So Melitsa asked me this question:

We sit around the table for our meals. I have a 5 yr old, a 2 year and soon to be born little one. Can you give any tips for starting points of what to talk to the kids about?

Here are some ideas:

1. I can’t resist the opportunity to enrich vocabulary at the table – point out new foods that she’s unfamiliar with.
2. Talk about her day – what she did, where she went, what did she play there?
3. Introduce a new word to describe foods – delicious, scrumptious, tasty, yummy, delectable.
4. Ask her what was the absolute worst thing that happened to her that day and the absolute worst.
5. Ask questions about foods, cutlery. Is that a blue pudding? Is this a round plate?
6. Introduce her to taste words – spicy, sweet, bitter.
7. Ask questions that encourage creativity – if you were an apple, what color would you be?
8. Fantasize about her dream dish, with all her favorite ingredients – sugar, her favorite fruits, her favorite choice of meat etc. The end result won’t be palatable, but it will make her smile.
9. Ask her to bring a favorite object to the dinner table – it could be a favorite toy or picture, something from her nature table, a book, anything. Now ask her what’s so important about the object and why it means so much to her.
10. If you can, choose a theme for dinner. Maybe an upcoming family event or reunion, or a vacation. It’s easy to get kids talking when they feel like they are participating in adult events.
11. Select a day as Dress Up for Dinner Day and ask your kids to dress to the hilt – tiaras, feather boa, clutch. Help them get ready in all their finery, and include the costume as the central theme at dinner time. Why did she choose that dress? Who is she tonight? What kind of jewelry is she wearing?

So, what do you talk about with your kids at meal times?

Kids love stories, and we love them because they encourage the use of imagination, and boost language and vocabulary skills.

Take a few minutes to create your child’s own story, by including his name, names of family members and pets, things in his house, his friends, his favorite games etc.

It could go like this.

Once upon a time, long long ago, there lived a wonderful little girl (her name). She lived with her mother (your name here), her father (her father’s name here), her brother and sister (insert her sibling’s names here. If you have pets include their names too). (Name) lived in a house with (number of rooms) rooms. There was a hall, a kitchen, a dining room, (insert all other rooms in the house here). In the hall there was a coat stand and a… (insert other objects here). In the kitchen, there was an oven,… (insert kitchen appliances, utensils, crockery and other objects here).

Every morning, (name) would wake up, brush her teeth… (insert her daily morning activities).

You can continue in this vein including other things your child loves to do, her favorite TV shows and games, the names of her friends and playmates, her aunts and uncles, grandparents etc.

This activity has multiple benefits. Your child learns to practice the names of people, objects and other things that are familiar to her, and she learns to form complete sentences. It has one more benefit that I absolutely love - it boosts self esteem and makes her feel important because the story revolves around her. That in itself, is enough reason to take part in this activity.

Have fun!

Learning to recognize and play with colors is usually more fun for kids because it’s at least a little messy!

Here are some ideas to try this weekend. Remember to cover your work table with an old plastic table cloth or cut up shower curtain to protect the surface.

Make a Rainbow

Take a sheet of paper, and moisten it by spraying water. Ask your child to paint arcs in red, blue and yellow using a paintbrush. Leave some space between the arcs of color. The colors will begin running into each other creating new shades. Explain the concept of secondary colors - how they are formed when certain primary colors mix together.

• Red and yellow gives you orange
• Blue and yellow gives you green
• Blue and red gives you purple

Mobile Colored Fish

Now that she has the basic concept in place, let her mix purple, green and orange by mixing the primary colors in separate bowls. Ask her to paint across a sheet of thick paper in waves or arcs. Once the paint is dry, turn the paper over, draw a simple fish shape and cut out. Your child can decorate with sequins and glitter. Let her make an eye, and cut out extra pieces of the sheet for fins. Punch two holes right at the top of the fish’ s body, tie a string and hang from the ceiling in her room.

Pretty and Pink

Give your child red and white paint in two bowls, and an empty bowl to mix. Let her mix a small dab of red with some white paint to create the color pink.

