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Benefits of Low Tech Toys

Hi everyone! It is the year 2020 and everyone seems to have a cell phone, table and personal computer. As a parent, I can say, these items do come in handy and do play an important role in our household. I for one am able to work from anywhere because of my laptop and phone. This affords me more time with my kids, less transitions throughout the day and so on. If you are a parent, you know being flexible is paramount…and I thank my gadgets for allowing a little more flexibility.

Now…when it comes to kids with technology…I don’t know what is best for others and I am not here to judge what others do as I truly believe parents all want what is best for their little ones ….and sometimes you need to find a Curious George episode so you can cook dinner!

We all know high tech toys. They are available and many have merit …. But today we are going to talk about the benefit of the old-school, low tech toys we grew up with!!! I do believe, and you can see from what we develop at Mobi, that there are so many developmental benefits associated with low tech toys. From the chance of more physical play to the opportunity to learn how to play fairly…there are lots of benefits we can find!

Board Games:

Board games allow the whole family to play together and often involve a competitive element. We’ve started playing Go Fish and Crazy 8s with our six-year-old. This has really been a lesson in playing fair and emotional regulation for him. He constantly wants to change the rules so that he can win, take more turns to increase his chances of winning and often hides behind the couch with a pout (and sometimes tears) when he loses. Game by game, we’ve seen his ability to regulate his emotions increase. The emotions have also provided us a way to talk about feelings, how we handle them, how we control our own thoughts and actions. It’s been really interesting.

Another cool thing about board games is that you can often play them inter-generationally! At Mobi, we’ve got 5 games on the market now and we’ve made a point of this being a key feature of all of them. There is nothing better than seeing our kids play a game with their great grandmother! It’s amazing and something both the littles and great gran cherish. Mobi, Mobi Kids, Ultimo, Bllox and Stello ….. they can all be played with all ages!

Stuffies:

We’ve just gotten into stuffies as a household. It all started because my son was afraid to sleep in his new bunk bed on his own. We talked through it and I gave him my old stuffed bear from when I was a kid … Bert. Bert has become a favourite and sleeps in that bunk every night. Bert can be thought of as a transitional object …. He provides a feeling of consistency and security when our son was adjusting to the new bed.

Bicycles:

We’ve got a six-year-old and a two-year-old who are extremely active. Bikes have been wonderful thing for our family. Our son can ride a two wheeler now and our daughter is on a balance bike. Not only do the bikes provide physical activity and therefore burn off a ton of energy….they provide an opportunity to learn about road safety and help develop balance and motor skills. 

We’ve notice our son grow up a lot since he began riding a two wheeler. There seems to be a huge sense of freedom, independence and empowerment that comes along with riding a bike. Our son has begun to trust himself to make more decisions on his own and we’ve also encouraged him to lead us on family bike rides … to be “the leader”. It has been so neat to watch his confidence grow.

We’d love to hear from you! Tell us some “old school” or low tech toys you love!

Hello everyone! There are so many things we love to do with our kids and being outside is one of them. One activity we’ve been doing is going on scavenger hunts! One of our favourite things to find or pick up = rocks!

Why rocks? I have no idea. It started about a month ago and we haven’t looked back. Every ravine walk we go on yields us a ton of prolonged fun. The kids like to pick different rocks. Sometimes we pick big, heavy rock and sometimes, the little (baby) rocks are the choice of the day.

As you know…. at Mobi we LOVE toys and activities that disguise learning and make it fun, right?! Open-ended, developmental play is the name of the game! Rocks are no different. There is no wrong way to play with them. Well, I take that back. Throwing rocks at someone is not a good idea and as you can imagine with two littles, we’ve had to have that conversation. Throwing at your sibling aside (!!), there is no wrong way to play with rocks! One of our favourite things to do with the rocks has been to paint them!

Painting rocks!

This is a great calm down activity after a day out. The kids love it and love having something beautiful to physically show after all their effort of “hunting for rocks!” seems to really excite them!

There are so many benefits that come from painting and I’ll hit on a few below:

The Brain:

Creative activities like painting exercise a different part of the brain than reading or math. The right side of the brain is often called our creative half. It is responsible for visual skills and understanding what we see with our eyes. Painting and creative play help exercise your child’s right brain.

Motor Control:

Squeezing the paint tubes into little containers, holding the fine paint brush and the act of painting ….we are working both fine and gross motor skills here. The bigger the canvas (if conventional and using paper ;) ) the more gross motor work at play.

Sensory Experience:

Painting on any surface is a beautiful sensory experience. With rocks, this is slightly heightened because there are so many edges, curves and textures. 

Cause and Effect:

We are big advocates of cause and effect play at Möbi. It is huge for development and we have tried to incorporate this into all our infant/toddler products. With painting …. kids are also working on this! For example, when a child starts out with yellow paint but mixes blue in ….. they will be able to see that that one action creates blue!

