Help your Baby Build a Healthy Brain

Everyone knows that if you have a question, you can Google it and get a million answers.  I like knowing that when it comes to raising little ones, there are a few places I can go to get reliable ideas. I can always go to my mom, she is an amazing parent who raised an outstanding daughter (just kidding).  She was a teacher in the early elementary grades for many years.  She also was the director for Head Start and she did successfully raise three kids who still feel like she is awesome.

Another resource is the Zero to Three website.  They specialize in little ones.  Zero to Three wants every parent to be successful in raising children to be the best they can be and so they have developed a free video series to provide guidance, support and knowledge to all parents.  These videos cover the following topics:

• Brain Wonders: Nurturing Healthy Brain Development From Birth
• Literacy Skills: The Roots of Reading
• Power of Play: Building Skills While Having Fun
• Temperament:  What Makes Your Child Tick?

Children are learning from the time they are born.  All those early experiences shape how they learn, how they relate to others, and the kind of person they become.  Zero to Three is providing tools that show parents how they can have the greatest, most positive impact on their developing child.  This resource is called The Magic of Everyday Moments: Seeing Is Believing.  The great thing is, the videos show how parents can nurture all the key skills and attributes children need to be eager, competent learners and to form strong, healthy relationships through everyday routines!

Check out these videos at www.zerotothree.org/MOEM and help your baby build a healthy brain!

Sensory Activities

Yes, sensory activities can be messy.  But sometimes the benefits outweigh this small inconvenience.  Rachelle Doorley from artfulparent.com shares the benefits of sensory play as well as some simple activities that little ones can enjoy.  You can click on the underlined activity for more information.  Another BIG benefit of sensory play is it might just give you a few minutes to get something done!  You can check out the full article at this link: http://artfulparent.com/2013/02/8-sensory-activities-for-kids-to-fill-the-witching-hour.html

THE BENEFITS OF SENSORY PLAY

• Calming: Playing with dry rice, sand, water, play dough, and other materials that stimulate the senses can calm children and improve their focus
• Find inner voice: Sensory experiences encourage children to tap their inner voice as they test their ideas and explore the phenomena of the material/s that are in front of them
• Fine motor development: Oftentimes sensory experiences foster fine motor skills as children are challenged to scoop, pour, cut, sift, or mold.
• Language acquisition: Sensory experiences can build language acquisition when adults facilitate the experience with contextual description language such as, “You’re moving the sand into the corner of the box,” or “Do you feel the warm water pouring over your hands?”

Water Scooping for Babies: This is one of the first sensory activities that my children were introduced to. We drink it, bathe in it, cook with it, and water our plants with it. Water is familiar to children, safe to touch, and endlessly fascinating.

Cloud Dough: This moldable, yet crumbly, dough is made from flour and oil. That’s it. It’s so simple and I’ve found that even if it spills all over my table and hardwood floors, it’s easy to clean up. If you add a little bit of lavender oil to the dough it will also leave your hands with a yummy smell.

Slime: The texture of this gooey substance is somewhere between play dough and silly putty. If you have carpets you’ll want to cover them first, but this is otherwise a fine activity to do indoors.

Goop: A simple mixture of cornstarch and water. It feels like a solid, and then a liquid…the texture will boggle the mind.

Water Beads: You’ll want to keep a close eye on small children who mouth objects. This is one of the most popular sensory experiences in my home.

Tearing wet paper: I gave my toddler a tub of water to play with and she carried sheets of paper over to it. Before I knew it she was soaking the paper and shredding it. She loved this activity.

Shredded paper: This is a super messy activity, but my kids ask for it ALL the time. See what you think.

Wheat Berries: Read more about how my girls used wheat berries in their play. Wheat berries could easily be substituted with dry rice, beans, sand, or lentils.

Valentines Crafts for Tots

This post is taken from Rainydaymum.co.uk and although it says 19 heart crafts for tots, there are only 16 activities that were still accessible.   Maybe these will get you thinking about other ideas!  Happy Valentine's Day with your little cuties!

The original post can be found at this link - http://rainydaymum.co.uk/19-hearts-crafts-for-tots

To start off how about 7 Valentine’s Day Crafts for Toddlers from Toddler Approved (I know a little cheeky saying I was sharing 19 when 7 of them are in one post). Toddler Approved is jam-pPacked full of ideas for toddlers, and these crafts are wonderful for little ones to do with you this Valentines Day.

Over on Mama OT there are some great fine-motor skill hearts crafts to make with your tots.

Playdough is one of our go-to activities, and I love this variation creating magnets with it play dough from Teaching Mama.

There are lots of printing and painting/gluing hearts ideas out there, but this Hearts Craft from Inspiration Laboratories is a little different.

Even then youngest ones can get involved in making heart crafts for Valentines Day, and The Educator’s Spin OnIt has some great ideas including the Heart winged footprint butterfly.

Mama Miss shared a gorgeous Heart Bracelet craft with us this week which would be great as a favour for Valentines Day Party with kids.

We love Glitter, and these Glitter hearts craft from Buggy and Buddy look a lot of fun to make, plus they are glittery.

An Idea on Tuesday shared a fun way to create a heart with weaving and garden trellis.

How about creating some faux stained glass effect hearts like the ones on Kara’s Classroom.

We love window decorations, and this one from The Fairy and The Frog is perfect for little hands to do.

Gigi's Playhouse

Here is more information about the Open House for Gigi's Playhouse.

To all who are interested,

 

This Friday is the grand opening of Gigi’s Playhouse in Layton! This is the first playhouse to be open in the Western United States. Utah has the highest capita of children with Down Syndrome, so it is very exciting to see this facility open up in our own backyard, along with the help it will bring to many Utah families. This facility provides a place for these children to attain free services that focus on physical/mobility support, math and reading tutoring, activities to improve their independence, and it also provides their families with resources and support groups. All of this is free to the children with down syndrome and their families.

 

Please spread the word that the opening will be this Friday from 10 am to 12 pm. It is located at 471 Heritage Park Blvd, Suite #4 in Layton, UT [just off of Hill Field Road, by the America First credit union].  The founder of Gigi’s playhouse will be in attendance, as well as her daughter who inspired this organization.

 

For more information on Gig’s Playhouse go to: http://gigisplayhouse.org/

 

If you want to pay it forward, in your spare time and on your home computer, feel free to nominate Gigi’s Playhouse for the Utah Jazz/Mountain America Credit Union Pass it Along contest at http://www.nba.com/jazz/PassItAlong .

 

Thank you so much for your time and reading this email!

Stacie Passey