Your preschooler is already pitching in when you dress her up – she puts out her leg to wear a trouser, and tries to find the armhole, when you’re slipping a T-shirt over her head.

When to comes to dressing up, it will be a while before your child can actually pick out her clothes, and dress up on her own. Patience is key. Don’t be discouraged if she can’t dress without help. And never force her. You can pick out her clothes, and lay them out on the bed for her in the morning, but it will take time till she’s independent enough to actually dress herself up. Some kids just pick up faster – it’s no big deal if she doesn’t. My son himself only picked up these skills when he turned 6. No long term damage there.

Ready? Let’s start with the coat, then.

Place the coat on the floor with the open end facing up, and sleeves spread out. Let your child squat down near the neck of the coat, and slip her arms inside the arm holes. Then she can lift her arms up and over her head, and the coat will slide very naturally down her arms, and around her. Practice makes perfect.

For pants, demonstration works best. Sit her down beside you on the bed or floor, and let her copy your movements. Teach her to pull zippers away from her body.

For underpants, teach her to look for the little label at the back. If there are no labels, make a little mark with a permanent nontoxic marker to indicate the back.

I love this tip from Parent Hacks to teach your child to slip on her mittens. Hold the mitten on your palm with the opening facing her, and let her slide her palm inside. It’s easier for her than to struggle with the mitten with her own two hands.

Teach her to loop the belt into the loops before she puts her pants on. Mark the exact belt hole she needs, with a small piece of adhesive, or circle it with a marker from the inside.

Use the marker to make putting socks on easier – make a sign at the heel. This is where most kids fumble.

To help her tell between left and right shoes, take a marker, and make complementary signs on the inside of each shoe, so when she places them together, the marks face each other. For instance, try a “ >” sign for the left shoe, and a ” <” sign for the right shoe. Tell her, “When these two arrows face other, then your shoes are ready to wear.” Try other variations – have two half circles facing each other. Or just peg them together in the correct order with clothespins.

More Dressing Up Tips

• Always stuff one sock or mitten inside the other, so you can always find a perfectly matched pair. Or clip together with clothespins.
• Use a diaper pin to attach a pair of socks or mittens, and let them stay attached through laundry, drying and back in the drawer. You’ll never have to look for a missing pair again.
• Keep clothes in your child’s closet in complete sets, so she always has a full set that’s ready to wear. It encourages her to try dressing up on her own.
• Teach your child to make a fist when she puts her hand inside a sleeve.
• If possible, get clothing with prints or appliqués in the front, so she can differentiate the front and back on her own. For plain colored t-shirts, teach her that the label end comes at the back.
• To slip on a T-shirt, let her first place the T-shirt front down on the bed. She can then slip it over her head, and down, easily.
• If dressing up in the morning rush seems hard, try getting your preschooler to wear her clothes at night before she goes to bed. Choose only non wrinkly fabrics, and use a plastic bib to protect her clothes during her brushing and face washing routine, and you should be fine. This doesn’t work with a bed wetter, of course.
• As far as possible, use shoes with Velcro for preschoolers. They’re just easier and hassle free. Or till she gets to the point where she can tie shoelaces on her own, substitute the laces with a piece of elastic tied at the ends – she can slip and out of the shoes with ease. Some parents are of the opinion that getting shoes with Velcro fasteners or slip ons makes it harder to teach them to tie shoelaces. I think, it’s important not to overwhelm your child. They have plenty of time to learn these skills, and the chances that you’ll still be tying her shoe laces when she’s in college, are pretty slim.
• Use the wooden handles of a chair to practice tying laces into a knot. Use ribbons for practice. Be patient – tying shoelaces tends to be one of the harder skills, since it requires such fine motor skills.
• Nail a smaller coat rack for your child near the entrance, so she can hang up her coat on her own. Nail a wicker basket to hold her mittens, and small scarves. Keep a small stool handy, so she can sit down and put her socks and shoes on with ease.
• Teach her to button shirts from the bottom up – it makes it easier to get them all even.
• Build self confidence in her dressing skills by letting her overcome the smaller challenges first. Buy pants and skirts with elastic waistbands or Velcro fasteners, so she can handle them easily. The same goes for shoes.
• Velcro is a smart Mommy’s best friend – sew on a patch instead of a button on your child’s overalls, and place them on shoes.

