Organised play is definitely the most effective way to get your children to understand how important it is to be orderly and organised. These kinds of activities reflect the way society works; everyone plays an important role that they must fulfil and there’s a certain order that must exist so things can run smoothly.
Playing is how children are introduced to many core concepts. One of them is structure, which can be done through organised play and even organised sports. There are many rules to follow in this world, which is what makes things work efficiently. If you want to teach your children the value of this, organised play is a great way to do it.
Children understand that actions have consequences, even if it’s in a very basic way. They understand that what they do have consequences because if they don’t organise their toys after play, they won’t be allowed to play again until they do.
When it comes to organised play at home, I’d say it’s a necessity. I know for a fact your child’s playroom is a mess right now. But that’s just because you haven’t introduced the idea of organised play. Your children can maintain a certain level of organisation even if you think they’re too young. They’re not! You can teach them to be more organised from an early age, it all comes down to your method.
First of all, it’s important you children have a space to play. It can be a playroom or simply a designated area in the house. What matter is that your children have their own space and you contain the toys to a specific area. Once your children have that, you can start introducing organised play.
You want to give your children a kind of system to organise their toys and you want to provide floor baskets or bins so your children can put away their toys easily. You also want to designate bins and baskets based on the size or utility of the toys.
This is sort of like dividing the toys into categories, so you can provide your children with an organisation structure they can follow. A bin for small toys, a bin for large toys, a bin for LEGOs, a bin for puzzles and books, etc. Label the bins and teach your children how they should put away their toys after every playing session.
You want the categories to be specific but not too specific. Allow for interpretation with broad categories. Remember they’re children after all! That means they won’t be able to categorize as amazingly as you.
Another way to teach your children to organise their toys is by sorting them by colour. All you need to do is get coloured bins or label them with colours. This way, all yellow toys will go in the yellow bin, all red toys will go in the red bin, and so on. This will be a lot easier and you’ll see they will learn the importance of organisation in no time!
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