Kids & Company Blog

Learning Through Play!

I have eight children. As you can imagine, working at building a business to care for children while raising my own family was a big job. I believe that having my own children helped me in creating the kind of place that I would want me children to be while I was working.

When we go off to work I think that we all want our children to be in an environment where they are cared for and enriched as well as they would be if they were at home with those that love them most.

In developing our curriculum I would often think about raising my own children and those cherished times spent at home with them. I asked myself what the one unifying thing was which made all of those memories so special. What was the one thing that ran through all of our most engaging, enlightening and purposeful times? The answer was Play.

Through play, all areas of development are enhanced.

Play is the best way to educate and model leadership, confidence and problem solving for our children. Playtime is the canvas for the masterpieces of child exploration.

Play was the lens through which we saw the experience of the child at Kids and Company. After all, play is the work of the child. This is how they learn, explore, connect and retain information. Through their experiences at play, children see the world and start to understand and learn about it.

I am so proud to share our curriculum through play with the children at Kids and Company. I am grateful that we can return them home to their families each night with the knowing that they have had a full day of engagement through play.

The work does not stop there however. The best way to keep the engagement of the child alive is to share in play at home. In our busy lives this can be hard to do but when done with engagement of the parent, can create deep lasting bonds with the child and memories which will shape a lifetime. Because I know how full the lives of our parents are with work and all manner of other responsibilities,

I searched for a product, which might help in keeping the purposeful play going at home. In my search I uncovered SparkPlay, created by a fellow top Canadian businesswoman and busy Mom who believes very much, as I do, that making purposeful play easy for Mom makes all the difference. SparkPlay exists to provide monthly play adventures for families to ignite some fun together. They are delivered to your door complete with everything needed for that month’s themed play and even come with a video tutorial about the how to play because a lot of us have grown up and forgotten how. I just love the idea of a box arriving addressed to your child which serves to help our parents in getting the play going and our children in spending fun and fabulous times with their parents in play.

It’s so important to foster the play in our children. It is the work of the child and the best way to connect, educate and explore the world with your child. Here’s to your next precious moment shared with your child in play!

You can check out SparkPlay here: www.sparkplay.com

 

Posted on: Monday September 9th, 2013

Posted by: Victoria Sopik