Preschool Learn and Play- Eco Friendly Way

As my son is growing older, he is demanding more engaging play time. I keep finding different ways to entertain him through which he can also learn things and won't loose his interest too soon in the activity.

I make sure these fun learning activities will make my preschooler eco aware too. Here are few such activities we do regularly.

Firstly when we go outdoors, even if  it is the outdoor landscape area around our building I let my boy explore nature surrounding him. Let him pick up leaves, collect stones, run behind birds. His clothes get dirty sometimes, but I let him select his natural toy instead of carrying toys when we go outdoors. He has learnt singing 'twinkle twinkle little star' by watching stars most of the evenings last winter.
It is beautiful to watch when he is mindful of ants queuing in park. He even talked to them few things and said bye to them :)

Stamping with vegetables

Learning numbers

• Colouring: All kids love to play with colours. But instead of giving him drawings to fill up colours all the time, I prefer giving him blank papers and let his imagination fly freely. Colouring with fingers is messy but fun and they get to explore the texture as well. I always select toxic free colours and then we use vegetables like okra, potato, carrot, onion for stamping.
• Learning numbers: My son loves to collect stones and dry sticks from outdoors. We always let him play with it. When he brings those stones and sticks and other natural toys I store them and let him lay with them even at home. He loves to learning counting of numbers with stones specially.
• Music: we create music out of anything, though it can get noisy sometimes but it develops creativity in kids. Ruhaan loves making music out of his green toys like stones and using dry sticks on drum.
• Learning colours and shapes: To do this best way is to go outdoors. From my experience, Kids learn fast the colours of tree, sky, flowers etc than what they see in books.
• Creating art: All children love sticking activity. To create art, first we visit outdoors, park, beach and collect natural collectibles like feathers of birds, dried leaves and flowers etc. Then all do is give him glue stick, blank paper and all his collectibles. He loves to stick them on paper and creates art from his imagination.

Collage out of natural collectibles

I am sure most of the readers must have remembered their childhood after reading this. We were exposed to nature more than our kids in this digital era. So it is more important now that we motivate our children to play outdoors more, or let them play with natural items than just dumping them with iPads, do you agree?