Toy Boxes as a Teaching Tool
Friday, August 5th, 2011Toy boxes can come in any style and design. They are helpful for teaching kids the proper organization of things. Everything in the world has its place, and there is a time for everything under the sun. A time to play, a time to refrain from playing, a time to clean up, and, yes, a time to be messy!
That is the wisdom of toy boxes: pedagogical tools in disguise. This is necessary as young children haven’t any sense of categories, never mind right and wrong. It is, however, also one of the most charming aspects of a child, that they are so innocent!
And so the ancient adage about babies, their mouths, and the truth. For children are naturally free of affect and pretenses – and that happens to be why their rooms can be so messy! And so it is that toy boxes can be of use to a parent, especially those models which are colorful or otherwise attractive to a kid’s innate sense of fun and curiosity. That’s because the young tend to benefit more from a hands-on approach, one that’s physical and concrete! Explaining things is so much easier when there is some practical task that exemplifies the lesson, which is why having such a box for putting away their toys is an excellent idea; it is an excellent pedagogical tool.
Believe it or not, motor skills can be learned and practiced in addition to conceptual skills where the box offers separate compartments for distinguishing which toy goes where. The lesson would be that while all toys go in a box, different types below in different drawers, say. Such useful life skills are imparted in the most casual of ways, making them all the more powerful!
But care must be exercised to ensure that learning to divide the world up into different categories of objects must not be taken too far.. It is hard to unlearn what one has learned, and so perhaps it is also useful to explain to kids, while they are still young and have not fully imbibed the bad old habits of so-called grown-ups, that while objects such as toys may be put into neat little categories, all with their own designated spots, not everything in the world is an object to be treated that way – especially people!