Author: fuelingbrains_AdMEEn

Have you ever seen young children painting? You may feel that they create more mess than actually painting. But it’s necessary to inspire and motivate our young artists. Every activity or art and craft teaches something to these young minds. The painting is not just an extra-curricular activity. While painting, children a lot of newer things.

They spend time in choosing, organizing, and painting and do everything on their own. When you see kids painting, you get a glimpse of the creativity of these young minds. Painting is a nice group activity where children can bond with each other and have fun.

How You Must Encourage the Children to paint quite often according to child care in Calgary:

• You encourage them to observe how colors change when they mix with each other as it motivates them to imagine and be creative with their paintings.
• They should be encouraged to swirl their paintbrush in different directions so that they know sky is the limit when it comes to creativity and there’s so much to explore.
• Encourage them to use the opposite end of brush to scratch their name on the painting paper and be a proud owner of their work.
• Encourage them to talk with a friend while they paint.
• Children should be encouraged to observe the world around them as they paint so that they know how beautiful this world is and how they can get inspired by so many things.
• Encourage them to hang up their own paper on the easel before they paint.
• They should be encouraged to put their own paper on the drying line or shelf.
• Encourage them to put red paint brush in red paint cup and blue in blue cup.
• They should be encouraged to gather the material for painting before they begin painting.

The major key take-aways are that children need to satisfy their inner artist and creative needs before they move to the next stage of creative expression. Their needs can be satisfied by giving them freedom, tools, and time to explore the creative process.

It is important the way children form relationships at a young age as it will have a huge impact on how they make relations in future. It is the responsibility of parents, teachers, and elders in family to promote healthy attachments with children.

Here’s a Look at Some Tips:

Strategies & Techniques

The early childhood educators constantly work to create opportunities for building healthy attachments with children in their way of caring along with helping the families in improving their attachment with the children. The educator works with the family and tries to create connections within the home environment, community, and the child care setting. These educators use several strategies for promoting healthy attachment in the classroom by following these practices:

• Being responsive, consistent, and understanding the signals and needs of children.
• Encouraging the positive behavior and play in children.

Secure Attachment

Secure attachments help in promoting self-regulation, empathy, social behavior, and positive sense of emotional well-being or self-esteem. When children don’t have secure attachments they spend less time in exploring and playing in the environment as the adult they rely on is not present.

You must remember:

• To be sensitive and empathetic towards the needs of your children by being warm, and responsive especially during their early years.
• You need to responds calmly and showcase good behavior as children learn from you to interact.
• It is important to interact and positively engage with your child and be there for them
• Parents must show positive behavior by eye contact, touch, facial expressions, and laugh while interacting with the child. You need to show interest in them.

The Educator’s Role

As an educator you can help the family to understand that they are the most important people in their children’s life and help them in comprehending various needs and behavior of child. You can teach them how to respond appropriately and how to get involved with their child. You can help the family in to create a positive bond and attachment with their child and try to show them where they are lacking.

So many myths and so much have been said about the birth order in children yet nothing has been proven scientifically. Scientific research on the social phenomenon of birth order naturally leads to generalizations. Your own experience may completely align with the findings, or you may totally disagree with the general data. Even experts disagree on the importance of birth order research. Nevertheless, the information is worth some thought.

Birth Order convetional beliefs

Birth order appears to significantly impact children’s personalities. In fact, researchers and parents generally agree on the following stereotypes:

• First children: rule-followers, high achievers, natural leaders, adult-pleasers, and know-it-alls who can be organized, punctual and responsible.
• Middle children: peacemakers and perfectionists who can be flexible, easy-going, social, independent, secretive, indecisive, adaptable and perceive that life is unfair.
• Youngest children: risk-takers who can be competitive, self-centered, creative, outgoing, funny, spoiled, easily bored and adventurous.
• Only children: Leaders who can be mature, demanding, dependable, sensitive, self-centered, spoiled.

