Your preschooler doesn’t really need a wardrobe the size of a Hollywood starlet’s closet to look great. Everyone likes to dress their kids well, but you don’t have to blow a fortune on clothes. Save the money for something that’s even more important than fashion – her education. It’s not possible to drastically cut down on the amount you shop for your kids, and I know those who have little girls have a particularly hard time staying within budget!

I must confess I am reasonably thrifty when it comes to my son’s clothes. I figure it’s not as if they have any intellectual, physical or emotional benefits, and I would much rather splurge on books, certain toys, family outings or holidays. These are the things that will make a lasting impact on their minds.

If you feel the same way, here are some ideas for saving money on clothing.

If you have a preschooler and a toddler or baby in the house, save clothes to pass down to the next in line. If they are of different genders, buy neutral clothing for the preschooler that can be worn by either gender. Unisex clothing not only tends to be less expensive, but it can also last longer than frilly girly thingies.

For your daughter, buy some smock type dresses. When she outgrows them, they become a top to wear over jeans.

Don’t discard T-Shirts that are stained with the remnants of one too many craft projects or rumbles in the park – these can easily be dyed. Learn to tie dye a T -Shirt to create a brand new one. It’s really easy.

Don’t just give away old clothes because they’ve gotten smaller – recycle. A padded jacket that’s she’s outgrowing can be turned into a vest for winter – simply chop off the sleeves. The sleeves are always the first to show signs of becoming too small. Old T-shirts and too-short printed pajamas can be used for cover ups at the beach.

If you’re handy with a sewing machine, or know someone who is, see if you can alter your own clothing for your little girl. Sleeveless vests can be dyed, and embroidered or decorated with beads, and used as little girls’ dresses.

This brings me to my next tip. Invest in a sewing machine, and see if you can pick up some basic sewing skills. They’re invaluable

Buy washable fabrics, and save on dry cleaning bills.

Protect new jeans by sewing an extra patch of the same fabric on the knees from the inside. The knees are usually the first ones to show signs of wear and tear.

Always look out for discount sales. There’s a family I know that dresses their toddler and preschool aged kids for the entire year in clothes that they pick up at the annual blowout sale at their favorite kids clothing store. They do the whole waiting-out-at-the-store-front-till-the-doors-open-to-be-able-to-rush-in thing, and grab some great pieces. They delegate sections that each parent will cover to find the best deals! They are so systematic about it, and it shows…Their kids are some of the best dressed I know!

If your child is already bored with a pair of canvas shoes, try dyeing them to get him to wear them and use them.

Give pricey brands a miss. A few pieces are fine, and these can be matched with other good quality jeans or shirts. Expensive doesn’t always equal quality, and the “you get what you pay for” adage doesn’t hold true for a lot of clothes.

Keep her good and costly clothes for when you go out to visit friends. At home, let her run around in T shirts, shorts and other easy to wear clothes that are good for rough usage. Do the same for shoes. Have a pair of sandals for running round and playing in. Leave the good and expensive footwear for when you’re in company.

If you have friends with kids of the same age, see if you can have an exchange of clothes.

Jeans that have been ripped at the knee can be cut off to make shorts or a skirt for girls.

When a tiered skirt becomes one size too short, add an extra tier or two in the same color if it’s a primary color, or even a contrast color. You can do this for A line skirts too.

So, do you have any thrifty ideas to save on clothes?

I chanced upon this great video by Gever Tulley called “The Five Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do.” Check it out - it’s definitely made a difference in the way I look at my child and his capabilities.

According to Tulley, who runs a workshop program for kids, we are in danger of raising a generation of over protected children who aren’t allowed to experiment, or explore, for fear of getting hurt.

He puts his suggestions across matter of factly – let them handle a knife, or cut things. Sit your child on your lap and go for a drive – let him handle the wheel, he says. The point he makes is that we limit our children’s experiences when we keep saying “Don’t touch that! You’ll get hurt!”

I know none of us wants to raise an over protected child, who grows up and faints at the sight of blood. Some of his suggestions may freak you out, but I think he makes some great points.

Watch it for yourself and decide how many of these you can incorporate into your parenting style. I hope you can pick up a few things from this that you can use with your kids.

