“Positive Parenting Tips” Febuary newsletter

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INDEX:
Inspiring Quotes
Toddlers Activities & Games
Easy Kids Recipe
Child Arts & Crafts Activities:
Positive Parenting Resources
Sponsored Resources
Editor’s Note / Humour / new free books

Inspiring Quotes:

Nothing happens unless first a dream." - Carl Sandburg

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." - Ambrose Redmoon

Kids Activities:

“Playing Shops”

It’s another wet day and your child is bored. Playing shops will keep that nagging boredom away. So, let’s play, you will also enjoy this time playing shops with your child.

What You Need:

• large cardboard cartons or table

• Coins, Crayons, Paper, Scissors

• Items for the shop (eg : Books, Toys, Fruit, etc )

• Props such as : Toy cash register, Old shoe box, Plastic bags or a carry basket

What to Do:

Organize with your child to make a shop with cardboard cartons or table. Look through the cupboards for things your child can use to sell from the shop. Ask your child to choose some things to sell in the shop too.

Making play money: Blue – tack some coins to the table, put a piece of paper on top of the coins then show your child how to rub over the money with a crayon to get the markings of the play money. Help to cut your play money out ready to start shopping.

Cash register: If your child doesn’t have a toy cash register then an old shoe box is the next best thing, you can make dividers to separate your play money by cutting out pieces of cardboard the same width of your shoe box.

Mom and Dad can play too, make your self a shopping list and visit your Childs shop. Your child will get so much enjoyment out of serving mom or dad.

So, come on mom lets go shopping!

Kitchen Play

This is great for the outdoor activity on warm days; kitchen play offers your child many activities amusing your child for hours. Watch the time go by while your children happily play.

Kitchen Play is loved by all children, its Fun!

What You Need :

• Unbreakable bowls, Spoons, Ladles, Baking Trays, Muffin Tins, Measuring Spoons, Plastic Jugs and Cups

• Water

• Cardboard Carton

What to Do :

All children love to cook, so now your child can do some cooking outdoors using cold water.

- Stirring, Measuring, Mixing and pouring.

- Add some color to the water with a few drops of food dye, use different colors to make the kitchen play cooking more interesting. Children think it’s great. Looks great too.

- Use the cardboard carton for their pretend stove. Let the cooking begin

When it comes to cooking a meal for the family, involve your child by giving a simple task to do.

Kitchen Play Indoors

What You Need

• Large Plastic Sheet or Plastic Table Cloth

• Play dough

• Baking Trays, Cake Tins, Plastic Cups, Egg Rings, Rolling Pin or a Plastic Bottle

Find an area to lay the plastic sheet or table cloth, give your child some play dough, watch the amazing and creative ideas that your child will share with you. Children love to be making all sorts of shapes and sizes, this activity will keep your child amused for hours.

Mom, you can even sit and play with your child and create some great shapes and sizes too.

Visit for our Free Kids Games & Activities from A to Z

Easy Kids Recipe:

Banana Oats

This Toddlers Activity recipe is just perfect for your 6 month old baby, bubs is going to love it. Introduce oats gradually, as oats may causes a rash in some children. This is a very easy Toddlers Activity recipe.

What you need:

Half a cup of ground oats

1 cup water, milk or baby formula

Half ripe banana

Half a cup of milk or yoghurt

Mix the ground oats with one cup of water, milk or formula in a saucepan.

Bring ingredients to the boil, and then simmer for about four to five minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat, then cover and let stand for a further five minutes.

Slice banana into a blender, add the remainder of the milk or yoghurt then bend.

When cooked cereal is ready, stir in the banana and ingredients and mix well.

Suggestions: For a variety, try pureed fresh or stewed apple or pear.

Child Arts & Crafts Activities:

“Apple Printing”

Make a fun design, wrapping paper, decorate t-shirts, or a tote with apple prints.

Parental supervision is recommended.