Yet some factors seem to modify these conventions, including the number of children in the family and their age gaps, their gender, their temperament, family illnesses, life changes, such as divorce, blended families, death, financial gains or losses and parents’ own birth orders.

First Children: The Highest Expectations

Many parents have higher expectations for their oldest child. In some situations, the parents become excessively critical of their firstborn. A parent who relentlessly criticizes the eldest child can dramatically alter the child’s path to becoming a reliable and confident leader. According to a study firstborns’ IQs tend to be higher than those of their younger siblings.

Middle Children: The Hardest To Describe

Generally, the middle child is the opposite personality of the firstborn and different from the other siblings.

Youngest Children: The Least Disciplined

By the time the youngest becomes a teenager; parents are more laid back and too worn out to be disciplinarians. This supports the commonly heard complaint from the oldest. They believe they would never have gotten away with the behaviors of their younger brothers and sisters. When our youngest child behaves poorly or speaks disrespectfully, we tend to ignore it.

Every parent dreams that their infant will sleep well. Many have no idea about the nitty-gritty of:

• How long will the nap last for my baby?
• What time should we put him/her to bed?
• How long can we expect him/her to sleep at night realistically?
• How will my baby’s sleep pattern’s change over time?

Everyone usually knows that a new baby will not sleep for long periods at a stretch for the first few weeks of their life. However, the biggest misconception for new parents is once their infant gets past the first weeks, their sleep will improve. The parents expect the baby’s sleeping will get better and better till the baby is starting to sleep for eight hours at a time by four months of age. Honestly, for many, if not most babies, it is like a roller coaster ride of frustrating regressions and victories with sleeping going from all night to waking two to three times a night.

With all this said, below is a list of what you should expect for your little one’s sleep schedule and some of the descriptions of what the babies experience during their first year. Every baby is unique, and their sleeping schedules can vary so this is not an exact science.

Birth – 2 Months

Total Sleep: Usually fourteen to eighteen hours a day. The first months, your babies will sleep in pieces and bits, waking now and then to eat. In the first few weeks, your baby will fuss from being hungry as many as ten to twelve times a day.

Their day will start at about seven a.m.

Napping: That sleepy little one will be taking a lot of short naps that will add up to eight hours a day. During the day they will be awake for about one-two hours and then sleep for about one-two hours. The second month, if your baby naps over one and a half to two hours, it is a good idea to wake him/her up to feed them. If you let them take long naps during the day, they will be eating less and be hungrier at night.

Nighttime sleep starts around ten p.m. Your little one will drift in and out of sleep throughout the night, occasionally asking for food. The longest time of sleep usually will be up to four hours in their first month and four-eight hours by two-months-old.

Heads up: Swaddling, white noise, and movement will usually work wonders starting day one to aid your baby to sleep better.

2 – 4 Months

Total Sleep: thirteen to fourteen hours of snoozing.

Their day starts somewhat earlier now. Most babies will wake about 6 a.m.

Napping: Baby will start settling into two-three naps a day for a total of four to eight hours of sleep.

Nighttime sleep shifts a bit earlier; the baby will start going to sleep about 9 p.m. They will also sleep for a more extended amount of time, still waking for a feeding or two. Their longest unbroken period of sleep is about five to eight hours (some might sleep longer).

Heads up: Watch for the three-month relapse! It can appear suddenly, with your baby waking like a newborn all over again — every few hours—and they want to cuddle or play …but they start refusing to sleep by themselves.

At two to three months old when you stop swaddling your baby might begin to startle more easily and wake several times a night and roll more.

4 – 8 Months

Total Sleep: Twelve to fourteen hours a day. When your baby is over four months old, they are what some call the fourth trimester. Many new parents may be exhausted at this point. If your baby is a good sleeper, don’t brag about it to any other parents.

Their day starts somewhere between six-eight a.m., all depending on the baby.

Napping: Two to three naps that total three-five hours each day.