Of course, it depends on your judgment, and how comfortable you feel with your child being exposed to it. For instance, I might find it hard to leave my 7 year old alone with a Swiss army knife. Maybe a year from today…

But I love the deconstructing things idea, as well as the driving. This is something I hadn’t explored, and it’s definitely got me thinking about the possibilities. My son, for instance has a natural talent for smashing just about everything he can lay his hands on, and this is a good way to channel some of that natural inquisitiveness into new areas!

If you’d like to help your child undo things and take them apart, check out garage sales in your neighborhood for old clocks, cameras or cell phones.

If you have appliances in your house that are past their prime, get together with your preschooler, and take them apart. I love what Gever says in the video – “Even if you don’t know what a particular part does, that doesn’t stop you from trying to figure out what it can do. “I can’t even begin to imagine how useful something like this could be in terms of letting them explore possibilities and possible solutions and uses. (I have a washing machine that’s seen better days, and was planning on getting rid of it. There’s a “tear apart” project taking shape in my mind already).

Like he says, it gives them a feeling that everything is understandable.

If you have a DIY project going on at home or garden, let your preschooler help with some aspects of it. She can help with digging, even tearing down a wall, under supervision of course. Exploring is terrific for kids, and when they are going to try new things anyway? When they are forty, and have a mortgage to worry about?

If you’ve been guilty of being over protective with your child, (and I know I’ve been), I hope this video can give you at least a couple of ideas to expose your child to “danger.” Let me know how it goes.

If you know someone who’s always hovering over her kids, maybe you can share this with her, too!

Have fun!

By the age of 3, your child has moved from beyond a high chair to a booster seat, and can start joining you at the dining table. Take her tender age into consideration when you begin teaching table manners – they don’t have a high attention span, their eye hand co ordination isn’t on adult levels which means a lot of spills, and they might not be able to sit through an entire meal without getting fidgety.

If it’s not possible to eat all meals a day together as a family, try to fit in at least one family meal to establish the basics of table manners.

Begin by teaching her the basics. She has to come to the table with clean and washed hands. Teach her to pull her chair out, and then sit on it. Once she begins chewing, she must do so with her mouth closed. They are a little young at this age to teach them not to place their elbows on the table, but it’s your call.

It’s easy for kids to move from a bib as a baby to a napkin as a child. Teach her how to dab at her mouth to clean a smear instead of wiping. Don’t make it seem like a terrible mistake if she doesn’t get into the perfect habits right away. Kids this age love to learn (as I never tire of saying). The trick is to make them think they are playing or having fun as they learn. Other easy manners you can teach a child this age are

• Not to talk with her mouth full
• Not to shove large portions of food into her mout
• Not to chew noisily
• Not to touch the food with her fingers. Don’t be discouraged if she does pick up foowith her fingers sometimes, though.

Use small sized plates and glasses to make it seem less daunting for your child. For water, use a shot glass – it doesn’t tip, and won’t spill water on the table. Get divider plates to help her keep each food separate from the other on the plate.

She might not want to stick around till the entire family is done. If she wants to leave after she’s finished, let her but teach her to say “May I be excused now?” before she leaves.

If you’d like to take your child with you when you eat out, she’ll need to have same basic table manners in place. Begin at home, right from the age of 3. Wait till she has her fundamentals in place, before you expose her to dining in social settings which is a whole different ball game.

Having said all this, don’t be disappointed if the reality of eating with your preschooler is a far cry from your vision of a refined and elegant family dining experience! But, she’ll never learn unless you begin exposing her to adult dining situations, so she’s better equipped when you begin eating out with her. If you have a hard time getting her to settle down in her seat and not talk loudly at the dinner table at home, it’s safe to assume you’ll find it harder in a restaurant, where there is a larger audience for her tantrums!

With the economy going into a recession and all kinds of fears being bandied about, I got thinking about how we could focus on saving money that’s spent on essentials for our preschoolers. Toys, crafts and art supplies, clothes…the list of preschool needs is endless, and a few ways to cuts costs wouldn’t be untimely, I think.

I thought I‘d start out by collecting a few basic how tos for making play dough at home.

