When Checkers announced a week or two ago that the Mini’s 2 collection would be coming out my heart sank. Another collection I thought, I know a lot of parentings are feeling pressure from their children. Us included, pressure to stop at a specific shop. Pressure to purchase in batches of R150, or to add groceries to your trolley to make up for the R50 missing to get another collectable.
Sound familiar? Take comfort mama! There are benefits to your child collecting things, long term benefits! Not only are they enjoying building something. There is suspense and excitement involved and they are also learning.
Benefits of collecting for children:
- A sense of responsibility – when collecting something children like or love. They take care in looking after their collectables, Emma’s collections are all kept in safe places. She spends a lot of time just looking at her collections, enjoying them and reading over her pages over and over.
- Organising skills – having collections means they need to find a way to organise and keep track of what they have and don’t have. It means they need to reason with themselves as to why they would group things together and how. Emilie has her collectors albums but keeps all of her doubles or extras separate ready for swapping with friends.
- Learning – Reading/Maths – Emilie reads over her Super Animals cards often, she has learnt so much about animals through them. Checkers mini’s could be used to play “shop-like” games with including opportunities to calculate money.
- Social Skills – Because of the nature of the types of collectables available, social interactions are encouraged. It is not possible for you to collect an entire collection without at some point needing to swop or negotiate for a certain collectable. Forcing our kids to learn negotiation skills and the power of barter.
- Budgeting – although the collectables are “free”when you spend fixed amounts at a specific store, closer to the end of the promotions, one ends up feeling desperate at getting one or two collectables that you have not yet been able to secure. This previously led us to finding Facebook groups to swop collectables on. Once you had no more collectables to swop – the option was available to buy. It forced her to look at money differently. For example: I’ve noticed that this time around she is very focused on even swapping more of an item that she has a lot of for less of an item she needs.
I love that Emilie loves collecting things, it gives her hours of enjoyment away from the TV and she learns. The collectables get a thumbs up from me.
In the meantime – how do you feel about all the collectables in the various shops?
If you enjoyed this post, please share with your friends using my links below. And follow me on my handles – Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, I know you are cool like that!
I haven literally never gotten any of these minis, angry birds, pick n pay cards, etc for my kids. They just never ask about it, so I don’t bother. I was at Checkers the other day and my stuff came to R144….I refused to find something to take it over the R150. lol. I figured if I go home with 1 mini, it may get the pandemonium started….. BUT great way of looking at it with this post! Emilie is a really awesome kid. xxxx
My kids however would never keep that safe…plus Adam would try to force one of the babies to eat those minis if he got his hands on them. ha ha
It gets hard! But she loves it and I enjoy that she does too. Thanks friend, she has her moments. You can keep your minis for us hey… I feel like I might need to start bedeling from friends without kids now… Adam is a legend!!
It’s my youngest daughter’s birthday on Friday. Her wish list included Shopkins, Tsum Tsums and Hatchimal Colleggtibles. She is FOUR!
The two of them were devastated yesterday to learn that they won’t be able to complete their PnP card collection cos the cards are finished. I actually feel really sad for them too.
They are getting into it the whole collecting thing so well now, and understand the concept. I agree with everything you said above. Great post!
We should chat, our collection is just about full and we have tons of spares. Just send me a message I’m sure we could sort something out. I LOVE sitting with her with the PnP card collection we got the sound card reader and she tells me all the information, its awesome seeing her face as she explains everything! Thanks xx
Will do. We didn’t get the sound reader, I downloaded the app instead. It’s also really great.
I did with the first set too! Xx
I think that played the biggest role in my collecting when i was a kid was the socializing and finding like minded friends. it was amazing. i love this post
YES! It definitely helped my little one this year and last year…at her new school too! Thanks for stopping by! xxx
These collectables are really cute. We need small bags to put the groceries in lol
Eisj ja but it’s not good for the eco system
Lol! Paper bags maybe. A lot of them are made from card so perhaps they can just make more of those ones? Win win. I hadn’t thought about the plastic actually but definitely something to think about. Xx