Raising Kids Online and Offline: Striking the Right Balance

Published: September, 2004

There’s no “passing go” when it comes to raising kids. Each stage of a child’s life builds on their existing knowledge, readying them for the next stage. While, every child progresses at their own pace, parents should be keeping a checklist of age appropriate milestones.

Early Learners:

At this age they are trying to give the world a sense of order. It’s an age when classifying, learning about cause and effect, verbalizing, and learning to feel comfortable and secure are important.

Mentally: They begin to understand shapes and colors, cause and effect.

Socially: They learn to interpret body language — the smiles and frowns of others. There’s more and more verbalization.

Physically : Large motor skills are improving everyday with jumping, hopping and skipping.

Suggested activities:

1. Sorting Blocks,
2. Sorting Laundry into colors and whites with you,
3. learning times of the day like when the mailman come or when it’s bedtime
4. stringing beads or macaronis to increase manual dexterity,
5. hide something and play with word clues like: before, after, under, and over to teach relationships,
6. Encourage activities that put things inside of other things: pots and pans, old boxes, shape sorters

Junior Thinkers

They’ve mastered walking, talking and toilet training and are starting to look outward. Brain connections are rapidly forming. Logic is beginning, vocabulary strong.

Mentally: Beginning to be able to abstract concepts. More aware of feedback from outside.

Socially: Play more with others. Games begin to involve taking turns and sharing.

Physically: Increased coordination they can now put simple puzzles together, ride a tricycle, balance

Suggested Activities

1. Go for a walk and make a map of the neighborhood which helps develop the ability to abstract from real world to paper (this is the opposite of computing when you go from real world to screen abstraction)
2. Chanting and singing songs are a good way to encourage kids to use language and new words. Make up your own silly songs about daily things like cleaning up the toys.
3. Buy some beads (various kinds) & have kids sort them into piles based on color and shape. String the beads on a shoelace.
4. Create a puzzle by using a photo you cut into pieces and & glue on cardboard.
5. Play large scale motor games like “Red Light Green Light” or “Simon Says” to improve large scale gross motor skills and understanding of shared play and verbal directions.

Masterminds

This is the age where socialization and verbal skills become increasingly important. It’s the age where they can read longer stories with greater concentration. They can reason out problems and solutions. Play often involves simulation, and concepts like gravity, measures and weights, and more start to make sense.

Mentally : They can now solve simple problems, anticipate outcomes and reason things out. They are less frustrated because they have a bigger vocabulary and have a longer attention span. Very interested in their own environment.

Socially: They are less egocentric, beginning to value friends and see the world from an external point of view. Gender differences begin to surface.

Physically: Small motor movements begin to improve. Can color within lines, paint in small strokes. Can play more complicated games like Dodgeball or baseball with rules and collaboration.

Suggested Activities:

1. Lots of pretend games from “gas station” “restaurant” or “doctors office” help them understand their environment.
2. Art materials like scissors, glue, more varied colored crayons are appropriate given small motor improvement.
3. Riding toys, bats and balls and other more complex outdoor toys are appropriate
4. Create a storybook of their life with them or a book of what they want to be when they grown up.
5. Create superheroes out of clay, puppets and other materials because they are entranced by the idea of special powers.
6. Keep building materials like blocks and Lego’s for open-ended exploration. No rules; just creativity.
7. Create labels for household items so they learn to read more words. Label bed, closet, refrigerator, etc.