Here are a few recipes for home made play dough.

• Dissolve a cup and half of salt in about 3 cups of water. In a large pan, put 3 cups of flour, 6 teaspoons of cream of tartar, and 3 tablespoons of oil. Add the salt water mixture, and place on medium heart. Stir constantly until you end up with a ball. Now knead this dough until you get play dough like consistency. You don’t have to refrigerate cooked play dough.
• For play dough with a different texture, mix half cup salt with half cup hot water, and bring to a boil. Take another bowl, and mix half cup cold water with a half cup cornstarch, adding water slowly and mixing all the time. Make sure it’s well blended and then, add this corn starch mix to the boiling water. Stir briskly. Keep stirring until all the lumps are dissolved. If you want to add some food coloring to the dough, put in a few drops. Take off heat and let cool. Knead until it becomes smooth.
• If you’d rather not cook, just take cup of flour, about a quarter cup each of salt and water. Add the salt to the flour, and then mix in water slowly, kneading in the flour the entire time. Add some food coloring if you want. Keep kneading until you get the required texture. Uncooked play dough is easy enough for your child to help you with. Store in plastic containers and refrigerate. Uncooked play doesn’t last as long as cooked play dough, however.
• Mix one cup flour with 3 tablespoons of oil, half cup salt and one packet of Kool-Aid. Add one cup of hot (boiling) water and stir. Knead until it forms the required consistency.

Tips

Coat your hand with oil before kneading to avoid a sticky mess, and for a smother consistency.

Add glitter while kneading the cooked dough, to create sparkling art pieces.

Finger Paint Recipes

• Mix a quarter cup of laundry starch liquid with a few drops of food color. Blend well.
• Mix a half cup of corn starch, 3 tablespoons of sugar, half teaspoons of salt and 2 cups of cold water. Cook over low flame for about 190 minutes or so. Remove when the consistency is smooth and thick. Let it cool and pour into separate storage containers. Add whatever colors of food colors you wish to each container, and blend well. Store in air tight containers.
• For an even quicker one-time use finger paint, mix canned milk with food coloring. Or mix a cup of yogurt with food color.

Cheap Art Supplies

Find other cheaper sources of drawing and art supplies.

• Save shirt boxes with white interiors and cut them to use as painting boards.
• Print coloring sheets from websites and cover them with a photo magnetic sheet from an old photo album. Or simply slip into a clear plastic sheet and seal the ends. Your child can work on the plastic cover with erasable non toxic marker pens and simply wipe them off to use again.
• Buy powdered paint from a teacher’s supply store, and create your own paint.

Look for unconventional and cheap sources of art materials for artwork that you don’t intend to display.

• Use shaving foam or instant pudding, and mix with food color to create paint that sits well on a cookie sheet.
• Mix egg yolk, dry detergent, and food color to use as a paint that can be used on glass and foil. The ingredients help the pain to stick to the surface.

Tip

To help them mix only as much color as is necessary, use empty egg cartons as a palette.

So, what are your proven cost cutting tips for art supplies?

This little girl’s parents are so pissed.

3 year Leonie Terry walked out of her school in Manchester England, managed to cross four streets on her own before a passerby spotted the lone preschooler and escorted her safely back.

The school, in question, Aspinal School in Manchester, apparently had their gates left open, and little Leonie who didn’t quite fancy the pork chops they were serving for lunch, decided to go off home, and get herself a more appetizing meal.

According to the beleaguered school which is being attacked vociferously by the girl parents and child safety experts, they have recently installed high routines and perimeter fencing to ensure kids’ safety.

Umm…News flash, Aspinal. 3 year old kids are more likely to walk through open doors, than vault over 8 foot high fences. Jeez.

If this was my child, heads would have been rolling by now.

Here are 3 games that you can use to teach your preschooler sorting and counting over the weekend.

