Three days of computer problems, and I am finally getting back on track.

Make your kids’ birthdays even more memorable by adding birthday traditions to them. A tradition is something that you will repeat every year on her birthday, making for a lifetime of memories. Here are a few ideas:

1. Begin the day with a special breakfast for your birthday boy or girl, with all their favorite foods. Yes, ice-cream and pizza in the morning. Why not?
2. Write a letter to your child on each birthday. These will become wonderful keepsakes to give when she leaves home. Write down all the things that you’re so proud of. You’ll find the list grows as she gets older.
3. Save a copy of the newspaper on her birthday – this collection will make an interesting gift to give when she turns an adult knowing what was happening on her birthday each year. My Birthday in History.
4. Have guests at her party write their names or scribble them into a white tablecloth. Preserve it.
5. Make a donation to a children’s’ charity in her name. It can be as small as you can afford. Let her know about it, that some one less privileged somewhere will be a little better off on her birthday. We do this every year for my son – our way of showing how grateful we are for him.
6. Plant a sapling on each birthday.
7. Each year, take a picture of her at the party standing by the cake holding a balloon with her age on it.
8. After the party, make a special photo album to send to grandparents. Stick the pictures, let her decorate and write messages to them. On one page, make a hand print. They’ll love seeing how she’s growing.

Do you do anything extra special that you follow every year?

I found this Telegraph story through Esmon, and wanted to share. The writer confesses not many of his friends take his child care advice too seriously, but he does put across a few interesting points.

For one, he has what he calls the “Manifesto of the Idle Parent,” and it reads like this:

• We reject the idea that parenting requires hard work
• We pledge to leave our children alone
• That should mean that they leave us alone, too
• We reject the rampant consumerism that invades children from the moment they are born
• We read them poetry and fantastic stories without morals
• We drink alcohol without guilt
• We reject the inner Puritan
• We fill the house with music and laughter
• We don’t waste money on family days out and holidays
• We lie in bed for as long as possible
• We try not to interfere
• We push them into the garden and shut the door so that we can clean the house
• We both work as little as possible, particularly when the kids are small
• Time is more important than money
• Happy mess is better than miserable tidiness
• Down with school
• We fill the house with music and merriment

I disagree with the very first sentence of the manifesto. I’ve never met a parent who feels parenting is not hard work, and if you know anyone else who believes otherwise, please let me know.

Having said that, he’s very right on a few counts. We all agree over-regulating a child’s life is no good, like those etiquette classes for kids we talked about a few days back.

And he’s right about consumerism too.

And every house should be filled with music and merriment.

But I am not sure if I’d let my child run completely wild, either.

I think balance is important in everything. I think this is one of those cases where you take a few points from his manifesto, and apply them to your own life as you see fit.

What do you think? Could you be an idle parent?

Playing dress up and role play are the most important things you could encourage in your preschooler – probably even more important than teaching her the alphabet or numbers.  It helps those little minds blossom, and imagine a world full of possibilities. 

Finding costumes can be tricky though. Here are some ideas to create costumes for your kids:

• Check out thrift stores, and dollar stores for shiny paper garlands, flower necklaces and bracelets, feather boas, tiaras, hula skirts, boys’ suits, jackets, and retro clothing.  The gaudier the clothes, the more chances your child will actually like wearing these!
• Adjust older clothes she has to provide some dramatic flair.  Glue colored pom poms to a black beret, or to the edges of a scarf or muffler.
• Paste sequins, satin flowers, and rhinestones on hats, scarves and skirt hems.
• Recycle. Hand down your old handbags and purses to your daughter to use as accessories when she’s all dressed up for an evening out. If you have short dresses from your pre-baby days that you’ve given hope of ever fitting into, they can be used as elegant full length gowns for your daughter. Use pins to adjust.
• Use appliqués to decorate T-shirts
• If you need to play animal characters for a story time session, make your own animal smocks. Take a large paper bag, and cut open the side panels and remove them .Cut a large hole in the bottom of the bag, enough to slip over her head.  Use black marker to draw eyes, teeth and whiskers on the bag.  Slip your child’s head through the hole, so the bag is hanging like a smock on her, with the animal’s face in front.
• If you’re playing shop, cut out small pieces of sponge, and stick them on an empty shoe box.  Write down numerals on each sponge. Voila! You have a cash register!

 
Do your kids ever raid your closet?  It’s probably a girly thing, because I don’t see my boy interested  in hubby’s wardrobe…

Scouting the blogosphere for some of the best resources for preschool mamas. Sit back, and read on:

First, check out 25 ways to simplify your life with kids. I am beginning to think my son could do a better job of picking up after himself than he’s doing now.

