To read or not to read

The majority of people believe that child’s early development basically means the ability to read at early age, when the kid is 2-3 years old. That’s what I’ve also thought before becoming a mother. However, as the psychologists admit the child being 2 or 3 years old is not able to feel/live/understand completely what he or she reads. Only after 5-6-7 they become emotionally ready to read on their own.

 

That’s what I’m observing with the majority of kids – they are not ready to read at early age, they just do not need it. Though there are lots of methods how to teach children to read from their birth (e.g. Doman), there is just no use of doing it so early.

Besides, there is not a proved link between the love of the books and the ability to read at early age. Real life example: a girl learned to read at 7 y.o., but she truly became the fan of books, going to the library every weekend. The love of books should be inculcated in children by their parents: reading to their kids as often as possible, discussing the characters and the plot together, reading the books themselves to provide an example.

Our way with Maria: she already learnt almost all the letters when she was two. Few months before her third birthday she was able to read short words. Encouraged by this success, I was pushing it further, but felt really strong resistance to continue doing it  - obviously Maria had a “reading allergy” (she didn’t want to look at the texts, she hated the blocks with the letters). So, I gave up and let her do whatever she wanted. Next half of the year I made some attempts to continue our reading, but again not successful. Then I gave up totally and decided to wait for her initiative. Recently Maria (3.5 y.o.) herself chose an activity book with the stickers, where the tasks required some reading skills. Needless to say that she excellently did the tasks herself, which made her really proud (me too, of course). Right now we don’t have any systematic reading exercises and probably we won’t. I suppose that the best way is the natural development of this skill.

Diversity of Impressions

Andrew 8 m.

In the very beginning of life the most important person for everyone is MOTHER, who feeds, nourished, cherishes, sings lullabies and introduces to the surrounding world. Everyday a baby sees his mother, her face, her arms. “So, why not to add some colours and novelties to this scene? “ – that’s what I thought when Andrew looked really puzzled after he spotted me with the towel on my head post hair wash.

 

I was amazed by his widely opened eyes and surprised face expression. I took out some of the animals’ masks, we use with Maria to study English, and every day was putting them on. I added also voice changing effect and it topped the expectations – Andrew was really surprised! He was studying his mum for quite a while. Then, his sister tried it, too, which was also really interesting and unexpected for Andrew. We tend to repeat it once in a while to enrich Andrew’s emotional experience and to have fun together! Now, of course, he is laughing together with us, a bit puzzled but obviously enjoying this masquerade.
 

As I read once, some experts advise mommies to change their appearance from time to time: bright make-up, colourful nail polish, new haircut.. this all means impressions and emotions for the baby! It’s rather interesting to live like this.

Kindergarden Motivators

Maria 3 y. 9.m.

As a rule it is veeeeery tough for many children to get up early in the morning (especially in winter) and go to the kindergarten, even if the child loves to go there. The same for Maria, though she likes her friends, teachers and the time spent there. So, we thought of several motivators to help us to go to the kindergarten early in the morning with a smile and in a good mood:

   ·        In winter: feeding hungry birds when going to the kindergarden; going in the sled; find a cone and decorate the room in the kindergarten;
 

    ·         In autumn: hunting for the colourful leaves and decorate the room;
 

    ·         Bringing the treatment for the mates (they have a ritual of drinking milk and eating some cookies before the day nap);
 

    ·         Once we draw the smiley face on the balloon and it was following Maria before we reached the kindergarden;
 

    ·         Meeting a friend on the road – then the competition starts who will be the first :);
 

    ·         Take some toys, which can be shared with the mates (but it is not the case with Maria as she is reluctant to take her toys to the kindergarden).

The list probably will be prolonged with some more items, but currently we are satisfied with these ones.

Handmade Sensory Toys

Andrew 6m.

