Showing posts with label gifts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gifts. Show all posts

Oct 11, 2017

This Diwali Gift Learning - Diwali Gift Ideas For Children - Open Ended Learning Experiences

Are you looking for Diwali gift ideas for children this year? Are you bored of buying the same old sweets or crackers or clothes as gifts & looking for better gift options that kids will remember in the years to come? Then do something different this year & gift learning, memories & experiences to kids! Read on to know more.


Diwali, the most important and widely celebrated festival for Hindus, commemorates the victory of good over evil. It is the festive time when families get together, everyone indulges on sweets, lit up diyas, illuminate homes, children burst fire crackers and everyone has a great time.

I just love Diwali! It is my favorite time of the year because of the positivity, cheerfulness & festival fervor in the air! It is customary to gift sweets, crackers, clothes etc to kids in our friends & family members. Why not do something different this year? Let us gift learning to kids. Sounds different? Let me tell you how this can be done in so many ways. I am listing some learning gift ideas for kids because at the end of the day, kids remember experiences & memories and that gives them learning for life. They do not remember that they got chocolates & sweets as gifts!


Excursions

Kids love outdoors, be it a simple visit to a nearby park. This Diwali let us keep them away from screens by gifting them our time & take them out for excursions. Depending upon the age & interest of your child, you can take him/her to a green farm, plant nursery, dam, boating, camping, fort, trek, adventure sports trip, amusement park or even just a long drive in the outskirts of the city. Nature is the best teacher & kids learn the best when they are amidst nature.

Field Trips

Did you know even a simple trip to a post office or a super market can be a learning experience for a child? You can even take your child to a temple over a hill, a fire station, museum or any such place. My toddler loves visiting new places. It gives us a new dimension to our never-ending conversations. And a holistic learning is already going on during such outings.


Books, Books & More Books


Nothing beats the smell & sight of books for me. They are never enough for me, just the space is less to store them at home. I have hundreds of books for myself & my toddler too & I still do not stop buying! Gift your child a bundle of books this Diwali. Let us raise readers! If you are confused which books to buy for your child, I have put up an exhaustive list of Diwali themed books HERE that you can choose from. Apart from this I have a bunch of book reviews & recommendations too on various topics. So go ahead & take a pick yourself!


DIY & Diwali Activities & Crafts


It is holiday time for the kids & what better than bonding with them over DIY fun Diwali activities. There so many more activities that I am going to do with my son this year. Also, pinterest is full of Diwali activity & craft ideas that you can browse through. If you are working or do not have enough ideas or motivation, you can send your child in Diwali camps happening at many places these days. Let your child soak into the festivities and learn a lot of things too.

Open-Ended & Free Play Learning Experiences
I cannot stress much upon the importance of open-ended & free play. It boosts creativity, confidence, self esteem of the child & the learning that follows organically is incomparable. We have a lot of open-ended toys & a brand that we personally love for its quality, designing & precision is Skola Toys. Toys are the best friends & the best teachers, so it is very important to make an informed choice of what kind of toys you buy for a child.

You might want to read this article - 6 things to consider when choosing toys & what is wrong with today's toys.

The team & designers at Skola Toys believe that play leads to exploration, exploration leads to discovery and discovery leads to learning. Skola toys stimulate the child’s senses by opening up a fascinating world of colours, shapes, numbers, alphabets, science, geography and more. Children between 0 and 8 have an extremely high rate of brain development that constantly seeks information through activity. For these young Skolars, activity, work and play are all synonymous.

We love Skola toys because they are made of natural material (wood) which gives a rich sensory input to kids. They are self correcting in most cases, which means that there is no need for an adult intervention to decide whether the child is working with the material correctly or not. They are open-ended, interactive & facilitates imagination, which is very important during early years. Each toy is targeted very beautifully for a particular skill like fine motor or emotional intelligence or math or language or science (more on science in my next blog post) etc. Moreover, the concept of "learning journeys designed as play" by Skola Toys is amazing & it gives us a concrete path which we can follow to decide which toy/material to get for the child depending on where the child is in his learning journey. Read more about "learning journeys" HERE.

