Summer Holiday Ideas: Garden Craft

This is a simple yet delightful piece of craft that can be accomplished in your garden or backyard. Tell your child to pick up pieces of twigs, leaves and flowers that are lying on the ground. Give your child paper and glue. Let her experiment with sticking them on the paper in her own unique manner. In the picture, twigs have been used to make a tree and house. Flowers have been used to create a garden. After giving your child a brief idea about the activity, leave him alone to do it. Let him decide what he wants to paste and how he wants to paste it.

Have fun filled creative moments in the midst of nature!

Summer Holiday Ideas: Paper Cutting

Children love to experiment with cutting. Give your child lots of  papers/newspapers that you don't need and a pair of child scissors. She will be able to spend a good amount of time cutting the paper and thereby working on her motor skills as well.

This activity is enjoyed by most children between three and six years of age, though each age group would execute it as per its abilities. The younger ones will face a bigger challenge cutting the paper. While you can certainly assist them initially and show them how to cut, it would be best to leave them alone to execute it further. Struggling to cut the paper and subsequently mastering the skill is part of the fun as well. So let’s not spoil it for them by interfering too often!

The older children should not have too much difficulty cutting and may add their own elements of creativity to this activity. This is best encouraged, even if the end result does not make sense to us.

Have fun cutting!



<p><a href="http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=2365">Image: Grant Cochrane / FreeDigitalPhotos.net</a></p>

Summer Holiday Ideas: Drawing

If you live in India, it’s almost time for the academic year to draw to an end and for the much awaited summer holidays to begin. Worried about how to keep your little one engaged for the next couple of months? In this series "Summer Holiday Ideas", I present various ideas that would help little children stay busy, have fun as well as learn during the summer. The prescribed activities are simple, fun, easy to execute and often cost effective. And even if you live in a different part of the globe where schools continue to work, you can always use these ideas over the weekend and on other holidays!

Here comes the first one that is highly popular among children who like to draw!

Free hand drawing-

It is a cost effective option. All you need is paper, pencil and colours (optional). Many children love to draw free hand. Have a drawing hour every day and leave your child alone with paper, pencils and colours. Let it be his or her “Me Time”. Let the child draw, colour and experiment as he or she wishes to. This is most suitable for children two years and up, though each age group would execute it differently. The very young ones would be happy just scribbling while the older ones may produce unique pieces of art. Let the effort be the child’s and not the adult’s, irrespective of the end result and its visual appeal.

Create a fun drawing hour for your child!

<p><a href="http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=1529">Image: hinnamsaisuy / FreeDigitalPhotos.net</a></p>

Learning About Shapes : Squares and Triangles

Here comes the next post on learning about shapes! This one is about squares and triangles.

Squares and Triangles

1. Show your child pictures of squares and triangles and teach her to name them.
2. If you have square shaped tiles at home, show them to your child.
3. Cut out slices of bread in triangular shapes and make triangular sandwiches with them! Allow her to experiment on similar lines with the bread. 
4. Give her clay and show her how to make squares and triangles with it.
5. Show your child a square shaped tissue. Fold and cut it out to get triangles! Let your child experiment with the same(with child scissors). 
6. Go around your house and ask your child to spot all the objects that resemble squares and triangles. 

For those of you who missed the previous post in this series on circles, here is the link http://haripriya-wondersofearlychildhood.blogspot.in/2012/03/learning-about-shapes-circles.html

<p><a href="http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=2714">Image: Just2shutter / FreeDigitalPhotos.net</a></p>

<p><a href="http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=2736">Image: piyato / FreeDigitalPhotos.net</a></p>

Communicating with Children: Feel Short Tempered?

An adult writes an important letter and places it on a table when her phone rings.

She takes two minutes to answer the call.

As she finishes her conversation, a two and a half year old child walks up to her with a piece of crumpled paper in hand. She shows it to her with a naughty expression on her face. The adult suddenly realises that it is the very important letter she just wrote. Her temper flares. She feels so angry with this naughty little child. She wants to give her a piece of her mind.