Until a child is 3 years old sensory experience is the most crucial for studying the world.  Fun tactile experience will definitely enrich the child with the new impressions! Besides, often kids get bored with one and same toy every day. So, to reach these two goals with Andrew’s 3.5 y.o. sister we made several sensory toys for Andrew's new tactile exploration and impressions.

1.     Caterpillar  - made out of old Maria’s tights, sewed the buttons (caterpillar's eyes and nose). Filled the first segment with the peas, tied over, filled the second segment with the rice, tied over, filled the third segment with the cereal, tied over. The caterpillar can be done as long as one wants, just the filler has to be thought over.

2.    Kinder Surprise® Rattles  - though I'm not too fond of the knitting, sometimes it tends to be relaxing. Kinder surprise plastic shells as a basis, ~10 min knitting per one rattle, a filler (rice, beans, coins).

3.    Hairy sun :) - made several holes in the Kinder Surprise  and passed through them the ribbons of different texture, length, width, colour.

 

Kid’s Reader’s Diary

Maria 3.5 y.

Perhaps, as every child Maria is fond of reading (better, listening to Mum’s/Dad’s reading J) before sleeping. And together, we’ve already gone through many many books for children. Sometimes I’m trying to stimulate the discussion on what we’ve read: on the characters, on their actions/emotions/thoughts, on the environment, on the plot etc. Sometimes, I’m keeping quiet and Maria starts to discuss various issues and asks multiple questions. These thoughts and impressions seem really valuable to me to better understand my child. Once we’ve been reading about a small grasshopper, who lost his parents. Maria said: “Cmon! The parents should have given him a mobile…” This was a kind of explanation to me why she wasn’t willing to stay on her own during her gymnastics classes - she didn’t feel safe if she couldn’t reach her parents whenever she needed to.

Besides, I somehow wanted to structure our reading that we keep a record of what we’ve read. For Maria the reader’s DIARY, which we decided to start, would be also a thing worth to look through once in a while and to recall what she’d read.

We decided to make it like a scrapbook, putting there stickers with characters, drawing sceneries described in the fairy tales, etc. We put there also the tickets from the events such as theatre performance or ballet we attended. I write down in this notebook the comments Maria makes, the questions she asks. Basically, one can do there whatever she wants, depends on the fantasy limits.

Creating summer mood

Maria 3.5 y.

There is a snowstorm, dark and cold outside and, therefore, we decided to organize a piece of summer in our flat by drawing, gluing and making some attributes of this warm and green time.

1.       Summer field with flowers and insects

Painted with watercolours, made flower stamps out of the toilet paper reel, modeled insects out of clay. We prepared the ladybirds according to the guidelines and then sticked them to the summer field. The whole work was purely done by Maria – I just helped to cut out the ladybirds.

2.       Fun and easy summer scenery we made pretty fast thanks to these videos: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. The exciting part of this work is that it grabs the attention of the very active children: you don’t have to care about your accuracy, you don’t have to care too much about the colours you use and it is very interesting to figure out what kind of animal you’ve painted.

3.       Salt Dough Cornflowers

Salt dough (2 glasses of flour, a glass of salt, a glass of water) is really good one for the finger work out. Besides, one can realize his talent when modeling some figures. Another benefit is its cost compared to  the pricey colourful dough found in the craft sets.

 We used the dough to make a panel with cornflowers and a ladybird. We made the buds of cornflowers out of plastic teaspoons, coloured them in blue with acrylic paints, snapped the edges and fixed them in the dough. Then, dried the panel in the oven and finished the panel with the acrylic painting.

10 Favourite Nursery Rhymes to Study English

Maria 3y. 7m.

 

For our English “lessons” we organized a special so called “English Zone”, where we have UK’s map, English books, an envelope with cards for articulatory gymnastics, different animals’ masks and other requisite.  This all is needed for our fun lessons, where the majority of exercises are done by performing some actions like running, jumping, drawing, modeling etc. But the most adorable part of the English studies (except for catch-up game, of course) is singing and finger-playing. Maria learns the nursery rhymes one by one and does it with pleasure remembering the words and repeating them all through the day. here is the list of her most favourite songs:

 

1. Row row row your boat

2. The Wheels on the bus  

These two songs we sing and move the respective transport mean on our UK map and then make particular exercise such as drawing or gluing or making articulatory gymnastics.