The creative Planning Queen has great ideas to plan your next kiddie’s birthday party. Definitely bookmarkable.

Lisa at Workout Mommy advises you busy mamas to combine some fitness time for yourself with quality time with your kids. Tip: Combine with learning – plenty of things to “spy” and point out along the way.

It’s scorching here, and I love these fun and cheap ways to entertain the kids during summer.

If like me, you’re a fan of the Montessori method and are homeschooling your child, you’ll find Montessori Free Fall very useful. Steph has pictorial accounts of educating her child using Montessori materials.

Finally, here are two posts from bloggers I follow regularly. They bought some things into focus for me the past week. Lis at Woolgatherings wrote about separation pangs, and it made me realize that sooner or later, my baby is going to leave, and there will be a huge empty void. Made me run off to hug him.

Alison at Three Times Kewl posted about getting through a rough week as a single mom. Inspiring, and very moving.

12

Disclaimer: I am not actually suggesting you take any number of kids in a fight.

I just played this game, and was pretty mortified at the results. Apparently, my fitness levels are at an all time low – I can take on only 12 5-year-olds-in a brawl. Pitiful.

It doesn’t help that I am vertically challenged, and don’t remember ever being trampled by a horse. Play to find out.

I’d like to know how these kick ass Moms fare – Cindy at Go Workout Mom, who’s flexing her muscles while she cleans the oven, scrubs the garage, and more feats that leave me exhausted just reading about them, and and Lisa at Workout Mommy who runs marathons. Enough said. I am guessing they’ll probably take on at least 30 runts each.

Stability is a good thing for a preschooler, but there is something called too much of a good thing. A little change in your child’s routine can actually stimulate her mind. Look at it this way – our minds become numb when we follow the same routine everyday. We begin to operate on auto pilot. But when something happens to change that routine, we find ourselves more enthused, more alert. It’s the same for kids.

Bear in mind you don’t want to make frequent and drastic changes to your child’s daily routine, just a few little things on occasion that can seem exciting for her , and get that little brain ticking! Here are a few things you can do to stimulate your child’s mind, by changing her routine.

• Change the way she usually does her art – let her work under the table instead.
• Or tape a sheet of paper under your table, and let her her lie down on her back, and draw on it.
• Move things on her table or in her room around a little, just enough that she actually has to look for things.
• Sing rhymes with different words. For instance, Mary had a Little Lamb to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
• Use old and empty cardboard cartons to make a tunnel from the front door. Your child has to crawl through the boxes every time she wants to go out into the garden.
• Make up new endings for her favorite stories. Little Red Riding Hood, for instance.
• If she’s playing the same computer games, or having fun on the same old sites, check out some new sites for her. Here’s a list.
• Let her be mommy for a day – let her decide on the menu, let her decide how much TV you can watch, and let her tuck you into bed with a bed time story. Or do just one of these things in reverse.

Change is a good thing, if you introduce it well. Having a fixed clockwork routine that never ever changes might be great for a robot, but preschoolers need to experience some flexibility.

What do you think? Would you dare to upset the cart?

If your preschooler loves putting puzzles together, create puzzles of your own, instead of buying new ones.

Take a picture of her, and stick it in the middle of a rectangular piece of poster board.

Decorate the rest of the board as you like with markers.

Once the picture is firmly glued to the board, take a paper cutter and cut up the board into several pieces.  For a toddler, cut fewer numbers of pieces, and for an older child, make more pieces to challenge her.

Put the pieces in a paper bag.  You can make as many puzzles as you like, varying the pictures to make them more challenging – photos of the whole family, pictures of the pet etc.

Tip: Remember to print another copy of the picture, so you can have one ready if she gets upset about having her picture cut up! If you can find small drawer knobs at hardware stores, stick one on each piece of the puzzle – it makes it easy to hold the puzzle pieces as she’s putting it together.

Have fun!

Here’a an idea to reward your preschooler instead of handing out material things.

Make a bunch of Reward Cards.  Take some index cards, select some activities that both you and your child can do together, and write an activity on each index card.  The activity has to be something your child loves doing with you.  Here are a few ideas:

• Going out for ice cream
• Going for a walk together, or to the playground
• Painting the fence together
• Washing the car together
• Cooking dinner together

Make as many cards as you like.  To store them,  cut out the pocket part of an old shirt, glue it to a poster board, and hang it somewhere prominent. Keep your Reward Cards in here.