Ink Blots

Take a thick sheet of paper, and make a fold down the middle. Let her drop a blob of thick paint in two different colors on one side of the sheet. Choose contrast colors like black and white, red and yellow. Now fold the sheet of paper, and then open up again. The colors would have mixed, creating an abstract painting!

Food Color Mix

Take piece of blotting paper, and cover the mouth of a glass with it. Secure with a rubber band. Moisten the paper by putting a few drops of water on it. Use an ink dropper or an old dropper from your child’s medicine bottle to drop a few drops of different food colors. Ask your child to observe what happens as they begin to spread and blend into each other.

Marker Mix

For another blotting paper idea, draw arcs on a sheet with washable markers in 3 colors. Take an ink dropper and put a few drops of water on each color. Let the mixing magic begin!

Black and White Drama

Take a plastic squeeze bottle, and fill with soap flake finger paint. Let your child squeeze out patterns on thick black paper.

Take Out Treat

Put a few blobs of finger paint in a divider tray, and ask your child to mix as many colors as she wants to. Give her a colored take out container, and let her dab little blobs paint on the container with her finger tips to decorate it.

Delicious Color Mix

Mix a quarter cup of milk with 2 cups of sugar to make frosting. Pour into three bowls and add red, yellow and green food coloring to each bowl. Let your child mix the frosting on the plate to see what happens when colors mix. This is one art project you don’t have to store or throw away – let her spread the colored frosting on crackers! Voila! A snack!

Have fun!

So why am I focusing so much on nurturing and encouraging creativity in your preschooler? Because it’s the only time you’ll be able to take concrete steps to fan the flames of inspiration. Children between the ages of 2 to 6 are in their prime to explore and absorb.

Here are just some reasons to feed that creative itch:

• When kids use their hands and fingers to paint, sketch, mould, and hold crayons or paint, they are enhancing their motor skills.
• As they get older, they learn to use their creative skills to solve problems.
• Art can also give them a means of self expression to express their feelings. There’s a reason why disturbed or abused children draw and paint dark and gloomy images.
• Take a look at some of the most intelligent and forceful personalities through out history; without exception, they have all been creative people.

Encourage Art

This one is a no brainer, and is the one of the easiest ways to encourage your child’s artistic side.

• Always keep arts and crafts supplies close at hand.
• Don’t supervise his work.
• Offer words of encouragement, but don’t constantly hover above him saying, “The sun should be a deep, yet mellow orangish yellow” or other such neurotic behavior. Nothing kills a child’s creativity faster than setting marked boundaries for him.
• Don’t force him to create entire masterpieces from scratch. Some days he’ll want to do nothing but rub crayon on paper. Help him by creating a rough sketch for him, so he can fill in color to his heart’s content.
• Praise the oddities in his artwork. For instance, “That’s a really beautiful sea. I like how you’ve made the whale orange.”
• When he’s made something, remember to frame it or display it.

Encourage Imaginary Friends

I know Moms who are freaked out over their child’s fictional friends or playmates and try to talk them out of it, or scold them when they mention these playmates.

Don’t.

Kids love to enact situations (it makes them feel all grown up) and an imaginary friend helps them act out situations that are interesting to them, and experience emotions. A terrific creativity booster.

Allow Time for Play

A 4 year old child’s life shouldn’t be a never ending cycle of art, activities and other educational play. Allow time for normal play and exploration. Don’t over schedule his life. A clockwork military style regimen is another outstanding way to kill creativity.

I can understand why discipline and obedience would be a concern for parents, but balance is key here.

Play Dress Up

Kids love to pretend they’re other people, especially older people. Nothing gives them a bigger kick than dressing the part. Little girls love the entire princess routine; boys are likely to pretend they’re Spiderman. No matter what they chose to be, encourage the behavior and play along. Ask questions.

So, where are you going all dressed up tonight?

Who are you going with?

What will you do when you get there?”

You might be amazed at the answers.

Trash the TV

Well, maybe not. But try to cut down on how much TV they watch. Here’s a doable way you can set a TV schedule for your kids.

There’s a lot on TV that’s educational and informative, and lots more than isn’t so great. The worst part about TV as far as creativity is concerned is that it makes kids lazy. Instead of using their own imagination, they sit back and watch the results of other people’s imagination at work. Plus, it’s addictive. You might find your kids less interested in arts and activities once they’re hooked.