Jumbo Counting

• Take a brown paper lunch bag, and fold down the opening of the bag so there’s a large opening.
• Cut out a picture of an elephant’s head and paste or staple it to the top of the lunch bag.
• Take a bunch of index cards, and write a number on each.
• Fill a bowl with peanuts (use the real variety, or if you don’t have any at home, look through old cartons and moving boxes for the other kind of peanuts - the packaging peanut shape material that’s used to cushion stuff while moving.
• Keep the cards face down on the table, and ask her to pick one.
• Ask her to use a clothes peg to feed the elephant the number of peanuts specified in the card.
• Vary with other animals and their foods -bunnies with carrots, chimps and bananas etc.

Counting with Food Buckets

• Don’t throw away food buckets – collect and store till you have ten of of them.
• Arrange the 10 buckets in a row on the table, and attach them to each other with a clothes peg so they stay in line.
• Write a number on each bucket including all numerals from 1-10. The numbered buckets shouldn’t be in a numerical order.
• Give her a large basket with 55 items. These should preferably be similar, to help her focus on the counting, and not get distracted by the variety of items. Use clothes pegs, or throw all the spoons you have in the house in the basket. If it’s tough getting 55 items of the same kind, just use whatever is available around the house.
• Ask your child to place items in the bucket, depending on the number written on the bucket.
• Have a bucket with the number “0” written on it. This is the right time to teach her that nothing goes into the “zero” bucket because zero means “none.”

Sorting Socks and Mittens

Give your child an assortment of socks and mittens of various sizes, colors and patterns. Ask her to sort these by color, size and pattern. Let her arrange the socks in order from the smallest.

Enjoy!

Few activities have the kind of multiple benefits cooking does. It’s part science, part math and part creativity. A preschooler who’s learning to potter around in the kitchen with his mother gets a rare chance to create something that can compare equally with something created by his parents, giving him the immense sense of accomplishment so vital at this stage. Plus, it’s the most useful domestic skill there is – the earlier they begin getting involved in preparing food, the more likely they are to continue this hobby right through adolescence and youth.

Obviously, there’s a limit to how much you can get your kids to do when they are in the kitchen. The kitchen is full of objects that could injure a young child – knives, hot dishes. Always make sure you are with your child at every moment, as you prepare the dish.

Even a 2 or 3 year old child can begin helping Mommy in the kitchen. Blunt knives like a cheese knife with a rounded point (never use knives with a sharp point to help your budding Nigella Lawson) can be used to spread cheese on crackers or bread. It helps eye hand co ordination and she gets the satisfaction of preparing a snack for her self from scratch! Show her how to hold the handle of the knife deftly to spread cheese on the cracker. She can also use the knife to slice up bananas, and other ripe and soft fruit.

When they’re a little older and more careful, you can progress to other harder vegetables using a serrated knife – these are safer than regular knives, but you’ll still have to be watchful when she handles it.

There are plenty of other chores she can help with in the kitchen.

• Greasing pans
• Washing vegetables
• Handing you ingredients
• Ripping up leaves for a salad
• Measuring flour and sugar for baking a cake

Get her introduced to smaller easy to use kitchen gadgets. Teach her to use a hand mixer (always under constant supervision) to beat the eggs for a cake. Kids this age find beating with a spoon really hard to do.

Get her to weigh out the ingredients for bread before she goes to bed and have her wake up to warm oven fresh bread that she helped bake.

Don’t forget to kit her out for the job – a child sized apron is a must. Get her small sized wooden spoons, blunt knives with smaller handles and a chopping board that she finds easier to handle. It makes her feel she’s contributing as much as you do to the family’s meal preparation.

This is one of the best parts about what cooking teaches your child – the concept that cooking for the family and others is not a dull, chore but a fun hobby that yields terrific results!

Encourage your child to have her own tea party. Invite your parents or siblings over. She can make cheese and cracker snacks, slice some fruit. Help her make some fruit juice or drink to go with the snacks. Help her add finishing touches to the presentation – add toothpicks to pick the fruit, and a few mint leaves decorating the sides of the plate.

Here’s a great video about cooking with kids, and a mini pizza recipe that any child can make.

Bon Appetit!

Bed wetting is one of those problems that don’t have right or wrong answers. What works like a charm for one may leave another completely unaffected. Most parents do the best they can to cope with the situation or train their child, until one day, they find that their child has outgrown the habit. (The chances of your child going to college and still wetting his sheets are slim to nil, so don’t stress about it. For that matter, few kids will continue to wet their beds past preschool).

