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The Benefits of Walking with Kids

We’ve been walking….and walking….and walking since COVID began. We’ve always walked and gone on adventures as a family, but there was usually our Thule Chariot involved so the kids jumped in and out when they wanted. For about three months now, we’ve been leaving the stroller at home and the kids have really taken to our walks. Our walks are more like marathons now as little feet only move so fast, but this allows for us to find so many cool things….snails, caterpillars, cool rocks!

Just the other day we came home from a weekend out of the city and when we arrived home (at 10:30pm), our son asked if we could go for a family walk. A “midnight” walk we had … and it was magical. Warm summer night, stars out, a neighbourhood cat to play with. Simply perfect.

Benefits of Walking:

1) It’s fun and interesting: You get to notice things along the way, say hi to neighbours and get to know your neighbourhood

2) It’s social: chat, chat, chat, chat, chat…..at least that’s what we do! We love hearing our kids' stories and questions they have along the way. Our walks have become such an important catch-up and connection point for our family.

3) Kids feel better: Exercise has been proven to make kids feel calmer and happier. It also improves concentration. Walking has also been proven to give your kids mood and self-esteem a boost.

4) It promotes independence and freedom: As opposed to riding in a car, when children are on foot, they get to be part of the decision-making process of their journey. They can choose to stop and jump over the log, look at a house, dig for worms or pet a dog. Kids can also start to make decisions about road safety. For older children, walking independently or a few steps ahead offers them some time to themselves.

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!

SOS: Save Our Sanity (Part 5)!!

Hi everyone and welcome back to SOS! Isolation day ____ ??? We’ve lost count BUT we are still playing! Always playing. The kids have been really into boxes. As a manufacturing company and with a house full of prototypes and products, we tend to have a lot of boxes. We always keep them as we are constantly shipping things out and need various sizes.

These boxes have come in handy since we’ve been quarantined!! The kids have gone crazy for them. Each wants a box (read multiple ;)) to call their own and they take pride in making them unique!

As you know….at Mobi we are all about open ended play and discovery. The freedom to explore, create, fail and reassess all help children learn. There are so many fancy tech toys and apps that complicate play. We are all about breaking those patterns down at Mobi. Yes, yes, we do make toys and games (we promise we try to keep them simple and open ended as possible) … but sometimes all kids need is a cardboard box!

Although not considered an “academic activity”, the free exploration that comes with open ended play plays such an important role in learning. One interesting thing that has come up as parents for us is our desire to “lead” the play…."let’s make this a castle”…."don’t smash the box!” for example. What we’ve learned is that we have to let them play. Let the kids smash the box, let them build what they want to build. Let them take the lead. We are just here to take the back seat and let the kids learn. Who is to say the smashed, flatten box isn’t the finished product?! Interesting right? Boxes have actually been a really cool lesson for us as parents.

Here are some things our little Mobi kids love to do with boxes:

Draw in them

Pretend they are cars

Make them into castles/forts

Smash them (!!!!)

Layers:

Something that we’ve recently done is add options to box play. For example, sometimes when we bring the boxes out, we bring glue and pipe-cleaners, stickers and/or paint. Adding layers adds to the imaginative play associated with box play. You can also think of it as adding layers of developmental play. For example, when you add in the stickers and pipe-cleaners, the littles being working on more fine motor skills. So much awesome going on with all of these options!

Positive Box Outcomes:

It’s been pretty neat to watch the way the kids treat each other since boxes have become a thing in our living room. They invite each other over to their boxes for a chat or for a color. They play nicely together when they make big forts. Really positive, social, sweet things are unfolding.

*I just had the thought that we should make little mail boxes or mail box slots in our boxes so we can write little notes to each other! How cute would that be??! More on that in a later post!

Okay – go grab a box!!!

Enjoy everyone!

Be well! 

Xo Team Mobi