So, how did you teach your preschooler to dress up on her own?

The sense of smell is the only one that sends signals to the brain, unfiltered.

Certain fragrances increase the brain’s ability to think. Mental alertness and creativity can be strengthened by smells like those of cinnamon, peppermint and lemon. Rose and lavender, on the other hand, help your child relax. Certain herbs and spices are also known to have calming effects, and can be used in appropriate situations. Use the sensory powers of these flowers and herbs to boost creativity and brainpower in your preschooler.

Encourage your child to participate in preschool activities that include the sense of smell , to stimulate these areas of her brain. It doesn’t have to be a formal activity with scented bottles – just introduce scents into everyday activities, and play around with them. Experiment!

• Give your child scented markers for artwork, or use scented dyes and paints.
• Create your own scented paint by mixing tempera paint with food essences.
• Create a fun and yummy scented paint mix of your own. Mix gelatin with just about half the amount of water that’s actually needed, and let your child paint with it. When the gelatin dries, she can have fun scratching at the painting, and sniffing the smell.
• Participate in activities together with your preschooler - make potpourri together. Put some cloves and cinnamon sticks inside a net bag, and draw it tight shut
• Make colorful new scented crayons out of old ones. Place crayons in muffin tins lined with paper, add a touch of food essence to each, and heat in the oven. You have colorful wax discs that smell heavenly. Here are specific instructions.
  
• Help her identify the smells of different food essences and extracts in your kitchen, and herbs and flowers from your garden.
• Encourage her to take an interest in your flower garden or herb garden.
• Fill your home with appropriate herbs that stimulate certain processes in the brain – keep rose, orange and chamomile in the bedroom to induce calmness and help her go to sleep. Lavender, vanilla and nutmeg are particularly good for those nasty irritable spells just before bed time. Place lemon, cinnamon, basil the room where she does most of her learning or art work.
  
• Participate in cooking activities together that make use of brainpower boosting extracts and essences - cinnamon buns, for instance.

Enjoy!

There are opportunities to learn in the most popular games preschoolers play. All little girls love a tea party, and because all kids love role playing so much, your little boy will be ready to host one too! Give your preschooler some practice at entertaining on her own, by helping her host a tea party for her dolls and teddy bears.

First up, let her take the initiative in planning for the party. Let her decide the number of “guests” she’s going to have.

Help her make some little sandwiches or cheese and crackers for her guests. Here are some cooking ideas for preschoolers, as well as a mini pizza recipe if you want to throw a party your guests will rave about!

Let her set place mats for each guest with matching fork, spoon, saucers, cups and plates. Help her make her own placements out of cardboard or thick construction paper which she can decorate with markers, and little place cards out of tags with the name of the guest on each.

Get creative – use her bracelets as napkin rings.

Let her set the table with the cutlery, place cards, and place mats.

What this teaches her: This game is ideal for teaching her to set a table on her own, and gives her good practice using sorting skills to sort out forks, spoons, cup and saucers for each guest. It also helps her learn the importance of organization and the value of planning ahead.

Bon Appetit!

Maybe because their memories of anything in white coats aren’t necessarily pleasant, kids love to play at being a doctor. It gives them a chance to torture some one else with a shot! Encourage this, and use it to introduce measuring activities and language skills.

Set up a clinic for her.  Give her a chair, and a table, with an empty writing pad to make her notes in, and a sheet of paper to record data.  If she has a doctor’s play kit, all the better.  Use her teddy bears and dolls as prop patients.

Act as the patient’s Mommy with four of your “kids” coming in to see her.   First up, let her measure the weight of each “child” by placing the doll on your kitchen weighing machine.  Let her note down the weight of the doll herself.

Next, let her use a measuring tape to measure the height of the child. D on’t worry about specifics – just the figure closest to the actual reading will do.

