Whole Child Development
If you’re looking for some ways to make this week memorable for your little ones, try serving up some pumpkin! You may want to use pumpkin as an ingredient (as in Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread) or use the pumpkin as the dish! Here are five ways to serve up some fun, originally published on Halloween of last year!
It started quite simply really. Showing my son a few educational videos I found online. Then some educational games. Now my oldest son has become rather adept at using the computer to find his favorite games and sites, and would gladly play all day long if he were allowed. I’m sure there are some benefits to his new-found love: he learns some educational concepts and has some technology proficiency I suppose. He may even have more computer know-how than his grandmother. But I just don’t like letting him have too much computer time. (Ironic I know, given the fact that I probably spend more time on the computer than anyone else in the house.)
I often write about the importance of giving children choices. They are struggling with a need to feel powerful in a world that often makes them feel powerless. Being able to take control and make their own choices gives them that powerful feeling, meaning they feel less compelled to seek out power in negative ways like tantrums or fighting. Children also need to be offered choices to give them practice making decisions and experience handling consequences as life skills. Giving children choices is important. But it is also important to recognize that as adults, we need to be clear in setting the boundaries for those choices. [Read more…]
I often write about the importance of giving children choices. They are struggling with a need to feel powerful in a world that often makes them feel powerless. Being able to take control and make their own choices gives them that powerful feeling, meaning they feel less compelled to seek out power in negative ways like tantrums or fighting. Children also need to be offered choices to give them practice making decisions and experience handling consequences as life skills. Giving children choices is important. But it is also important to recognize that as adults, we need to be clear in setting the boundaries for those choices. [Read more…]
I spent the weekend working on an eBook on Positive Guidance that I hope to have ready to share with you soon! I’d love to tell you the title, but I’m still a bit stumped on that. Do I go with practical and descriptive, or catchy and literary? Roll into that the challenge of summing up so much information with just a few words. I find it challenging!
I wrote a while back about a sign-in chart that provides regular practice for name-writing while also providing a record-keeping system to track progress. Some children really thrive with this method — they’ve recently figured out that they OWN their name, and they want to write it everywhere! Others however, are more reluctant. “I already did that,” they may say. Like the parent who’s constantly cleaning the same kitchen, the child wonders, “Why am I doing this again? I did it yesterday!” Sometimes all a child needs is more purpose for the writing. Writing it today so they can write it again tomorrow just doesn’t always cut it. Here are some ways you can encourage reluctant writers to leave their mark. [Read more…]
There’s a fascinating article from Newsweek entitled, The Creativity Crisis. It was actually published in the summer, but I just stumbled upon it recently. It’s left me with all kinds of writing prompts swimming around in my head, but I thought I’d actually start with something I’ve already written. Here’s a look at what the term “arts and crafts” means to me, originally published August 12, 2009.
As I sat in the waiting room of a doctor’s office not too long ago, I flipped through a family magazine and was taken aback by an advertisement. The picture showed a mother with a baby in her lap, both looking enthusiastically at a computer screen as flashcard-like images of apples and dogs and the Eiffel Tower played before them. In bold letters, the advertisement promised a computer program that would make your (otherwise dreadfully average) child a genius.
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