What You Need

• Apples
• Paint
• Paper plate, shallow tray, or wide paint brushes
• Something to print on, like paper
• Newspapers to protect the table
• Knife to cut the apple

How To Make It

If you are going to make your prints on paper, use washable poster paint for good results. If you want to decorate fabric - like a t-shirt or tote, make sure to get fabric paints - and the kids need to be dressed in old clothing!

Apple printing is always fun: there are two very different prints you can get by cutting apples in half through the middle OR from the top to bottom.

You can cut them in half through the stem, dip them in red and green paint, and make a very nice-looking collage of apple shapes. Cutting them through the middle makes a circle stamp with a star in the middle.

To paint on a t-shirt or tote, put a thick layer of paper inside the shirt/tote to prevent the paint from bleeding through to the back of the fabric.

An easy and very effective project is to decorate a plain tote with apple stamps cut from top to bottom (making an apple shape) in a horizontal line around the tote.

You can make a wreath by using two colors of green paint and apples cut through the middle (to make circles with 'star' centers).

Then take a sponge, cut a triangle (for 1/2 of the bow) and dip it into red paint - add the bow.

To make dark green paint, add a little black paint at a time to some green paint.

You can also make a fun gift for a parent, grandparent or caregiver by brushing the paint onto the children's hands and decorating the shirt or tote with those special handprints.

Positive Parenting Resources:

“Mother Matters”

Ninety percent of men and 92 percent of women identify family as the most important institution in society. That’s according to Dr. Ruth Westheimer and Ben Yagoda’s book, The Value of Family: A Blueprint for the 21st Century.

The authors go on to point out a few incongruities. For instance, we point fingers at the family for a host of social ills, from street crime to school shootings.

At the same time, we laud workaholics, we envy wealth, and we long for the freedom—and the cash—to go anywhere and buy anything at a moment’s notice.

We conduct studies to prove that mothers don’t matter. Some researchers, it seems, are bent on reminding us that this role could just as well be filled by the average babysitter, which the U.S. Department of Labor feels necessitates less training than a shoe salesperson (source: Department of Labor’s Dictionary of Occupational Titles).

The Children’s Defense Fund has their own statistic: Most states require 500 hours of training to be a hairdresser, but 32 states don’t require a single hour of training for childcare center employees. Some studies show that even moms who sacrifice their careers to stay home aren’t making a difference in their children’s lives anyway.

Consider these recent studies:

• On average, Dads spend 8 minutes, working mothers spend 11 minutes, and stay-at-home moms spend less than 30 minutes talking to their children each day. (University of Missouri Extension Service study on balancing work and family.)

• Nearly 20 percent of students in grades 6 through 12 report that they have not had a 10-minute conversation with at least one of their parents in more than a month. (Children’s Defense Fund poll.)

• Children enrolled in early childhood programs and day care centers actually have an edge in school over those who stay at home with a parent. (The Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth—October 14, 1999).

Just last week, I saw a news broadcast detailing a North Carolina study that tracked a group of students in a special day care program over a period of several years. These students, the study found, were better suited for academic achievement.

But the news program failed to answer the question: Better suited than whom? The program under study attributed its success to two factors: a low teacher-turnover rate and low teacher-to-student ratios.

I can’t think of a lower teacher turnover rate or lower teacher-to-student ratio than that of a mother or father to a child, whether that care takes place after school, before school, or all day long.

Perhaps we could best use these study statistics and information not as a way to champion childcare--at the expense of other options--but as a way to strategize toward the optimum mom. Socialization is important to a child’s academic and social development, so that should be part of a mother’s daily activity. Playgroups and field trips with neighborhood friends could fit this bill nicely.

All parents want to help their kids develop--to provide a firm foundation for a child’s emotional, social, and academic development. According to a parent poll on the Zero to Three website, five million infants and toddlers in the United States have parents who feel they don’t spend enough time with them.

This Parent Poll on Early Childhood Development, conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates concludes, “[Parents] do not fully understand the connection between their own parenting practices and the social, emotional, and intellectual aspects of child development.”

The poll found that 60 percent of children ages 0 to 3 are cared for on a regular basis by someone other than the parent. Twenty percent have been cared for by a parent exclusively since birth. At the same time, 39 percent of these parents say they have the greatest influence on their child’s emotional development.