Heredity has a lot to do with it, so if you or your partner had bed wetting issues as kids, the chances of your child following in your footsteps is quite high. Doctors will tell you that bed wetting is nothing to worry, and that you should be patient till your preschooler outgrows the habit. That doesn’t mean that it’s just a matter of waiting it out, however.

In any case, bed wetting in your preschooler (and we’re only discussing bed wetting in kids of this age here), is nothing to worry about – more kids do it now than at any other stage in their lives. Extreme methods like medication, and hypnoses are simply not necessary at this point in time.

It’s also necessary to differentiate between potty training and bed wetting. A child could be fully potty trained – urinate, and have her bowel movements in the potty most of the time - and still have a problem controlling her bladder at night. Bed wetting is simply a matter of lack of bladder control. It’s completely involuntary, and it’s got nothing to do with stubbornness or being lazy about using the bathroom (which potty training can sometimes be about).

Contrary to what many think, it’s also got nothing to do with psychological problems or behavioral issues, so don’t blame yourself. I like these facts about bed wetting – they should put your mind at ease.

Even if you have been a little tough on your child about potty training, it must be avoided in the case of bed wetting. Not only do pressure and threats of punishment not work, but they actually make it worse.

A child who wets the bed at this age is in all probability a sound sleeper, which explains the inability to tell if she needs to go to the bathroom.

If your child has bed wetting issues, try a few of these tips to help control bladder movements.

• Restrict fluids after a certain time in the evening. It doesn’t have to seem like punishment, and it shouldn’t. This works well if your preschooler is dependant on you to give him his water at regular intervals. Also remember, some kids are just naturally thirstier than others their age. Try making sure she gets her fill of water when she gets back home, and early in the evening, so she won’t feel so thirsty later. (This actually didn’t work for me – when I told my son he couldn’t have too much water after 6, he decided he was thirstier than ever).

• Make sure that your child uses the bathroom just before bedtime. Wake her up at least twice after she goes to bed for a potty visit. If she goes to bed at least 2-3 hours before you do, then all you have to do is wake her up to make a visit to the toilet before you go to bed. Set your alarm to 3 hours later to wake her up, and have another go at the potty. I know this can seem like a chore, but it worked for me. You don‘t have to wake her up – if she’s light enough, just carry her over to the toilet and set her down. Often you’ll find the pressure of the flow so high, you’ll know she would have wet her bed if you had left her in a little longer. That was always enough reason to make me get up and walk over to my son’s room. This doesn’t cure bedwetting per se, but you will have dry sheets in the morning. Plus, your child gets used to waking up whenever he needs to empty his bladder.

• Make sure she’s covered up warm. I never had this advice when my son was in preschool, and wetting his bed. He hated covering up, and I’d find him sprawled out on the bed in the morning, covers off … on a wet sheet. You tend to pee more often when the weather is chilly, and the same goes for bed wetting too. In my case, I simply made sure my son went to bed all bundled up in a warm sweater and thick pants. Problem solved!

• Some pediatricians advise telling the child to change and clean his sheets himself, but I wouldn’t recommend. It just seems too much like punishment.
• Other expert advice includes increasing the length of time between bathroom visits in the day time. (I hear this one bandied about a lot, but I am not sure if it works for preschoolers). The logic is that when she isn’t going to the bathroom at frequent intervals in the daytime, the bladder learns to hold larger amounts of urine. I wouldn’t recommend this either. Many preschoolers are still at some stage of potty training, and might find it confusing when they are suddenly stopped from going to the bathroom in the day time. Plus, retaining urine has been found linked to urinary infections. If you’re trying this, let me know if it’s working for you.

• There are also natural remedies like St. John Wort’s Oil massaged on the inner thigh before bedtime, although I am not sure how effective these are. Plus, natural remedies take the longest to work.

• In very rare cases, bedwetting could be a sign of bladder problems. Some kids have bladders that are formed smaller, so they can retain only small quantities of urine. If you find that none of these methods work, and she’s having accidents more than twice a night, consult a pediatrician to rule out any deeper causes.