What more can I ask for to gift a child this Diwali? A wholesome sensory playing & learning experience, and in addition to this, their products are sustainable too. No plastics! Good for earth, less guilt for parents.

Here are some amazing open-ended Skola toys that you can consider for gifting kids this Diwali.



If you are unsure of what to gift to your family members' kids, then Skola has an option of GIFT CARD as well.

You might also want to check out more articles & reviews of mine on Skola Toys HERE.

So this Diwali, gift learning to kids! Let us change the trend and do something valuable for our kids, our future generation!

I hope this post gave you some unusual Diwali gift ideas for kids this year. If you have any more ideas, I would love to hear them!


Do not forget to follow "The K Junction" on Facebook page & closed Facebook group, Twitter and Instagram for day to day updates that might not always find a place on this blog. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to know more about our early learning journey, DIY & Montessori-inspired activities for kids, kids books & toys reviews and much more!


Hope to see you around. Happy Parenting!


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Jan 1, 2017

Christmas Nativity Setup For My Toddler And The Experience That Followed

This is my small & humble Christmas Nativity Scene setup :) My first ever in life, for my 22 months old son! I took a big tray, covered with red cloth, spread some shredded cardboard & put figurines of Baby Jesus, Angel, Mary, Joseph, Shepherds, Wisemen, Animals to create the scene of a stable where Baby Jesus was born. I got these figurines from Kerala for 150 INR when we visited there for vacation.


Nativity Scene Setup

I put all his Christmas gifts around this setup at night so that when my son wakes up on 25 December 2016, he is greeted with everything here :)



Here are the details of the setup - 
  • Christmas tree with some decoration - I got the tree & ornaments from a local shop
  • Gifts for my 22 months old son - My son is a vehicle & book lover & these days crazy about planets! Gifts include fighter plane set, swing with Jesus Christ ( I got this from a facebook group Ionica Toys, DIY planetarium (Again this is from Ionica Toys), shoes, car, tanker, books (from Amazon) & snowflake threading toy from Skola Toys! You can see the snowflake activity post HERE. By the way, you can get an exclusive discount of 15% on ALL Skola Toys till if you use the discount code I shared on my group. Just visit my group HERE & view the pinned post to get the discount code & use it during checkout when you shop Skola Toys from their website www.skola.toys









#UPDATE
My #22months old has been playing with these #NativityStory figurines for the last 2 days now & loving it! Look at how he is holding, admiring & kissing baby Jesus :)


I had also read to him nativity story from a book few days back when we were traveling.
I was surprised, he named the characters  correctly on his own during free play & even narrated the story in his own keyword style.

Here is his version :)

Mamma!

Bethlehem, Mary Joseph, Hotel
Andhera, raat ho gayi (dark, night time)
I asked where was Jesus born?
He says mamma stable. Animals.
Shepherds, dekhbhaal (take care), sheep
Wisemen, gifts, baby Jesus


Pretty accurate a narration! My Christmas is made! :)

The #freeplay with #Christmas #Nativity figurines continues.
Some brand new story being weaved here ;)

My son 'A' talking to himself...

A : Ye kaun hai? Wisemen. Ye kaun hai? Camel. A camel pe baitha. Shepherd. Dekhbhaal. Shepherd leto. Camel leto. So jaao. (Who is this? Wisemen. Who is this? Camel. I sit on the camel. Shepherd. Take care. Shepherd lie down. Camel lie down. Go to sleep. )
Mum : ab? (Now?)
A : Subah utho. (Wake up in the morning)
Mum : Ab? (Now?)
A : Khelenge. (Will play)
Mum : Kya? (What?)
A : Chess

I always wonder how creativity fosters during free play!

I also hosted an 18 days FREE kids' activity series on Christmas & New Year theme. If you missed it, check out HERE. My son enjoyed the activities thoroughly & my articles on the same on BabyChakra were received very well too :)






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