Tell her what’s wrong with the baby – she’ been sniffing and hasn’t been eating too well etc. etc. If she has a play doctor’s kit, she could use her stethoscope to listen to their heartbeat, give them shots etc.

Let her arrange all her patients by height, and weight.

There are plenty of opportunities to learn in everyday games.  If you play games with your preschooler that encourage learning, I’d love to hear about them.

The preschool years are the perfect time to introduce your child to the wonders of science though small and easy activities and games. Since everything at this age seems wondrous and breathtaking, you won’t have trouble getting your child to sit still, and take part in science activities that teach her about actions and reactions.

• Let her use a block of margarine to scribble on a sheet of paper. Splash some water on the paper. The part with the margarine on it won’t get wet – the water will slip right off. Explain to her why this happens, that oil and water never mix. Show her more examples of this – mix cooking oil and water together, and show her the result. Point out gasoline layers on puddles of water.
• Let her hold a candle like a crayon, and draw on a piece of paper. To reveal what she has drawn, let her paint the page. She can also use potato juice or lemon juice for the same effect. Explain the concept of invisible ink.
• Use gardening and plants to explain the concept of photosynthesis. Place two pots of plants in two separate locations – one in a dark closet, and one in the sunlight. Water both equally, and observe the difference in the two plants after a few days.
• Drop a few seeds in a cup full of soil, and cover with plastic. Keep in a sunny area. Monitor the progress of the seeds as they begin to sprout.
• Play with your shadows. Switch off the lights, light a candle and make animal shadows on the wall. Compare your own shadows on the walls. Point out your shadows in the daytime and at different times of the day.

Science is actually more interesting to many preschoolers than learning counting or the alphabet. The results are always so astounding, and magical to little eyes.

Have fun with these!

It’s been a crazy couple of days, and I am late with my weekly tip.  Here you go.

Recite the following rhyme together with your child:
Who took the cookie from the cookie jar?

I think Mommy took the cookie from the cookie jar?

Who me ? Yes, you!

Couldn’t be. Then who?

With each round, substitute “Mommy” for other members of the family- her grandparents, relatives, friends and teacher, even the pet.

This helps promote memory for all the people in her life.

Enjoy!

Role playing boosts creativity, and strengthens imagination.  Because you are the primary care giver and because her family plays such an overwhelming role in her life right now, your preschooler will love playing you.  Who among us hasn’t loved playing “mommy,” tottering in her high heels and her pearls dangling (we think) stylishly?

This kind of role playing has more benefits than the mere cuteness of it all.  You might not realize it but if you observe carefully, you’ll see your child mirroring your actions and gestures, even your style of talking, and the phrases and facial expressions you use .

Role playing activities are not just fun for preschoolers, but can also be a learning experience.  Make it an educative process by giving her props, helping her come up with imaginary situations and enacting real life ones with her. Here are some ideas:

Let her act out the beginning of your day.  Give her props to do so.  If you work outside the home, she’ll need car keys, your cell phone and handbag.  Discuss the process with her. Where’s mommy going?  What time will she be back?

Discuss what happens at your workplace with her.  Let her act out your day as she gets back home too.  She might need more props again.

If you’re a SAHM, let her enact out your day as she sees it.

Play at reversing roles.  Let her be the one giving you milk and cookies at the table.  Ask for more milk, and let her pour out a glass from the jug.  Prepare for some splashing, or keep a tray under the glass to catch spills.  Learning to pour without splashing helps develop motor skills.

Ask her to read you a bed time story at night.  Keep a picture book ready, so she can make up stories.

Playing at being you helps her understand how things work, and why people do the things they do.  She is able to form a pattern to your behavior, and understand routine in your life.  Above all, acting out requires her to concentrate and use her memory to remember what exactly she has seen you doing - always an intelligence booster.

Enjoy!

To establish color recognition in your preschooler , always begin from the basics - primary colors - and work your up.  The trick is to move up one step at a time, rather than having her understand and recognize many different colors in a single session.

If your preschooler is familiar with the three primary colors, use this activity to establish these colors before moving on to the other colors.  Cut out pairs of colored paper in red, blue and yellow, and ask her to match these.  Ask her to name each color.

