Play and Playthings by age: 3 - 6 years

Skill: Social and Intellectual
Appropriate Playthings: dress-up outfits, bathing and feeding dolls, puppets and theaters, store-keeping toys, toy phones and clocks, playhouses, housekeeping toys, toy soldiers, dolls for dressing and undressing, large puzzles, outdoor play equipment, board games, I Spy books

Skill: Problem Solving
Appropriate Playthings: farm, village, and other play sets, small trucks, cars, planes, and boats; beads, blocks, buttons, peg boards, simple construction sets, housekeeping toys, trains, race car sets, balls

Skill: Form and Spacial Relationships
Appropriate Playthings: simple puzzles, set of plastic measuring cups, large tricycles, sleds, cookie cutters, wagons, scooters, swings, backyard gym sets and jungle gyms, empty cardboard boxes, seesaws, monkey bars, rope swings

Skill: Creativity
Appropriate Playthings: crayons, children's safety scissors, finger paints, clay, sketch pads, paste, rhythm instruments, art books for young children

Skill: Problem Solving
Appropriate Playthings: various size boxes, simple puzzles, games, stringing large beads, take-apart toys with parts that snap together, construction toys that snap together, toy/moveable books

What caregivers can do:

• Begin reading regularly (see our early literacy resources).
• Reverse roles.
• Make-believe telephone conversations.
• Play hide-and-seek.
• Improvise characters doing routine things.
• Practice motor skills with card and board games.
• Play games of courage.
• Play "counting" and "number" games.
• Provide children with the materials and environment needed for good, healthy play.
• Do gymnastics.
• Use hand puppets with different voices.
• Listen to and talk about dreams.
• Tell "what-if"' stories.
• Act out fairy tales.
• Read to children.
• Teach children to identify different sizes and shapes with cookie cutters and baking pans.
• Play "matching" games.
• Describe activities that are taking place while you are doing household chores.
• Encourage children to create stories while looking through books and magazines.
• Take children to the library.

Play and Playthings by age reprinted with permission from the National Network for Child Care - NNCC. (1994). Play is the business of kids. In *Better Kid Care: A video learn-at-home unit* (pp. 3-18). University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Cooperative Extension.