Teaching preschoolers to be creative can sound like a bit of a paradox. After all, isn’t creativity supposed to spring from some bottomless fountain only the luckiest among us possess?

Not entirely true. Kids have an uncolored, pure view of the world that will most likely sully as they get older. That’s why there’s such innocence and charm in a child’s play, and that’s why kids say the darndest things that end up making the most sense.

The most commonly used way to encourage creativity in preschoolers is to allow them to experiment with arts and crafts and activities. I’ll go into these in depth in other posts, but for now I want to concentrate on the easiest way to encourage creativity and social skills in your child. Arts and crafts are excellent options, but they can be a little time consuming. And some days, your child is not going to be ready for yet another vegetable painting masterpiece.

However, there’s another way you can teach your child to use his imagination without the use of paints and crayons – role playing. It’s simple, doesn’t cost a cent and best of all, it does double duty by combining creative ability enhancement with bonding.

Role paying doesn’t have to be all pirates and daggers and adventure stories. Simple every day activities like going to the grocery store or the bank, or a trip to the beach can be used as themes for role play. It’s something kids enjoy because they love activities that help them pretend to be adults.

I love role play as an imaginative activity because kids are free to assume the roles they want to. Participate freely in the role play, and follow your child’s lead.

If you’re doing an “entertaining” theme, where your child is the host and you’re the guest, follow all social protocol, the way you do yourself as an adult. But, allow them to talk and react the way they want to in the imaginary situation. This particular theme has a triple edged benefit - your child learns to be creative in his responses, his social skills are enhanced, and it creates an incredible opportunity for the two of you to enjoy your time together.

To make things easier, and to help make role play a regular part of your routine, create prop boxes for some much loved themes that your preschooler and you have. Say you love playing shop, set aside a large cardboard box or get one of those big plastic containers, and throw things in there that you could use for your role play – toy fruit and vegetables, toy currency. When you’re actually playing, grab some stuff from around the house, and lay it out neatly just like in the shop.

Separate boxes by theme and label them on the outside. For a beach theme, your prop box would contain a beach ball, sunglasses, a large plastic table cloth that you could scatter with shells and a pair of beach towels for the two of you.

Once you’re done with your little game, just stuff everything back in the box and put it away for another time.

If you’ve dreaded the moment your little tyke begins to ask uncomfortable questions (no, not about that, about Santa), relax. A new study reported in Live Science says kids are quite capable of dealing with the shattering of their Santa fantasy.

At some point in time, your little preschooler will grow up, and begin asking questions about Santa. How exactly does he manage to circle the world in one night, delivering goodies to good boys and girls everywhere? How does a reindeer manage to fly…and non stop? All right, so what exactly is the deal here?

As a parent, you might think it’s best to not build up the Santa story too much, so as to prepare your child for not so big a disappointment when he figures out that no one is shimmying down the chimney on Christmas eve. Now, experts say there’s no harm in letting kids believe in a Santa. After all, a lot of kiddie play centers on imagination. Make believe friends, role playing - these are all ways through which preschoolers hone their creative skills. The Santa fantasy is just an extension of this, and nothing that you should be getting paranoid about.

And in any case, kids are more resilient to hurt and disappointment than we think they are. In other words, the chances that your child will be permanently scarred, and hold a grudge against you for the rest of his life for deceiving him are minuscule at best.

But, a word of caution for parents who are really worried about deceiving the kids: don’t elaborate on the fantasy and feed it. If your child takes the lead in embellishing his Santa fantasy, join in. There’s absolutely no harm. But, skip on the empty glasses of milk on the mantel.

So, what do you do when the inevitable questions begin tumbling out?

Chances are if he’s asking questions he’s already figured most of it out himself. After all, he sees a Santa at every mall he visits, and he’s probably sat on the lap of more than one Santa listing out all the ways he’s been a good boy lately. He’s already beginning to clue himself in to the truth of the matter. So his very first experience with innocence lost may not be as traumatic as you think.

When can you expect the fantasy to end? Studies show that it’s around the age of 7.

So, how are you planning on dealing with the inevitable questions? Is it something that worries you at all?