If she can do this easily, introduce her to secondary colors with these color recognition activities for preschoolers.  Next, cut up pairs of colored paper again, but this time include green, purple, orange, pink, black, white, brown and gray, besides the primary colors.  Ask her to match the pairs.  Tell her the names of each color.

Once all these colors have been firmly established, and she can name colors without much prompting, place all the colored papers in random order, and tell her to arrange from the lightest to the darkest shade.  An older preschooler might find this last activity easier to do than a three year old.

Tip: Introduce color recognition activities into every day life - while in the kitchen, during dinnertime, at the supermarket, at the traffic signal, while dressing up etc, during story time etc.

Have fun!

Practice makes permanent, so here are 40 ways to get your child to practice identifying and writing numbers.

1. Write numbers on a large sheet of paper, and let her use play dough to create and trace number shapes on each number on the paper.
2. Let her dip a Q tip in paint, and trace the numbers. Use a clear plastic to cover the sheet with numbers.
3. Make a number board by writing large numerals on a white sheet, sticking it to cardboard, and covering with a clear plastic sheet. Let her trace numbers regularly with a marker.
4. Practice writing using edible finger paints like pudding, on cookie sheets or plastic trays.
5. Give her a bowl of different shapes of pasta. Let her sort them, and count how many of each kind there are. Let her write down the numbers herself in a worksheet.
6. Do more such sorting and counting exercises with M & M’s. Let her count the different colored ones in a packet.
7. Have a bunch of index cards with a single numeral on each. Hold up each card and ask her to hop or jump as many times as the number on the card.
8. Enjoy preschool number activities together. Paste a rabbit or elephant’s picture on a lunch bag and give her smooth pebbles, peanuts, or pieces of construction paper. Write down numerals on a bunch of index card. Hold up each card. Let her “feed” the animal that many peanuts or carrots by counting them and putting them in the bag.
9. Clap a certain number of times. Let her listen, count and clap the same number of times.
10. Make your own number scrap book. Use pictures from magazines, or stickers to paste on each page. Let her write each number on a page. Allow her to decide the colors of the marker and pictures for herself.
11. Look for numbers every time you’re out of the house – on license plates, shop numbers, hoardings etc.
12. Look for numbers inside the house – on cans, books, newspapers, the phone book, shoe sizes, clothes tags.
13. Combine learning with shopping at the supermarket - ask her to fetch two tins of milk, or 4 packets of chips.
14. Use playing cards and buttons. Let her place the appropriate number of buttons on the hearts, or spades, clubs or diamonds on each card
15. Let her count the number of hearts or clubs on each playing card and count out pasta shapes or M & M’s.
16. Enjoy more number activities for preschoolers. Line up 10 food baskets with numerals on them, from 0 to 10. Give her 55 objects - spoons, plastic cups, small toys – and have her put the required number of objects into each bucket. By the time she finishes, there should be no objects left.
17. Write out numbers 1 - 0 on a sheet and have her erase a number as you say it our aloud at random. By the time, you’re done, there should be no more numbers on the sheet.
18. Hold up index cards with a numeral on each. Let her take a look at the number, and make chains of paper clips.
19. Attach a magnet to a string. Place cards with a numeral on each, and attach a paper clip to each card. When you call out a number, let her fish for that card.
20. Make numbers out of round and straight pretzels, pasta shapes, and cooked spaghetti.
21. Use thinking and counting games. Have her count out pasta according to questions you ask – How old are you? How many people live in this house? How many friends do you have? How many brothers do you have? How many sisters? When is your birthday?
22. Combine exercise with numbers. Let her look at the date on the calendar. If it’s the 15^th, let her touch her toes 15 times.
23. Place cardboard cutouts of numbers under a sheet of paper and let her rub over the sheet with crayons. As the number begins to take shape, let her guess the number.
24. Use counting rhymes, and often.
25. Write numbers on circular pieces of thick paper, and punch a hole in each. Let her string them in sequential order, and make a necklace to wear.
26. Use cues to help her write numerals – “Straight line down makes the number 1,” “Half a cookie and put it on a plate makes number 2,” “Around the tree and around again makes number 3,” “Down and over and down again makes number 4,” “Across and down and around the tree makes number 5.”
27. Let her count foods she eats as one– an apple – and foods she eats as many – peas.
28. Let her use the fingers of both hands to show the numbers that you call out. For 5, she could use three fingers of one hand and two of the other, or some other combination.
29. Cut a cake, and count the slices. Cut up fruit, and let her count the slices, or vegetables as you chop into smaller pieces. Cut cheese into multiple strips, if she can count beyond 10.
30. Play a game of Twister. Place large pieces of construction paper with numerals on them on the ground. Let her place her right foot on 5, her left hand on 3 and so on.
31. Count the number of body parts she has – how many eyes, ears, hands, legs, mouth? Can she count the hairs on her head?
32. Give her index cards with numerals on them, and let her punch as many holes as the number on the card with a punch machine.
33. Write down numerals in an ice cube tray, or place stickers in the empty sections of a candy box. Let her count, and place the required numbers of buttons, or beads in each section.
34. Give her a dollar, and ask her to pick out anything in the supermarket that costs a dollar.
35. Let her weigh out ingredients in the kitchen with you – 2 eggs, 3 bananas, 4 tablespoons of sugar, 2 cups of flour and so on. Such measuring activities in the kitchen can help make math enjoyable.
36. Give her a shoelace or wool, and let her trace numerals on a sheet of paper.
37. Give her a tray with sand, and let her trace numbers in it with her finger.
38. Stuff an old sock with sand, and make a small hole at the bottom. Let her use the dripping sand to make numbers in the yard.
39. Cut out numerals made of sandpaper by tracing them out with the help of a stencil. Let her trace her fingers over each numeral.
40. Make your own sensory numeral cards. Cut out numerals from thick paper with a stencil and drip wax from colored candles to trace each numeral in a series of dots. When dry, the dots giver her a wonderful sensory learning experience. If you’re okay with her using a burning candle, help her make the wax dots herself.

