Have you ever been to a garden? Of course, what kind of question is this? Then have you noticed the children over there. There are children of all age groups; from 0 to teens!! Some infants are in their mother’s lap , some are  in a pram with their granny, and enjoying the show peacefully; some teens are busy quarrelling over cheating in a match, some 8-9 year olds are inquisitively looking at a snail or caterpillar in the bushes and planning some prank or so!!. But the happiest souls exploring the place like a free bird are 3-6 year olds!! They are the ones who are carefree, exploring the world and people around them without any prejudice!! They want to explore everything, the swings, the slide, the soil, the way a football goes up after a kick, and so on!! Nothing like a 4 year old ready to be friends with a stranger/another kid! But, these kids are still dependent on their parents. From the corner of their eye, they keep a watch whether their mom is looking for them or not! If someone offers them a food item or something, the child looks for an affirmation from his/her parents before accepting the offered item!

Thus they are not yet completely independent individuals, but are also not as dependent on their parents as an infant or a toddler. They are exploring, they are learning and they are growing up! And now, all because of the CORONA pandemic, these young explorers are trapped at home because of the LOCKDOWN. They are not able to go OUT and explore objects, people and behaviours!  No play school, no pre-school, no crèche and no gardens! Just think about a researcher whose research has been put to a halt because of lack of funds!!! Exactly, that’s the feeling your child has right now! But no worries, we are here at Parenting Matters- in times of lockdown to help you engage your 3-6 year olds at home, and create an equally stimulating environment in space limitations!

Early childhood i.e. 3 to 6 year olds is a period of child development where they develop more refined motor skills, become more self controlled and self sufficient. Their make believe play blossoms. They start relating their experiences like travelling in a train, going to a fun fair etc in their imaginative play. You find a 4 year old getting ready for office or preparing tea for the dolls in his/her play. Their thought and language expands at an astounding pace; they start using difficult words, phrases and can even tell short stories., a sense of morality starts developing , they start understanding terms like ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and initiate friendships!!

  These children form the 3^rd stage of Erikson’s Psychosocial stage where children are learning to take initiative, explore and if parent’s support this sense of purpose of their child, a sense of ambition and responsibility develops. However, if too much self control is demanded at this age by the parents may lead the child to excessive guilt, thus affecting the self esteem of the child. This age group represents the Pre operational stage of Cognitive development as theorized by Piaget. And Make believe play forms the most important part of their development in all domains- motor, language, cognitive and social too! It is this make believe play  which strengthens the memory , sustained attention and logical reasoning. It highlights the imagination and creativity of the child. Imaginative play creates an opportunity for the child to understand emotions and reflect on one’s own thinking. Child starts taking another’s perspective too.

They say children are born creative, but 98% cease to be creative as they become adults! And Hence, we the 98% not creative adults find it difficult to engage these young explorers and creative minds!!!

So while dealing with this age group I would like to focus on two major areas-

First, activities for the children and                                                                                             

Second, general guidelines for parents while handling them.

Following are the ways in which you can engage your children (3-6 years) at home during these times of lockdown and beyond.

1. PLAY– Have you ever wondered why the schools of 3-6 year olds are called PLAY schools? What does the term “Kindergarten” mean? It means children’s garden!! And what to do children do in gardens? Play. Exactly, this is the reason these schools are called play schools. Because PLAY is the single most important occupation of children. Play is the work of childhood.  Albert Einstein has rightly said “Play is the highest form of research.” It is through play that children are learning, experimenting, creating and thinking!

While playing with your child, provide your child with realistic materials like toy car, dolls, cooking utensils etc and also provide materials with no clear function like blocks, blank papers, sand etc. The combination of these shall bring out the creativity in your child’s play.

Gross Motor Activities:

• You can engage your child in hopping, jumping, wheelbarrow walks, skipping, animal walks,(crab walk, elephant walk, frog jump etc) alphabet yoga and animal poses (cat, frog, rabbit etc).
• Activities involving   a series of action commands, obstacle courses spanning all the rooms of the house, balloon toss using both hands fists, alphabet bull’s eye and so on promote gross motor skills.
• Atleast 30 minutes to 1 hour of physical activity per day is a must.

Fine Motor Activities:

• Activities like opening bottles, squeezing, punching holes, lacing, beading, finding buttons in clay dough or Atta dough, putting coins in piggy bank etc can help in refining the fine motor skills of the child.
•  They help in developing hand grip, handedness, hand coordination and hand and finger strength.
• Here I would like to mention, donot force a left handed child to right handedness. It’s going to do no good to the child. And being left handed is absolutely fine!! Many geniuses and creative people have been left handed.