 

3. Incy Wincy Spider

4. Hockey Pockey

Excellent finger/body play!

 

5. Finger Family

6. Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes
Very good when one needs to study parts of the body

7. Sing a Rainbow

Absolutely top hit when studying colours

 

And of course the lovely classics such as:

8. Old Macdonald Had a Farm

9. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

10. London Bridge is Falling Down

The most favourite songs are definitely those, which are sung by the children.

Get Active with Little Ones

Andrew 4 m.

 

At his age of 4 months Andrew is rather well-developed: swims and dives with pleasure, rolls around, stands on his fours (to prepare himself for creeping), sings and speaks with his toys and his family members, is able to play independently for some 15 to 30 min. So, what are our time and effort investments for Andrew to develop physically and mentally? Here is the list of things we do (almost) every day:

1.    5 min fit ball exercises;

2.    10-15 min massage;

3.    5 min exercise on inflatable ball;

4.    Listening to various types of music, but primarily classics;

5.    30-40min swimming;

6.    Reading and singing nursery rhymes. Also Andrew becomes active listener when we read to Maria short stories.

Gymnastics with mum is another option to be added to the list for the mum and baby to be fit.

 

Besides, Andrew and Maria enjoy speaking and playing together, which undoubtedly stimulates mutual development and learning. It is said, that second, third, fourth children develop faster than their older siblings.

Playreport: Kids want to Play with Parents!

What is a Play according to children: Building, Reading, Role play, Exercising, Creating, Thinking, Dressing Up, Cooking

 

 IKEA has undertaken a major research-driven project to investigate the subjects of children's development and play called the Playreport. 7,933 Internet-based interviews were conducted with parents and 3,116 interviews with children aged 0-12 years during October and November 2009.

The good thing discovered during the study is that the kids preferring 9 to 1 to play with friends and their parents over watching TV. However, there were also some worrisome findings:  

·         45% of parents feel they don't have enough time to play with their children

·         26% agree that they're too stressed to play with their kids

·         46% of parents admit to feeling guilty about not spending enough time with their kids

Very interesting results were obtained when asking single, wide-ranging question that invited them to tell us in their own words, ‘If you could wish for anything, what would that be?’ It's needs to be noted that a significant of children wishes are not to difficult to fulfill.

“To be an Olympic swimmer”

 “A time machine. A library”

“A TV in my room”

 “(I wish that) we lived in New Zealand - it looks wonderful, beaches are great”

“To grow up to 16”

“My own laptop”

“Liverpool to win the league”

 “A pony”

“To live in the country and have lots of animals”

“To get a good job and be happy and have lots of holidays”

“That my school friends lived closer so that we could meet up and play more, especially at the park”

“I would wish that me and my mum could spend more time with each other and go to the park and bake things. I would also like my mum to take me to places like swimming pools and the zoo and farm. I would wish that we could all eat together like a proper family (with no TV.) I would like to do art with my mum and Christmas cards and decorations. (I would like to have some more takeaways as well.)

“To go to a dance school and to be famous and rich”

 “I’m happy as I am”

“To be a professional footballer with lots of money”

“To have my nanny back from heaven as she used to play with me a lot and let me do fun things! That's it”

“A brilliant life and loadsa friends!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“I wish I could go a visit my big sister in America for a long holiday”

November Table Games

Maria 3,5 y.

We’re trying to establish family tradition – playing table games Friday evenings. It’s the moment of family unity and overall comfort as well as fun and excitement.

The ideas of the following handmade games were seen in the Internet, but they were slightly adapted to our preferences. The games we prepared ourselves and the work was mainly done by Maria (of course, the squirrel was drawn by me :)), who was really eager to start playing.

