Telephone

(Open Ended Play)

We never have a landline telephone at home. At this era and age, smartphone is no question win over the landline one. I never thought about it until we have Y. We travel a lot. I just realized how much in love Y about landline phone in every hotels we have visited. We don’t quite know how she know how landline one works since no one we know has shown her.

Young children have likely seen adults speaking on the telephone, so they'll want to mimic their behavior. Infants and toddlers can develop their verbal skills by talking or just babbling into the phone.

Each time we check into our hotel room, she would go straight to the phone, pick up a telephone and pretend to talk. Y always say “Hi,” paused, “Hmm,” “Yes,” paused, “Yes,” paused, “Okay, bye-bye.” The same pattern since she was around one year old of age. Back then we often got a return call from the receptionist who was asking if there was anything she could help for us. Lesson learned, after that we always unplug the wire once we checked in.

We often think of telephones as only being important for the housekeeping area, but play phones can work for any dramatic play theme.

Telephone play enhances multiple areas of development. Just a few examples include:

- Math concepts (numbers on dials, shapes of buttons)

- Language acquisition and back and forth communication

- Fine motor development (pushing the buttons, picking up the handle, putting the hearing part close to ear, setting a phone back on it’s cradle and writing a quick notes on a sheet of paper or on the phone itself using the hotel complimentary pencil)

- Cooperative play (handing it over to other people)

Y could play with it hour long. Telephone is the favorite go-to busy play for her.

I wonder, does your kiddo love landline telephone as well?

#hotel #toddler #play