Art and Craft:

• Involve the child in some art activities like craft, origami, etc Start with as simple as a boat, dog, house out of colored papers.
• You can make a collage using bits of newspaper. For example, draw a large mango on an A4 paper, and then find yellow color on the newspaper, tear those bits, and stick them.
• Use different types of stickers and help your child decorate his/her name.
•  Let your child scribble, draw, color different objects. Let the child go by his imagination and creativity. Donot try to limit the child by making him follow the conventions like blue sky, green plants etc. If your child wants a PINK SKY…so be it!!!

Activities promoting Pre writing and early literacy skills

These children are   learning to write, learning alphabets, numbers, colors, shapes etc.

• Paper pencil activities like mazes, find the difference, join the dots, find the odd man out, alphabet search, number search are very useful.
• For these, many online worksheets are available. Also, magazines like Magic Pot, Read and Color, Chiku Piku also have similar activities!
• At home, during daily activities like arranging utensils in kitchen rack, putting clothes for laundry etc you can practice counting, identifying colors, and shapes with your kiddo.
• Use finger paints, crayons, sand, Atta to help your child trace alphabets and numbers and thus learn and enjoy in messy play!

Activities to promote Cognitive skills:

• Teach the child concepts like big and small, more and less using toys, food items and other objects.
• Give sorting activities.
• Play dumb charades with your child to teach him about various emotions, actions, weather conditions, adjectives etc.
• Create riddles and play guess who, make a treasure hunt for your child using clues like- red objects or round objects etc.
• Blind fold your child and let the child identify objects given in his/her hand or ask him/her to identify the sounds of animals, objects that you make (Soundscape).
• Play games like copy me and Simon Says-these stimulate imitation, attention and right and left differentiation also.
• Jigsaw puzzles are big cognitive exercise. If you don’t have jigsaw puzzles, you can make one at home. Select a picture of animal, cartoon etc, paste it on a card board, cut it into 4 pieces and the puzzle is ready. You can gradually increase the difficulty level by increasing the number of pieces as the child starts enjoying it. Or you can even use the front side of a Cornflakes box or Choco’s box and divide it into pieces to make a puzzle.
• Board games like snakes and ladders; ludo, carom, Jenga etc help in understanding rules and turn taking.
• Memory games, Ring toss also can engage and stimulate the creative minds!

2. Reading Time and Story time : This lockdown period can turn out to be a great opportunity for you to develop the habit of reading in your child. It promotes child and parent bonding where you can open the whole world of possibilities for your child.  Joseph Addison has rightly said “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body”. And hence a child who reads will be an adult who thinks! Daily reading for 10-15 minutes can add up to exposure to more than 1 million words in a year. Reading daily with the child can enhance General Knowledge, vocabulary, reading comprehension, verbal fluency and spellings! Children’s books actually contain 50% more rare words than prime time television. So we have to make the wise choice. Even if you are not yourself into reading regularly, start with your kid now! It’s never too late !!

 Story time is actually a part of reading time but it can be made more interesting by asking questions about the story during and after the story; Creating situations and asking the child what he/she would have done; bring a twist by asking the child to ring the bell as the names of the characters appear in the story or  just  weave a story with your child line after line!

3.  Self help skills or Activities of daily living– This is the age to learn toilet training, to undress and dress up, eating by self, brushing teeth, tying shoe laces and so on.  These are called self help skills Give opportunity to your child to do these activities even though you feel the kid won’t be able to do them properly. In our Indian culture, parents have an inclination of doing things for their child out of love and affection, but then that child doesn’t develop these essential self help skills by 6 years of age and hence in later ages is still dependent.  So you can use this lockdown period to focus on any one self help skill and help and motivate the child in doing that. Use rewards like stars to reinforce the desired behaviour.

4. Social stories: As we are practising social distancing, the opportunities for socialization are minimum for these children. And since this is the age when children socialize, make friends, learn social skills, they are indeed missing out! So, as parents you can make social stories with your child, where you can take scenarios like, visiting a friend’s place, going to the doctor, going for a haircut,  going to the movies, what to do when  hurt, etc. Then using colors, papers and framing some single line sentences, a story book can be made. This can be useful in making the child understand various situations, the social skill needed, the kind of behaviour expected in the scenarios. So even though in lockdown, you can help your children develop social skills.  

