ways your child can play with this toy. Instead of toy being an object and she playing with it. Your child becomes passive and toy does all the play. There is no engagement or learning on Child's part.
Now let’s say your daughter received a regular stuffed bear toy or a wooden peg dolls which does not have any existing character, so she can assume whether the toy is a boy or a girl. The toy does not even wear a smile on its face, so she can pretend when the toys is happy or sad, depending on her mood.
She determines her toys’ world and will have more chance of playing with bear toy or peg dolls than with electronic doll.
Such open ended toys can evolve to kids need and imagination more than a character driven toy.
Limitation with “entertaining” toys is that kids are passive. Like an electronic doll that sings or dances when your kid presses a button. It’s amusing, intriguing and keeps your kid busy… However that’s pretty much it. Sure, they learn cause-and-effect: When I press this button, this is what happens.
This is great, but again—limiting.
On the other hand let’s suppose they have an open-ended toy like building blocks. They have the same cause-and-effect feature, but in a wider scope. When I stack too many blocks, they fall. When I hit two blocks together, it makes this certain sound. And when I place a block on the rectangle, it stays, but on the ball, it falls.
Moreover, open-ended play encourage problem-solving as the toys doesn’t come with instructions to play with. Kids need to figure out on their own or with the help of parents.
Let’s say your little one had a doctor’s visit. During the appointment, he was scared while doctor examined him. It was a new experience for him. When he comes back to home, he might feel like he has lost some power and control over a scary situation.
But he will process the information from the experience he had. Sometimes later he will grab his teddy bear and proceed to “examine” him the same way his doctor did to him.
In playing doctor, he’s able to reassure himself that everything is okay and he’s fine.
Or we may notice our kids playing “momy-momy” with their doll, which is again your baby trying to process the vast changes a new baby can bring.
Open-ended toys help kids understand their world and any changes that may be happening in their lives.
Most of the open ended toys are simple, timeless and last through ages. Many of the open-ended toys our kids play with can be passed to next generation.
In fact they are just not for kids and even we adult can relate too and play with the same zeal that of our kids. Open-ended toys accompany your child as he grows and gets rediscovered in different ways along the way.
How to encourage open ended Play.
Like myself most of today’s parents grew in the age when internet did not exist, even TV was rare in every house hold and we had loads of free time as a child. . Do you remember the feeling of just sitting with a material, exploring it without any end goal in mind? It could have been pebbles, water or wooden blocks, sand, fabric or play-dough. We didn't know what we were going to do when we started, only that you felt the urge to experiment. I am sure we all have some wonderful childhood memories from that free time.
Open-ended play works only if your child has ample of free time at home. We need squeeze in free time almost every day from over scheduling our kids from homework to extracurricular activities, to family function.
Giving a lot of free time will create boredom for kids. That is how we encourage them to figure a way out of this boredom first. Feeling bored itself isn’t pleasant, but your child learns the important skill of not only tolerating boredom, but how to find ways out of it. Driven to find a way to not be bored, many children get creative with their play.
The point is that open-ended play has always been a part of kids learning process but lately became a hot topic in the world of early childhood education because there has been an increased scarcity of open play opportunities for today’s kids and we need to create perfect environment for the same by micro managing time, reducing screen time to foster free style play experience.
Allow your child to lead the play – you’re simply their partner in creative crime!
Children begin to understand the world around them through movement and play. As parents and caregivers, we must provide imaginative play environments that allow children to discover the world at their own pace.
Allow mistakes and mess to happen. Since there is no end-product in sight, open-ended play is relaxed. Tidying as you go may ruin their train of thought.
Ask your child what he wants to play and let him direct as he wants to.
Open-ended questions are the best tool to strengthen their creative muscle because they have to think about the answer.
Ask open-ended questions while you play together. Put toys in front of them and ask what they can make with them. Can it be used to build a house? Can they match the colors? Count the pieces? It allows children to formulate their own story about their art in their own way (and it’s a real language booster too!)
Sometimes all it takes is planting an idea to get creative juice flowing.
Nature is the perfect environment to inspire open ended play. Going in a park or open space gives children a great opportunity to engage creative.
As pointed in the beginning, objective of the toy is to promote collaboration, communication and confidence of many.
Construction toys are wonderful for collaborative play. So long as they have enough pieces to build together. Sometimes my kids choose to collaborate on a larger structure like a tall tower, and sometimes they each build their own structure.
In his “theory of lose play” in 1971 Simon Nicholson emphasized that we can empower young children creatively with open-ended materials that could be constructed, manipulated and transformed through self-directed play.
Some basic toys provide a multitude of possibilities for clever, creative, curious little people. You can encourage your kids to create whatever they imagine by filling your home with open ended toys like:-
Building Blocks: -
There’s no one way to play with Blocks, making them perfect foundation for any kind of free-style, kid led play.
Blocks are one of the best items in the world for open ended play. A child’s imagination can run wild creating unique masterpieces with building block set.
Peg Dolls:-
Children of all ages will imagine so many fun ways to use these sweet little Rainbow Dolls because they are a natural addition to almost any of the toys already in your toy box.
Designed for creative use in anyway children see fit, they can be used with building blocks, for counting, as “people” in any type of pretend world your children create
Rainbow Stacker: -
The wooden rainbow stacker is a classic toy for open-ended play and for good reason. It’s so versatile and can be part of children’s play in so many ways. Kids can use the colorful arches as bridges, tunnels, fences and end number of creations.
This toy accompany Child as he grows, gets rediscovered in different ways along the way.
Household Items
Give Your Child a box of dress-ups and encourage them to try on different characters.
You can encourage your child to explore making things on their own terms by setting up a craft table in a kitchen corner.
Plank some play-doh on their kitchen table and provide some kitchen utensils to experiment with, Kids love playing with the pots and pans and a lot of time they are used to cook up the most amazing pretend meals.
On warm days, setup a water play activities in the backyard or courtyard. Different sized containers, watering cans and empty plastic bottles can provide hours of fun. Always supervise children around water.
Every home has a variety of toys for different purposes: open-ended play promotes creativity, some entertain, others encourage physical activity, some to challenge kids mentally, and still others are games that are fun for the whole family.
And toys are anything. I sometimes catch myself telling my daughter not to play with an item because “it’s not a toy.” Meanwhile I will catch her riding on mop pipe. Kids will explore anything they’re curious about—that’s why the stick is at the top of the Toy Hall of Fame.
The same holds true with open-ended toys. They can be the simplest items or store bought. Your kid can find a leaf on the ground and consider it her next best toy ever, or she may ask for them during a shopping trip.
I hope this blogpost gave you some ideas and inspiration how to keep busy when you are stuck inside or at home.
If you like what I shared here with you and you are looking for more play and learn activities, follow us @chitrani.wooden.toys on Instagram.