Nighttime sleep starts at about nine p.m. Your baby might have a period of unbroken sleep for six to ten hours, that almost anyone would like to call “sleeping thru the night!”

Heads Up: Teething usually starts between four-six months, but, your baby might be earlier or even later. Gum pain might make your baby not sleep as good and be fussier. If you could provide rumbly, loud, white noise, it could be helpful in aiding your baby tune out distractions, those that are internal, like teething, and the external, such as noises.

8 – 12 Months

Total Sleep: Twelve to fourteen hours each day by eight months.

Their day starts around six to seven a.m.

Napping: Still two to three naps a day.

Nighttime sleep starts about eight to nine p.m. Baby’s longest time sleeping is likely seven to ten hours a night!

Heads Up: Baby is crawling and may even be walking. They usually wake up wanting to get out of bed and start exploring. But, until they are twelve months old, the only safe way to quiet them is white noise or a pacifier.

12 Months

Total Sleep: Twelve to fourteen hours in a day.

Their day starts at six to seven a.m.

Napping: Two naps, usually two to four hours a day.

Nighttime sleep usually is starting earlier, with the baby going to sleep about seven to nine p.m. Earlier for mom and dad to have some time alone! Their most extended sleep will stretch out to about seven to ten hours each night.

In preschool is when your children begin making friends and build relationships along with their peers. We all realize that our children developing friendships is important during your child’s early years as this is an important time when they learn to ‘give and take’ in a relationship. By the sharing of experiences, interacting with one another, feelings, your child learns how to meet the social needs of other people and their own.

While in preschool, children will start playing more with other children and begin the forming of friendships. It is here that they start to learn to share, take turns, and include others in their classroom and at home too. They will be doing what other children might want to do, start playing some group games, participating in the group activities, beginning to understand how others feel, which are all some of the things your child learns as they learn how to develop and build friendships.

Friendship Skills Children are Learning

Skill	Example
Patience	When children are waiting for their turn, taking turns and sharing with others.
Communication	Talking and listening to others.
Empathy	Responding to others’ feelings with understanding and taking the perspective of others.
Consideration	Learning to say please and thank you, and being helpful to those around them.
Play Skills	Make suggestions for role-playing and giving ideas.
Social Skills	Learning cooperation, empathy, communication, responsibility, and controlling emotions.

Being a Positive Role Model

It will provide your child with opportunities to begin to experience all the aspects of friendship, those that are beneficial to developing and learning overall. For young children that may not have learned how to share their emotions and feelings yet, making friends can be hard. As a parent, you can be a positive role model and show your child how to interact with others. You can show how to support your child’s friendships by:

• Modeling empathy and reciprocating for others
• Sharing playdates and giving opportunities so your child can meet others
• Give your child encouragement
• It will show your child how to include others in playing
• By listening and talking to your child
• Classroom Friendship Activities for PreschoolersCircle/Group Time IdeasWhat is a Friend? When you have group time, ask your child what they think a friend is and you write their answers on a piece of paper taped to a board. To further explain their answers, ask the child what friends should do for each other. By asking this question, it will provide an opening for a further discussion about friendship.
• Block Centre Ideas
• Team Building: Make a variety of blocks available to the children and encourage them to build a house, castle, or a tower together. It will allow the children a chance to work as a team to build something and take turns while sharing the blocks they have been given.
• Artwork Ideas
• Friendship Chain: Provide the kids with some different colors of construction paper that has pre-drawn lines and some without the lines and give them some scissors. Ask them to cut the construction paper along the lines into strips. Guide the kids as they glue the links together in a friendship chain. Now hang this on the wall to remind the kids how it was when they worked as a group.

As preschoolers learn how important friendships are and the ‘give and take’ of their relationships, parents can support these new skills by giving opportunities for them to start experiencing all the different aspects of friendship.