In short, the study revealed that there are two child development concepts that many parents fail to grasp: the fact that the continuity of a caregiver is important, and that the quality of stimulation provided to a child is more important than the quantity. All stimulation is not healthy, age-appropriate stimulation.

While we gather information about the best environment for our children, let’s give moms some credit, too. Moms need to feel important in this society. It is both arrogant and dangerous to tell mothers that the average daycare worker is more capable of raising her children than she is and that she is somehow damaging them if she sacrifices or postpones her career to be with them.

The profile of a mother no longer fits a common mold. Of all families with children, just 16 percent (a little over 5 million) fit the traditional model, in which the father brings home the bacon and the mother fries it up in the pan. That is, dad is the wage-earner and the mother stays at home.

The Labor Department reports that the fastest growing segment of the labor force is mothers of children under the age of 6. Thirty-seven percent of married mothers work full time, and another 36 percent work part time. Fifty three percent of mothers with children under the age of one are working mothers.

But all moms--whether you stay-at-home, or work at home or in an office--should object to having the all-important role of mother relegated to little more than a child care worker.

We know what kind of a role we occupy in a child’s mind. We don’t get it from a study. We get it from the look on her face when she tells you about her day at school. From the cries in the night when he needs his mother’s milk, and from the dreams we have of them all taking on the world with the same vision and idealism that we once had.

Our role is determined not by the latest study or political climate, but by our nature and instincts as mothers. We know it is the most important thing we will ever do. So we do it, and we do it well.

Even if recent surveys have undermined the role of the mother, scientific evidence affirms it.

In our rush to approve everything from attachment parenting to boarding schools, we can’t forget the basics. Caring, close families and nurturing mothers really do matter. Parents occupy a huge role in helping their children develop and thrive intellectually, physically, and socially throughout their lives.

Young children are so impressionable. Research shows that, unlike other organs, our brain changes throughout life (unlike other organs). In fact, the brain is not fully developed until after puberty.

New brain research proves that the kind of care you provide in the early years has a significant impact on the actual development of your child’s brain.

How it works According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, a baby's brain bubbles with twice the activity of that of an adult. And the first three years holds a child's highest potential for learning...by age 3, your child's brain is already 80 percent of its adult size.

A newborn’s brain has 100 billion neurons, which grow and connect with other neurons in systems that will allow us to see, move, hear, and feel. Networks of brain cells allow us to think and learn. Each brain cell sends and receives signals to other brain cells. Repeated connections among cells create and strengthen a network of neurons.

So, repeated experiences result in repeated connections and, thus, stronger connections. This repeated activation leads to brain development: scientific proof that your child’s early experiences actually shape the organization of his brain.

Researchers have also identified a direct link between a child’s relationships in the first part of his life and development in the social and emotional parts of the brain.

Since repeated experiences activate nerve systems in the brain, experience in the real world allows your child’s brain to mature.

Healthy relationships, complete with love, attention, and snuggling, teach your child empathy, confidence, and resilience, as well as communication skills.

A predictable, safe environment helps children develop a sense of trust and self-reliance, confidence, curiosity, enthusiasm, and motivation to learn.

These children might also have a better handle on stress. Studies show that these children’s bodies actually produce less of a stress hormone called cortisol. One theory is that a predictable environment allows children to focus on learning without the distractions of continual changes. And a study conducted by Alan Sroufe and Byron Egeland at the University of Minnesota found that children who had predictable, reliable relationships developed fewer behavior problems at school. These children also showed higher confidence levels and better social relationships.

An environment that centers around the child, that allows the exploration of all the senses through books, toys, and music, can further a child’s cognitive development.

Free Toddlers Activity & Child Discipline Guide
Free parenting resources to help you use positive parenting in your child’s development, toddlers activities & games, toddler arts & crafts, kids easy recipes, free kids books for bedtime reading and even child discipline help!
http://free-toddlers-activity-and-discipline-guide.com

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