Every time your preschooler completes a small chore, or does anything worthy of praise, let her have a card that she can use to spend more quality time with you.

Be specific in your writing on the card.  For instance – This Reward Card is valid for one afternoon of finger painting together.

This is a great way to reward kids (children are more likely to do things if you can dangle a reward in front of them, and if you’re hesitant about using money or gifts or anything material, as I know many of you are, this is a great reward).

Before long, your preschooler will want nothing much to do with you, and will have plenty of other things she’d rather have than time with you, so make good use of these days!

Enjoy!

Hmmm…

I came across this article yesterday – please take the time to read it.  Apparently, etiquette classes for kids are becoming all the rage in America.  Stressed parents have no time to teach kids social graces like table manners and stuff, and so, are packing kids off to these etiquette classes so their children will learn to mind their Ps and Qs.   The video shows a bunch of 7 to 11 years olds, sitting stiffly at a table and being taught the fine nuances of social dining. 

Kids as young as 4 – and this is the point that bothers me – are being sent to these classes to imbibe social graces!  Four!!! Why does a four year old need to be all stiff and formal? To have dinner with the Queen?

A part of me feels sorry for parents who are too busy to devote as much time as they might like to teaching their kids manners.  After a stressful day at the office, the last thing you want to do is remind your child through gritted teeth not to talk with her mouth full or to get that elbow off the table.  I can even understand sending older kids or teens to these classes, if their manners were leading to you being dropped from party invitations around town.

But preschoolers? Come on.

What do you think?  Would you consider sending your kids to  a manners class?

I’ve been wondering how much time you spend doing stuff with your preschooler – not TV or movies, just preschool activities that are fun and also teach her something…anything. I try to spend an hour most days, more on weekends, and not so much on a crazy busy day. Time management has always been an issue for me, because all my work is done online, and there’s just too much there to distract you.

Thankfully, all seems (relatively) quiet on the Britney front. I remember I lost valuable time keeping up with her antics during that entire head-shaving-sanitary-pad-displaying-locking-self-in-bathroom phase. The more time I spend looking up the latest bit of Britney Spears gossip online, the less I get done. Worse, the lesser time I get to spend time with my family, which is unforgivable.

For those of you who’re having trouble finding time to include meaningful and fun activities for your preschoolers in your daily schedule, I highly recommend a preschool activity calendar.

What you do is create a monthly planner. You can do this together with your child, and that’s an hour of quality time right there. Draw up a calendar on a sheet of paper, with large squares for each day of the month, and on each square note down an activity for the day. Some suggestions for preschool activities:

• Make a snack together.
• Read a book.
• Play dough fun – mix play with learning alphabets and numbers.
• Role play. Bring out the props – old scarves, jewelry, accessories – and let her imagination run wild
• Go on a nature walk, picking up interesting things along the way
• Act out a favorite story or nursery rhyme with lots of actions
• Try fun with science – with mirrors for instance. Here are other science activities for preschoolers that don’t take a lot of time.
• Look through family pictures – talk about her grandparents, and other relatives
• Create a love map together. Make a list of all her favorite things –movies, books, songs, stories etc. Things change fast when you’re a 4 year old, so her choice of favorite movie or song will probably be different by the time next month rolls around! This is a great activity for boosting self esteem and confidence.
• Make a sock puppet, and act out a story.
• Put on a puppet show – use papers bags to create easy to make hand puppets. Here are a few ideas on using paper bags to make puppets.
• Make an obstacle course in the yard, and have fun with it!
• Put on some music, and dance together.
• Have a tea party with your child.
• Take some chalk and draw stick figures in the yard.
• Draw a family picture together.
• Play games with sand – fill a tub with sand, and let her write out alphabets and numbers with her finger.
• Play a game of Lotto.
• Play a game of musical hide and seek.
• Do some sensory activities with smell, taste, and hearing.
• Do a memory activity.
• Take a few paper plates, some string and make face masks from them.
• Have a Mommy and Baby workout!

I am sure you have more things your child loves to do that you could include. Write one entry for each day of the month. It’s Okay to have a couple of activities that repeat – for instance, you could set aside more than one day for reading activities, or nature walks, depending on the weather. But you have to make sure you complete the activity for the day, unless there’s an earth shattering emergency.

Once you’ve written everything down, decorate with stickers and sketch pen squiggles. Slip into a plastic cover, and hang it up someplace where you both can easily have a look at it.

Every time you’re done with an activity for the day, draw a star on that day with the marker. All the stars on the calendar as the month comes to an end will make you feel like Super Mom!