1.       Colours Memory Game

   2.      Nuts eating - a very good one for those, who wants to learn the basic colours (when playing with Maria we speak foreign language for her to expand her vocabulary in other than native language) and also for those, who loves nuts. Every player starts on the square of the same colour as his cup. Then, the player throws a dice and moves his cup. If the colour of the cup coincides with the colour of the square, then the player takes a nut, cracks it and puts it into his cup. The game stops until there are no nuts left. The winner is the one who has more nuts than the others.

 

Independent second-born children

Andrew 2 m.

Research results demonstrate that the first-born children are more likely to conform, while the second-borns appear to be more independent, rebellious and adventurous. Second born children are competitors. Though these traits of character vividly appear in the adolescent phase, Andrew being only 2 month old appears to be very independent. He can easily play on his own for some 20 min. If someone is nearby and he hears or sees smb, he can extend his independent playing time even for an hour unless he feels uncomfortable (e.g. wants to eat, to sleep).

With Maria we made a toy for Andrew that he can entertain himself, while we are cooking or running around. A branch of a pine-tree we adjusted to the part of musical mobile. To the branch we attached the strings with „handmade” sun, clouds, and „sky” with white and black stars (juice packs filled with rice and beans). So, when Andrew pulls the ribbon, this „construction” moves and makes a sound. Later, we added some bells for the better sound.

 

The toy works perfectly and Andrew is very much excited about it. Excitement makes him move again, which moves the toy. This turns into an endless excitement and playing, but at a certain point of time he gets tired and one should help Andrew to stop it. In the beginning the movements were rather chaotic, but with time passing, Andrew started to realize dependence of the bells ringing and clouds and sun dancing on his movements. So, now he moves intentionally if he want his entertainment centre to move and sound for him.

The Power of Music

Andrew - 2 m.

Here are some of the astonishing results of the famous Masaru Emoto’s water experiment, which clearly show the effect of the music.
 

The water crystal exposed to heavy metal music

 

The water crystal exposed to folk music

 

 

 

The water crystal exposed to Bach's Air for the G String

 

 

 

 

 

 

And though the „Mozart Effect” that babies become smarter after listening to Mozart sonata was not proved, anyway the beautiful music definitely has a positive effect on babies for their emotional and intellectual development. Besides, the music may stimulate baby to become more active, to relax, to cheer up... it can really influence the behaviour and the well-being.

We’re listening to the classical and nature music with Andrew 1-2 times a day for about 20 minutes. The effect of listening does not appear simultaneously, but he evidently likes it very much as he usually calms down and starts to listen carefully trying to figure out where the music comes from. We're also in process of attracting Maria (3.5 y.o.) to our regular music sessions...:)

 

To relax and calm down: flute, piano and violin; wood and sea; Vivaldi, Beethoven, Brams, Schubert, Chopin, Debussy;
To reduce anxiety: folk music, children songs, Chopin, Strauss, Rubinstein;
To reduce irritation: Bach, Beethoven;
To stimulate activity (e.g. before feeding the baby): Bach, Schubert, Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky (allegro, allegro moderato);
For the well-being and activity: marches, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, List.

Baby Carrying

The single most important child rearing practice to be adopted for the development of emotional and social healthy infants and children is to carry the newborn/infant on the body of the mother/caretaker all day long...   James Prescott, Ph.D., developmental psychologist

 

It's good to have mother-child contact all day long, but in that case moms will need extra-hands to be able to do something else. When having more than one child, the case of perpetual contact is basically not real, and sometimes a feeling of guilt can appear. Some psychologists advise there should be at least 10-20 min baby carrying in every gap between baby's naps. Besides, skin-to-skin contact is important for the baby to feel safe and comfortable.

 

Inspired by Autumn

Maria 3y. 4 m.