As preschool children learn the importance of friendship and the ‘give and take’ of relationships, we as parents and educators can support these skills by providing opportunities for children to experience all the aspects of friendship.

The Abacus and Brain Gym Course is an educational system that will maximize the potential of your child’s brain.  The process used in learning the abacus system is called Mental Arithmetic.

Working with abacus improves and incorporates the functions of the right and left sides of the brain in the early years of the child.  It is proven that by using the Abacus system, it stimulates the nerves in one’s fingers and can send messages through those neurons.

By this continuous processing of information transfer; it energizes the brain.  Brain gym exercises can enhance communication between useful centers and remove mental blocks that will result in the entire brain development.

Benefits of the Abacus Course

In young children, their brain is constantly making new connections in response to received stimulation.  This one process will use three senses (visual, auditory, and tactile) to balance and develop the physical, mental, emotional, social interaction, personality, and confidence of the child.  The regular practice of abacus, Speed Writing, and Brain Gym helps the child.

It helps with improvement in the academics with improved concentrating, comprehending, recall and retention, speed & accuracy of computing skill and logical reasoning.

Abacus training will help your child in the below ways:

• Build a concrete foundation for mathematics:

Mathematics can be hard for some.  Learning abacus will build a solid understanding of math starting from the formative years.  By using the visual aid of the abacus, all of the abstract concepts of math itself are shifted to visible beads.  Children must count the beads that are present; this develops hand-eye coordination.  By practicing, the child can develop the image of the abacus in their head and perform mental math.  It will be a fun way to be introduced to the more complex mathematics.

• Encourages the use of right side of the brain:

Then the left side of the child’s brain will focus on the analysis of the information.  The right side of the brain will focus on visualization, thinking, and creativity.  The left temporal region is utilized to perform math calculations with paper and pen.  Abacus training will stimulate the right side of the child’s brain, improving their ability to observe, visualize, and memorize.

• Develops logical understanding

Over time, the child will improve the ability to see the abacus in their mind and calculate mental calculations.  When the child can visualize the math questions on the imaginary abacus in their head, he/she will think and be able to apply logic to perform the correct movement of beads in their mind.  Repeatedly executing mental math will build up their ability to employ logic in their other daily life scenarios.

• Improved understanding of math:

From research, we have found that abacus learners that are advanced are better with solving specific types of math problems in comparison to kids who had not been trained abacus.  It seems abacus training improved the child’s ability to solve math problems with digits, fractions, and decimals, and issues that require a higher level of analytical thinking.

• Improves concentration:

The effects of abacus training in kids classrooms have been analyzed.  It was noticed that those students who had received abacus training revealed a significant improvement in their level of concentration.

• Improves memory and visualization:

Abacus learners have been noticed to have better visual and auditory memory as compared to non-abacus learners.  It has also been shown that abacus learners can improve visualization, that is credited to the fact students of abacus can visualize an abacus in their minds.  The visualization technique has found to be useful to students in other areas of study.

Your child’s developmental stages early on are extremely important, so it’s important that you are aware of some of the critical stages in that developmental period. Think of them as milestones, and you can mark them off as being social, cognitive, physical, mental, etc. Once you’re noticing progress in at least one of these areas, there is no need for concern. Each child develops at their own pace and keeping track of milestones is just a way of staying engaged in your child’s life. With that being said here are three milestones to be aware of before your child enters kindergarten.

Language Comprehension

By the time your child reaches an age when they can enter kindergarten, they should be able to practice two-way communication in the sense of listening and responding to questions as well as asking their own. Kids at this age should be able to communicate their thoughts, even if they have difficulty with certain sounds or letters. However, if their speech doesn’t improve over time, try to consult their pediatrician to determine if any speech therapy or language interventions are necessary.

Communication is important at this stage because in kindergarten it is the main way of obtaining information. Children at that age use their words to receive input and output as their means of understanding the world.