Tip: Introduce your child to few numbers at a time. Begin number learning lessons in the morning, so you can continue practicing these activities through the rest of the day.

Above all, have fun!

Continuing with my series on preschool sensory activities, we’re moving on to taste activities. Here’s the first one:

Take 8 dropper bottles. Smaller bottles with narrow mouths will also do.

Paint the lids of fours bottles green, and four others red.

Into each red lidded bottle, pour four different tasting liquids

• Sugary water for sweet
• Salt water for salty
• Lemon juice for sour
• Black coffee for bitter

Do the same for the green lidded bottles

Ask your child to wash her hand, open a red lidded bottle, put a couple of drops of liquid on the back of her hand.

Ask her to taste the liquid.

Let her then test each green lidded bottle till she finds the exact same taste.

When she finds a perfectly matched pair, let her keep those two bottles aside, and proceed with the others.

Keep a small jug of water and a plastic bowl for her to wash her hand after each testing session.

More Taste Sensory Activities

Add taste sensory activities to every day eating scenarios. Talk about the taste of different foods as you eat together.

• This apple is so sweet.
• This yoghurt is sour.
• These chips are salty.

Encourage her to find the taste of ingredients in each dish –

Can you taste the lemon in the lemon sponge cake?

Ask her what a certain food tastes like – a slice of lemon, a piece of horseradish etc.

Blindfold her and put a bite of a food that she’s familiar with in her mouth – a grape, a spoon of pasta. Let her guess what it is.

Place a large plastic tray in front of her, and give her three cups of pudding with food coloring mixed in each. Let her paint on the tray, and then lick the pudding off her fingers. Next time, vary the taste of the edible paint – make it thick yoghurt mixed with food coloring. This activity allows her to use all her senses – she can see the pudding, smell it, touch it and taste it.

Since kids haven’t been exposed to as many tastes as we have, they are not prepared for what they will taste, which heightens the entire sensory experience for them. Plus, the mouth is one of the earliest organs for exploration in a baby, which makes it feel natural for a preschooler when he takes part in a tasting activity. Introducing her to different tastes can also help her develop an interest in different foods.

Have fun!