Never humiliate the child, and don’t use words like “dirty” and “lazy.” It only gets worse. Since we’re talking preschoolers here, there’s really no need to get worked up about it.

Coping with Bedwetting

If you’d rather not have her getting used to pull ups, place a plastic sheet (use an old plastic table cloth, or a shower curtain cut down to size) or rubber pad under her sheets to protect the mattress.

If she’s wetting the bed more than once a night, provide extra protection by placing a thick towel between the plastic and the sheet. The towel will absorb the additional wetness, and the mattress will stay protected.

To avoid having to change sheets in the middle of the night, have two sets of bedding for her when she goes to sleep, including two rubber or plastic pads and two bed sheets. Then, you can easily pull off the wet set, and have the fresh set already laid out for her.

If you’ve tried other methods to cope with bedwetting, I’d love to know about them.

There’s nothing like playing and having fun to help a child learn. This is how preschoolers do a lot of their learning, and there are countless ways that you can help them develop their reading and spelling skills, including many you probably had not even considered for their educative value!

Teaching Through Tongue Twisters (That’s a tongue twister in itself!)

Repeating tongue twisters helps preschoolers to hear the sounds that make up the words, which helps them recognize those words better. Learning to read, and spell are interconnected, and much more complex than we know. Repeating tongue twisters can help establish a sound foundation for spelling and reading. Tongue twisters have been found especially useful in helping kids with dyslexia, if started early enough. If you have dyslexics in your family (hereditary causes have been found connected to dyslexia), repeating the tongue twisters often, can help.

Plus, tongue twisters are fun to repeat with your kids! Peals of laughter – and lots of jumbled gobbledy gook words on your part can make for a fun mother-child experience.

Here are three commonly known tongue twisters. Use them with your child, and often.

She sells seashells by the seashore

The shells she sells are seashells I am sure

So if she sells seashells by the seashore

I am sure that the shells are sea shore shells.

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers

A peck of pickled peppers Peter piper picked

If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers

How many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?

Betty Botter bought some butter

But she said the butter’s bitter

If I put it in my batter

It will make the batter bitter

But a bit of better butter

Will make my batter better

So she bought a bit of butter

Better than her bitter butter

And she put it in her batter

So ‘twas better Betty Botter

Bought a bit of better butter.

Quick Tongue Twisters

A big bug bit the little beetle, but the little beetle bit the big bug back.

Ask your child to say the words “Peggy Babcock” or “Friendly fleas and fire flies” 10 times without stopping.

Have fun!

Next time you’re out shopping with your preschooler, use the time to boost her alphabet, counting and observation skills.

On the way there

• Look out for her initials on store signs, hoardings, and even traffic signs.
• Look out for her age on license plates, and door numbers.
• She can count the number of steps it takes to get from the car to the main doors.
• Let her count the number of people at the bus stop, the number of trees on the way, the colors of the cars parked at the signal.

At the Supermarket

• Play a game of I Spy in each checkout aisle.
• Ask her to look for her initials on the food cans, and bottles.
• Let her count the number of check out counters, and the number of people at each counter.
• She can count the number of steps it takes to get from the furthest end of the supermarket to the checkout counter.
• Let her look for foods she likes. (This encourages observation skills, and builds a feeling of importance in a child).
• Take some time to prepare a grocery list for her, with pictures of the products that you’re constantly buying – fruits, and vegetables, cereals, sugar, eggs. Allow her to look for these, and add them to the cart. Laminate the list or just slip into a clear plastic cover and seal the ends, and you can use the same list for future shopping trips. Each time you use the list to go shopping, you can place a small sticker on the items that you need. (Again, this helps her feel important and enjoy the shopping experience, instead of being just a part of the trip).
• Set her a goal of 3 healthy foods that she has to choose before she gets to pick one treat.
• The supermarket is a great place to teach her about nutrition. Explain to her that you can’t allow her to buy certain foods because they are just not good for her. “I love you, and I won’t buy something that could make you sick.” Alleviate the disappointment by allowing her to choose something else (that’s a little healthier) to add to the cart.
• Give her a dollar, and tell her she can pick anything she wants that costs a buck. (You’re teaching her the value of money, and encouraging prudent spending skills).