January is National Hobby Month a wonderful month for children to start a collection of their own. Children are natural collectors of almost anything; those collections can help your child discover that learning is fun.
Once they’ve chosen something to collect, let them start gathering all they can. After a while your little collector might specialize in one aspect of their collection. A baseball card collector may decide to specialize in one team or player. A ball collector may only collect balls that fit into his pocket that can bounce higher than their nose.
To truly enjoy their collection they need to have a way to show it off to others, to classify and display. A journal for a picture and a few notes of each piece- how and when they found the piece and the date is good way to organize a collection. However, collections can be stored in shoe boxes, bags, egg cartons, baby food jars…anything can make a good display.
If they become serious about collecting, there are clubs and magazines for almost every kind of collector. A trip to the library can gleam books, magazine articles about any particular kind of collection.
A special collection can give your child a chance to be a young authority on a subject they are excited about. Let your child’s heart guide his collecting selections. An enthusiastic curiosity will do more toward growing a life-long learner than all the nagging in the world.
Someday you may call your child a numismatist (coin collector), or a philatelist (stamp collector). Maybe your child will teach you something new about their collection.
Some collection ideas:
· Animals (Stuffed)
· Buttons
· Crayons
· Dolls
· Erasers
· Fishing- lures
· Games
· Hats
· Insects
· Jump ropes
· Key chains
· Legos
· Marbles
· Nickels
· Ornaments
· Pencils
· Quarters
· Rocks
· Shells
· Train sets
· Umbrellas
· Valentine’s
· Worms
· Xylophones
· Yo-yos
· Zippers
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