Verbal Language Skills:

As a parent you can ask open-ended questions like “what are you painting?” or “would you tell me about your painting”? As you can imagine, in our household we can some crazy answers! Rocks have become ninjas, dragons and rainbows.  Asking open-ended questions, just like open-ended play, allows your child to stretch and grow his/her thinking and verbal skills. 

Confidence:

Whether your child’s rainbow comes out looking like a rainbow or a brown clump …. They will take pride in their painting and will see in your eyes that you do too.

We would never have thought that collecting rocks would be as fun for our family as it has turned out to be. We’ve been asked if we will hang our kids’ rocks on the fridge with their other artwork! Instead we are forming a rock garden!!

What are you guys doing to keep creative? We’d love to hear from you!

 House of Webs

Hello everyone! We hope this finds you well and enjoying the abundant family time that this pandemic has provided us with. We are slowing things right down on the weekends and letting our kids lead the days. This weekend, they found some string…..and oh what fun they had.

As you know…. at Mobi we LOVE toys and activities that disguise learning and make it fun, right?! Open-ended, developmental play is where it’s at! This string was no different. They literally “webbed” the entire house. The adults thought it was very “Mission Impossible-y” and pretened the string was like a lazer beam that would zap us if we touched it. The kids…..played that way with it for a while, then pretened that the string was their bridge and that if they didn’t walk on it, the pretend alligators would get them. They had a ball! Speaking of balls….they also dumped out our ball basket and tried to through the balls under, through and over different parts of the web!

Questions for the kids:

Lose or Tight:

At various places around the house, the string was either loose or tight…or somewhere in the middle. We went around and asked them to talk about the tension of the string at different points.

Long or Short:

Same idea as above. Where did you make the string reach for long distances? Where do you see a short piece of string? 

Under or Over:

Do you think you can step over the string without touching it with your body? Can you crawl under the string without it touching your body? We did this all around the house, and the kids loved it! Think high jump and army crawls! Very cute and quite an active activity!

Developmental Benefits of Web Building!

Fine Motor Skills: Rolling the string out and placing it around certain household objects like sink faucets, door knobs, railings….required quite a bit of fine motor skills!

Cause and Effect: We encouraged the littles to watch what happened when they stepped on the string. Did it tighten in other places? Did it get loose? What did it feel like under their feet?

Coordination and Proprioception: Over or Under as described above was big for coordination and proprioception. The kids had to make sure they knew where their bodies were and had to focus on where to put limbs as they moved over or under!

Concentration and Focus: Although it seems all fun and games…there is quite a bit of concentration and focus required to move through a web and even set it up! We were super very impressed with their desire to web the entire house and then play for hours.

We never thought we’d make a web in our house, but we also never thought we’d be quarantined for this long! When we took the web down on Monday, we made sure to wind the string back up nicely so we could do this another day! We will certainly do this again independent of quarantine! We also think it would be a really cool backyard activity!

Hello and happy Tuesday, March 24^th 2020! Like most of you …. we are still in isolation, and still coming up with creative ways to entertain our kiddos at home. Keeping everyone safe and healthy is our priority as parents! Keeping sane as parents…that’s also our priority ;)

So…what’s happening in our house??? We maybe, just maybe have some fun, educational games that we’ve created hiding in our storage room. Today we brought up Mobi Kids and started playing!

Activity Booklet!

Our son Noah is 6 and loves numbers. He always has. So getting him to playing with tactile number tiles is pretty easy for us! The picture below is actually from when he was 3! Mobi Kids comes with an Activity Booklet that takes a step-by-step progression towards making equations. So even when you have young little people in your household, they can start playing and getting comfortable with numbers! Pretty awesome right?

We’ve attached the link here so even if you don’t have Mobi Kids (or have Original Mobi and want the resource!) you can access it!

Activity Booklet

Original Game Play!

Once your kids are ready to make equations on their own…you can start playing Mobi Kids!

Mobi Kids is a gentle approach to numbers/math. Each player gets their own set of tiles and the operation tiles are communal. Players try to connect all their number tiles (using operation tiles) before the other player!

Other ways to play with Mobi Kids!

• Kate’s Way! Our daughter Kate is 2 and a half. When she isn’t hiding number tiles on us….and we are able to get her to sit still for a second, we play “Kate’s Way!”.

I say: Kate can you find all the 2s?

Kate collects the 2.

I say: Kate can you find all the 8s?

Kate collects all the 8s.

….. you get the idea. Such a simple game but for number recognition, tactile play and fun…..this is amazing when you are 2!!!!!!

• What If??? Noah always likes to shake things up, so we created “What If?”

I say: Noah, what if I had 5 pet monsters and 2 went to the park? How many monsters would I have left??

Noah finds the number 3 tile.

 Noah's Monster! 

I say: Noah, you have 3 cookies and Kate has 5 cookies. How many total cookies are there?

Noah finds the number 8 tile.

Again….you get the idea. Super simple but for the kids, mental math is at play and they get to see you as their parent get creative!

Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy! Until next time!