Autumn seems to be the most inspiring season, it stimulates creativity and motivates for arts and crafts. We enjoy lots of world famous masterpieces  created by the well-known artists, we read lots of poems devoted to the autumn time. The changes in nature happening in autumn such as leaves changing their colour and animals preparing for the winter are so diverse and so colourful that one can't miss it.

We could not neglect autumn time inspiration either and indulged ourselves with the autumn crafts:

1.     Autumn in the forest  - of course none can compare with the Autumn-Artist but still we tried to reflect our autumn mood on the paper. Maria painted colourful background, glued pieces of journal paper, which were supposed to depict birch-trees, and, then, finger-painted leaves on the trees.

 

 2.     Maria was dancing all around with the rowan beads and a bracelet we made together. This was a good exercise for the little fingers when she was putting rowan on the string with the help of the needle.

 

 

3.     Making a geometry ship recalled Maria about the basic geometric forms, which she was painting with the excitement for the ship to have beautiful sails. Later we enjoyed our ship floating in the nearest pond.

Overall the ship-building process was pretty easy and fast: a) put the paper sails on the chopsticks; b) made three holes in the plastic bottle for the chopsticks with sails and a nail in the back; c) tied a ribbon for our construction not to collapse after few minutes of sailing; d) the ship is ready for grand sailing! (not to forget to tie up some string to be able to steer the vessel)

4.      Acorn man, acorn dog and some strange creature J Maria was rather a passive observer this time, but an active acorn hunter.

 

Black’n’White

Andrew 2 m.

It’s well-known that the newborn babies cannot see the objects clearly and can’t distinguish the colours until up to three months old. The best distance for the baby to study smth is around 20 cm, which corresponds to the distance from the breast to mom’s face meaning that the ideal time for studying mom’s face is breast-feeding.

What babies are fascinated by (of course, after parent’s facial expressions) are the contrasts of the dark and light and specifically, black and white. Other colours, which are the first for the newborn to recognize are red and orange.

Based on this knowledge, together with Maria we prepared a training for Andrew – coloured in black some paintings  as well as made a rattle (made out of Pringles chips box, which we filled up with macaroni and taped the top of the box with black’n’white Mary’s drawing). Andrew’s reaction exceeded all expectations! =) he was amazed by these contrast papers and could stare at them for quite a long time. It was an excellent help to keep Andrew happy on his belly (which is usually the most disliked activity of the newborns).

Big City Life

Mary 3y. 4m.

Once we went to the airport to see off our dad, who was going to the business trip. Maria was soo excited by the view from the window, by the infrastructure of the airport, by the planes taking off and landing, that I could hardly persuade her to go back home finally.. had to pay the whole fortune for the parking .. oops..

 

When came back, we studied the planes and other means of transport we could find in our kid’s encyclopedia as well as watched some youtube films on the topic. The buildings and other city’s infrastructure, however, we studied in a more interactive way. We build the whole city on the piece of paperboard: organized the traffic with traffic signs and lights, planted and painted the trees, built houses with glued windows, parked some cars (everything was done by Maria except me cutting off the trees and traffic lights, and drawing the roads). She enjoyed building the city, though less playing with it. The city, however, was valued more by other kids coming to us.

Another thing we made was an outside activity, when we were drawing with the chalks. To make it more interesting there were some tasks for Maria and her friend to fulfill:

1.       Maria and our small neighbour Nick were given some paper stuff (e.g. doctor, airplane, animals etc.). They had to find the right place where to stick them to:

·         Doctor – hospital (hint: red cross);

·         Animals – zoo (hint: cages);

·         Plane  - airport (hint: runways);

·         Vegetables – shop;

·         Train – railway.

2.       Had to find and draw waves in the swimming pool.

3.       Finish drawing the railway.

4.       Draw some traffic lights

Maria added the sun placing it near the airport and other colourful dots saying these are the planets. So, we decided it is no longer an airport but the planetarium and a spaceport.J