Printing Awareness

It’s more than okay for children to not comprehend the entire alphabet by the time they enter kindergarten, but some knowledge of the letters should be present. Along with this sense of awareness, understanding the way letters and words work (reading the words in a book from left to right / turning pages, etc.) is also a good sign of developing cognitive skills.

Fine Motor Skills

Children developing motor skills will inevitably be faced with challenges every step of the way. It will be their first time doing most of the things we already know how to do so it will take some adjustment before their motor skills are perfected. But, if you notice them fiddling with objects or scribbling with pencils, then they are on the right track!

Here at Kids U, we foster the development of the entire child. Our vision is “To provide quality child care, preschool, and kindergarten programs that build strong brains necessary for lifelong success.” Please contact us to book a tour or simply find out more about our services and programs.

By inspiring our children to think and act like scientists, this not only supports their understanding on a deeper level of important world phenomena, but it can also help our children to develop a self-concept as a learner that is capable of many things. In the following article we will discuss how and why it is important that our children begin to take on the identity of a scientist, and how seeking out these opportunities can expand their mind, and make them a more well-rounded adult in the future.

Build on Children’s Natural Curiosity

We should constantly be working to create opportunities with our children to share and exchange knowledge. Informal ways of doing this are by turning and talking to them as we wrap up a lesson, and by providing hands-on opportunities to help them seek answers to everyday questions. Finally, by engaging our children in real science practices such as guiding them to ask questions, observed and gather evidence in their surroundings, and you said evidence to draw conclusions, we’re teaching them more and more the value of thinking like a scientist.

Provide Opportunities to Ask Important Questions and Work with Others to Find Answers

When we provide our children with opportunities to learn not only with each other but also from each other, we allow them to ask important questions to work with others.

Help Children Connect Their Learning Across Various Contexts

By using another content area that supports scientific learning, such as reading and mathematics, we allow them to extend their inquiry on informal learning times. It’s also important that we work with families to build a bridge between home and school connections. We do so by utilizing what we have on hand such as informational textbooks and guiding a bridge to be made between different content areas, connecting their learning over various aspects.

At Kids U in Calgary, AB, we are much more than a childcare center. We offer different approaches to developing the young minds of the children that walk through our doors. Time spent with us isn’t merely filled with playing with blocks and copying letters on a piece of paper. If you are truly interested in your child receiving an education that goes above and beyond, feel free to call our office or send us an email as soon as possible. It is never too early, contact us today!

Your child’s very first day of preschool is an exciting occasion that only happens one time. In order to celebrate this special day, do so to make it great and one to remember. It’s important to remember that kids are naturally nervous when starting preschool, but if you keep the most fun and enjoyable, they’ll go into their first day of preschool with confidence and eagerness.

Special Breakfast

One way to make the first day of preschool special is by cooking a special breakfast. Like cooking your child favorites, they can begin the day on a great note. Whatever it may be, such as pancakes, eggs, or bacon, making them a special treat can make even the sleepiest kid perk up. Big breakfasts are also a great idea as it will keep them energized until lunch, so start off the special day off right with a special breakfast.

Picture

Of course, in order to commemorate this day at the beginning of their school career, take some first day photos. Your child would look back on these photos, and they’ll remember them as a very special day.

Plan

In order to make sure that the first morning goes by smoothly, it’s important to plan ahead. Planning your breakfast, having the lunch is made, and shoes, clothing, and backpacks all laid out will make their morning much easier. This works to eliminate stress and any kind of a meltdown before school starts.

Sleep

One of the most important things to be sure of is getting plenty of sleep the night before. This will ensure that your child has the energy to take on their new environment and meet new children. Sleep is important, not only for preschool, but also for the rest of their schooling career. It plays a big role in their growth, learning, and mood, and is essential for a great preschool experience.

If you have more questions about how to make the beginning of preschool special, feel free to contact us at Kids U in Calgary, AB. were willing and able to answer any questions you may have, address any concerns, and ensure that your child’s school and career starts off without a hitch.