These stories later on can be used just prior to the situation also, thus helping the child reduce the anxiety of unknown , because most of the times when we take our child out, we donot convey where we are going and what is expected of him/her over there; and then suddenly we find the child being anxious or misbehaving in the social scenario.

So in this way, you can do variety of activities with your child at home, all you have to do is use some creativity and imagination!

  Now let’s focus on some general guidelines for parents while handling their children.

1. Catch your child being good. We as parents take our child’s good behaviour for granted and hence do not acknowledge. But praising the child and acknowledging good behaviours can reinforce the behaviour and also increase the child’s self esteem.
2. Be consistent. Both parents as well as the grandparents (if staying together) should be on same page regarding child’s behaviour. If child gets different responses for same behaviour from the mother or father or grandparents, kid is smart enough to manipulate and get things done as per his/her will.
3. Keep promises. If promised a reward for a good behaviour, ensure that you give that reward. Hence, rewards which are doable should only be promised. Rewards like pat on the back, praise, stickers, stars, small toys, play time with parents etc are advisable.  Similarly, if any punishment or denial of privileges was promised for not obeying or for misbehaviour, it should be executed. However, any type of physical punishment is not recommended.
4. Provide good models/lead by example. Children are very observant. They pick up habits of parents without being taught to. Hence, if you wish to develop a habit, ensure that you lead it by setting an example. Some good models of values like kindness, honesty, cleanliness can be taught in real life settings as well as through story books.
5. Label the act not the child.If child misbehaves, donot label the child as bad boy or bad girl, rather label the act done by the child as bad. This is very important to develop self esteem of the child. Also, explain why the act is bad or wrong and what was expected from the child.
6. Give responsibility to the child. Simple tasks of bringing a water bottle from the kitchen, to taking help of your child in caregiving of the younger sibling can boost up the self esteem.
7. Give positive directions and clear commands to your child. Limit setting is a must. There should be a balance between child listening to your commands and you fulfilling child’s demands. Too much of permissiveness will lead to temper tantrums and behavioural issues. Too much of control can decrease the confidence of the child and even sow the seeds of shame and guilt.
8.  Quality time or Child Directed time: This is that time of the day, where you do not tell your child what to do, but rather your child chooses what to do and you be just a part of the activity without being judgemental, without giving instructions to the child. Spend 10-15 minutes of a day with the child this way, and you shall notice your child’s independent thinking, creativity and interests. This is a chance to build up that bond and confidence between you two, so that your child knows when in need you will be there without judgement.
9. Screen time– As per American Academy of Paediatrics, for children 2-5 year old, not more than 60 minutes of adult directed screen time is recommended. That means, the parent should be actively involved while viewing on screen, and should involve the child in interaction while watching. Parents should themselves choose the content and shouldn’t allow passive and independent watching of videos, songs and games! Studies have shown that excessive screen time  can lead to delay in language acquisition and usage, delay in motor skills due decreased opportunity  of physical activity, decreased imagination and creativity, lower parental involvement, hyperactivity, aggression, reduced sleep,  poor sleep quality , unhealthy eating habits, obesity and poor social skills. Hence, limit screen time exposure, provide good models by decreasing your own use of screens, follow no screen in bedroom, no screen during meals and no screen 1 hour prior to sleep.
10. Sleep Hygiene– Holidays affect the sleeping habits of kids badly.  No set bedtime, late morning awakenings, screen exposure before sleep all these affect the behaviour and activity of the child during the day. Hence, even though holidays are there, set bedtime has to be a rule, child’s bedroom should be quiet and dark ,follow bedtime routines like brushing teeth, bath ,reading story etc. Physical activity during the day helps in having a good sleep at night. Avoid caffeine (which is present in colas, chocolates etc) in the evening, as it can delay sleep.

So to sum up, in these times of lockdown, the magic 8 ways of engaging the 3-6 year olds at home are

1. Use activities that promote motor skills, pre writing and early literacy skills and cognitive skills of the child.
2. Take the help of art and craft.
3. Include story time and reading time in daily schedule.
4. Focus on self help skills and build it up.
5. Introduce Social stories.
6. Spend quality time or Child Directed time daily for atleast 15-20 minutes.
7. Screen time not more than one hour per day.
8. Maintain sleep hygiene.

I hope that the information shared in this blog shall be useful to the parents looking out for solutions while dealing with their children in the age group of 3-6 years. You can also listen to this information on podcast at KUKU Fm. The link for the podcast is http://applinks.kukufm.com/bvC5frCvZCMxV95m6 We will be coming soon with our part 3 of Parenting Matters-In times of Lockdown!

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