4 Ways Your Child’s Favorite Characters Help Them Learn And Grow
Disclaimer: This sponsored conversation about how a child’s favorite characters can help them learn and grow was written by me on behalf of Spin Master. I was also sent the Cars 3: Risky Raceway game to use for this post, still all opinions and text are my own. This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
It’s amazing when you notice your child starting to become interested in things. Before you know it they start having things they favor such as characters from books, TV shows, and movies. These favorites mean the world to them. You can take advantage of your child’s excitement and use your child’s favorite characters to help them learn and grow.
4 Ways Your Child’s Favorite Characters Help them Learn and Grow
Nick has had many favorite characters over the years. Many of them come and go depending on his interests. This summer he has been consumed with Cars 3 though.
His Cars 3 fever of the summer only increased when we went to Walt Disney World a few weeks ago. He spent the entire trip getting new Cars 3 toys, and you can imagine his excitement when he got to have a character meet and greet with Cruz at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
For years I have watched Nick go through favorite character phases. I’ve come to realize how much these character obsessions help him learn and grow, so I always encourage them and use them to help him grow even more.
Encourages Imagination
One way your child’s favorite characters can help them is by encouraging the use of their imagination. I’ve noticed that Nick plays more with toys that go with his favorite characters. I’m sure there is a duh that comes along with that statement, but the fact is that the way he plays with them is just so different.
Part of the difference comes from having a story base to work with. Once Nick gets going he can play a long time (always a plus for me!).
It’s not that he just recreates a scene and calls it a day. He’ll take a scene to start his play, and then he’ll run with it. He knows the characters well enough that he can branch out from the original stories to create his own.
Gets Them Reading
Being a language arts major I feel strongly that we should do whatever is necessary to get kids reading, and reading books about their favorite characters is a great way to make that happen.
When the movie came out I bought Nick the Cars 3 Read-Along Storybook and CD (we actually listened to the CD on our trip to Disney). We have read that book a lot this summer, but getting back into Cars has made Nick pull out many of his other Cars books as well.
Helps Them Learn Life Skills
Board games are an invaluable tool for teaching life skills, especially for young kids. While it isn’t hard to get Nick to play board games he’s even more excited to play when they involve something he’s really excited about. Something like Cars 3!
A new game we got this summer is Cars 3 Risky Raceway. This is seriously an awesome game, and it has so many great lessons embedded in it.
In Risky Raceway you get to join Lightning McQueen, Cruz Ramirez, and Jackson Storm as they train for the big race! Not surprisingly the first one to the checkered flag wins!
As with most games this is a great way to teach kids about taking turns, the individual counting of spaces, and how to be a good winner or loser. This one also teaches the lesson about hard work. As you play the game you can go through race training (the long way) or take a short cut. If you take a shortcut though you don’t earn training tokens which help you avoid the hazard places. When we played Nick and my mother went through the training course while I took the shortcut. Needless to say they both beat me. A true testament that taking shortcuts often doesn’t make things happen faster.
Gets Kids Moving
Nick loves to play make believe and we usually have to role play whatever characters he’s into at the time. With Nick that usually involves a lot of running around and other types of movement.
We spent a lot of time walking this summer as we were preparing for our upcoming Walt Disney World vacation, but after a few walks Nick didn’t find them very exciting. To keep himself entertained we ended up being Cars 3 characters on our walks. I found myself being Mack, Mater, and Jackson Storm a lot.
Those role play games continued even after our walks were done. Nick especially loved having us run all around the yard pretending that we were Lightning and Storm racing against each other.
It does not matter who your child’s favorite characters are. Any favorites will do when it comes to helping your child learn and grow. Kids are more apt to do things when it involves things they like and enjoy.
Keep these ideas stored away in your parental tool box and see what ways your child’s favorite characters can help with your child’s growth and development.
Cars 3 toys and the Cars 3 Risky Raceway game are available now at Walmart and Toys”R”Us.
Having a favorite character definitely helps in the learning process. The Risky Raceway game looks like fun. My grandson loves playing games and having them in a favorite character makes him like them even more. He loves his Despicable Me Operation game.
Oh I bet my son would love the Despicable Me Operation Game. He really does love those minions! LOL