How would you feel if you were in this adult’s shoes? If you would also feel as she did, it is absolutely nothing to worry about! It is the way most people would normally feel. However, what you choose to say and do in that moment of anger is of greater significance than how you feel.

If you are a parent or a teacher, you will agree that children often say and do things that can send our tempers flaring.

However, it is important to keep our tempers in check when this happens. Because losing it would only make the situation worse. Losing your temper will do nothing to stop undesirable behaviour in the future. Children would also get a wrong signal, which is that they can get your attention by exhibiting destructive or undesirable behaviour.  

Going back to the story, the adult though angry and feeling a rise in her temper, manages to find a sense of balance.Though very angry, she does not react or lose control of herself. She opens the crumpled piece of paper and looks at the child. 

“You crumpled my paper and destroyed it,” she says to the child in a calm yet serious tone of voice. The child just stares back at her.

“I feel very angry that you did this,” she continues. The child continues to look at her without saying anything. 

You see what happened. The adult expressed her feelings in a calm manner. Hence, the child did not perceive a threat. As a result, the child at least stood in one place and listened to what the adult had to say.If the adult had instead lost her temper, the child would have gotten busy defending herself, getting away from the scene or throwing a tantrum. It would have created one messy loop with both the adult and the child angry!


The adult was able to express herself to the child only because she managed to stay calm. The end result was that the child understood that her behaviour was not acceptable and that it made another person unhappy and angry.

You may be wondering if it is alright to tell the child that you are angry. Of course, it is! Anger is a normal emotion that most people feel from time to time. So, there is no need to pretend like you never get angry. But finding a healthy means to express the anger, without losing control of self is important.

Communication is a very important part of effective living. Communicating clearly with children is as important as communicating with adults. When doors of communication are open, it frees you up to express your feelings and thereby solves issues in an effective manner!



<p><a href="http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=3062">Image: David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net</a></p>

Articles of the Week: Art, Crayons and Emotions

Here I share three inspiring reads which are authored by my blogging friends at  http://www.mommy-labs.com/, http://www.puttiprapancha.com/ and http://learningunboxed.wordpress.com/.

One is about learning to break free from the fear of imperfection, the second is about creativity with crayons and the third is about learning to identify emotional needs in the process of learning. 

Click on the following links to get a glimpse of the inspiring articles. Happy reading!

http://www.mommy-labs.com/me_time/art_diy/art-experiments-learning-to-break-free-from-my-fears-of-imperfection/

http://www.puttiprapancha.com/2012/03/crayon-play-and-learn.html

http://learningunboxed.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/handling-emotional-needs-for-learners/

Learning About Shapes : Circles

Young children love exploring shapes. The world around us is full of shapes! Hence, learning about shapes can go well beyond learning to just draw or name them. Whether you are a parent at home or a teacher in school, teaching your child about shapes can be loads of fun for the child and you. Read on to know more.

In this post, let us explore circles.  Here are some ideas to make learning about circles fun for your child.

1. Show your child a picture of a circle and teach her to say “circle”.
2. Give your child paper and paints of different colours. Let her dip her fingers in the paint and make circles on the paper.
3. While cooking, get your child to make things that are circular in shape. For instance, she can try to spread dosa batter (dosa is an Indian dish made of rice and pulses) on the skillet in a circular pattern. If you are from a different culture, get your child to participate in cooking a dish that is circular in shape.
4. Give her a circular bangle. Let her keep it on paper and trace around it.
5. Go out to your garden or to a park and ask her to trace circles in the sand with her hands and feet.
6. Draw circles of different sizes on paper. Give her child scissors and ask her to cut them out.
7. Look around your house and ask your child to spot all the objects that are circular in shape.
8. If done in school or with a group of friends at home, all the children can join their hands together to form circles of varying sizes. That should be fun!

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