All My Children

Model Town and Mapping

AGE 5 TO 6 YEARS

How it helps your child

These activities help your child develop an awareness of spatial relationships and perceptual skills, as well as prepare him for using maps either of your own neighbourhood or of differentcountries. The activities are also excellent for language development and learning and teaching a second language.

What you need

2 model towns or farms fitted together by a divider.

2 charts for each scene

A box of appropriate models. These could include, say, I o cows, 5 trucks, 5 cars, 3 children, Continue Reading »

Trans

AGE 2 TO 3 YEARS

How it helps your child

This activity extends your child’s vocabulary and helps to reinforce travelling experiences he may have had after an outing or a journey. It can also be used to reinforce left/right orientation.

What you need

3 activity boards depicting air, water and land on one side and outlines of appropriate methods of air, land and sea travel on the other.

27 cards with pictures of varying means of transport. If you wish to make up the game at home use pictures cut out from magazines.

How to play

1. The first step is to ask your child to match the picture cards to the outlines on the activity boards.

Continue Reading »

Vegetables and Fruit Printing

AGE 2 TO 3 YEARS

How it helps your child

In addition to all the reasons given earlier in the book for encouraging art and craft in the home, this particular activity will give your child the opportunity for self-expression and to communicate his ideas. Ideally you could do this activity with leftover vegetables, or fruit, that aren’t fresh enough to eat. (You should always be concerned to discourage waste). The activity will also help your child develop new skills.

What you need

Different surfaces on which to print such as coloured paper, newsprint, rice paper, paper towels, plain paper, old wallpaper, or fabrics. Thick tempera or powder paint

Suitable vegetables such as potatoes, carrots, celery and fruits like oranges and apples

You could also make a printing pad by putting absorbent paper or wet cloth in a shallow dish and then adding the paint. Continue Reading »

Sorting Fruit and Vegetables by Taste, Touch, Smell and Sound

AGE 2 TO 3 YEARS

How it helps your child

At this age a child responds to everything with his senses. Daily he is learning new things, gradually building up knowledge and vocabulary. All the different ways you can think of to help him learn about fruit and vegetables you usually eat in the family will add to this knowledge.

What you need

A collection of fruit, say, apple, orange, banana, strawberry, grape, etc.

A collection of vegetables, say, sprouts, carrot, broccoli, cabbage, potato, leek, spinach, etc.

How to play

Line up one each of the above fruits vegetables. Continue Reading »

Set up your expectations and ground rules about dating in advance— well before your teenager asks if he or she can go out with someone.

Each family will have to set its own standards, but extremes are best avoided, Rigid parental control through high school and beyond (including selecting a limited number of “acceptable” candidates for courtship) stifles growth and independence and virtually guarantees rebellion. But a lax, anything-goes approach without parental guidelines is like handing the car keys to someone who has had no driver’s training.

Think seriously about adopting a stepwise approach, especially for your adolescent’s first socializing experiences with the opposite sex. Many parents have a policy that if someone wants to spend time with their son or daughter under age eighteen, the first step will be an evening at home with the family or joining in a family activity such as dinner and a movie or a ball game. Continue Reading »

Language is not the only territory your preschooler will be striving to explore and master. At this point he is sorting out not only words but reality itself. He is now well past the basic “see-touch-taste-drop it” method of exploration that served him in his toddler days. By age three or shortly thereafter, he has come to understand that he is an individual separate from you. By now he should know— without any doubt whatsoever—that he is deeply loved and respected, that his welfare is your highest priority, and that he doesn’t rule either the universe or your family.

With this foundation firmly established, your child is free to launch out into the world and learn about it with curiosity and confidence rather than with fear and trembling. Taking part in conversations within the family, asking questions, and falling in love with books are important basic components of his exploring process. Other components include: Continue Reading »

A preschooler is old enough to learn some basic table manners: keeping the volume of her voice reasonable, chewing with her mouth closed, saying please and thank you, using a napkin, and waiting until everyone is seated and a blessing is offered before beginning to eat. If she is done with her meal and conversation among the adults is extending beyond her interest and attention span, don’t insist that she sit indefinitely. But before she gets up, she should ask to be excused. After she departs, don’t let her crawl around under the table with the family pets.

By the third birthday or soon thereafter, it is likely that your child will be well versed in the basics of using the toilet. Continue Reading »

During the coming months, your child will continue to show wide variations in her desire for food. A ravenous appetite one day followed by picking and dawdling sessions the next won’t be at all unusual. Just as when she was two, your job will be to provide an appropriate mix of healthy options; her job will be to decide how much of each (within reason) she will consume. If you need a calorie estimate of her needs, figure about forty calories per pound per day. A thirtyfive-pound child, for example, will consume about fourteen hundred calories per day, spread over three meals and two snacks. Between 25 and 30 percent of the total should be in the form of fats. Milk should be kept to a maximum of sixteen ounces (one pint) per day. Vitamin supplements are not necessary at this age, but if you have any concerns, check with your doctor. Continue Reading »

During or before toddler days, your child undoubtedly discovered that touching the genital area felt good, and you may have been dismayed to see little hands exploring inside the diaper zone (whether clean or otherwise) on a number of occasions. This type of exploration is common and quite normal in young children, as is an ongoingcuriosity about body parts. Questions about where they (or their siblings) came from are part of the same package. When it comes to dealing with such sensitive areas and topics, you have a number of important assignments:

Make it clear that you are the prime source of information about these matters—and not the kid next door or some other unreliable source.

Be levelheaded, honest,calm, and straightforward when you name body parts and explain what they do. Using actual terms (penis and vagina) and not more colorful vocabulary may save some embarrassment later on if your child happens to make a public pronouncement. This information by itself doesn’t jeopardize your child’s innocence. Continue Reading »

Don’t worry about this if it occurs on an occasional basis over a month or so. Avoid showing impatience or disapproval while she’s trying to get through her sentence. Also, don’t try to fish the words out for her, complete her thoughts, or add any pressure to the situation. If anything, her stuttering may be a signal that the speed and pitch of everyone’s conversation at home needs to calm down a bit. Normally this situation will resolve itself. However, if your child is having an ongoing problem getting her sentences launched, looks tense, twitches and grimaces, or is definitely upset by her stuttering, she should be evaluated by a speech therapist.

Other things you can do to help your child’s language blossom include:

Read to her and with her.Don’t limit storytelling to bedtime. Go to the library regularly and help her fall in love with books. Have her sit next to you while you read so she can study the pictures and watch the words as you say them. Continue Reading »