December Community Activities

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!    

I hope everyone enjoyed Thanksgiving.  Here are the community events in December.

West Bountiful:
December 5th at 5:00 pm - Santa will make his way through town on a fire engine and arrive at City Hall by 7:00 pm.  Enjoy activities, cookies and hot chocolate while waiting to tell Santa what you want for Christmas.

Centerville:
December 6th, 13th, and 20th from 10:00 am to 6 pm - The 4th Annual Christmas at the Whitaker.  Enjoy an old-fashioned Christmas.  Make a craft, write a letter to Santa, and take home a treat enjoyed in pioneer days.  Bring a camera and take a picture with Santa between 4:00 and 6:00 pm.

Farmington:
December 3rd from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm - Christmas with Santa.  Make your appointment by calling 801 451-0953.  Crafts, refreshments and Santa will be at the Community Arts Center.  This activity is free to Farmington Residents.

Until December 16th, you can send letters to Santa at:
                                       Santa Claus
                                       1 Candy Cane Lane
                                       North Pole, Ak, 99705

Fruit Heights & Kaysville:
December 31st from 6:00 to 10:00 pm - New Years Eve Celebration at Davis High.  Fireworks, bingo, games, music and food.

West Point:
December 5th at 6:00 pm - City Hall Lighting Ceremony

December 23rd at 4:00 pm - Cemetery Luminary at West Point City Cemetery

Clinton:
December 3rd from 5:00 to 7:00 pm - Holiday Sing-a-long at Parkside Elementary

The Power of Routines for Shaping Behavior

I came across this article the other day by the program manager of "More Than Words - The Hanen Program for Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder."  Here is a summary of the article.

The beauty of daily routines is that they provide recurrent opportunities for learning in a naturalistic, yet structured way.  Routines include bathing, feeding, diaper changing, riding in a car - anything that a parent does with his or her child every day.

Children learn a variety of skills and knowledge through participation in daily routines, such as:

• Social Roles - such as how to initiate and respond in socially appropriate ways, to understand the words that people say and how to participate with others as an equal conversational partner. In order for children to learn how to initiate, parents need to give opportunities to children to do so.  Initially, the parent is leading the routine and doing most of the work, but as they child learns and develops the skills to participate, opportunities need to be available for the child to initiate and participate more.  The parents job is to teach the routine and then be willing to watch for and respond to cues the child provides.
• Understanding Meaning of Words - by making routines language rich experiences (talking about what you are doing and what the child is doing and labeling things), parents are able to "map" words onto objects and through many experiences with the same words, children are able to attach meaning to the words.

Here are some guidelines for making daily routines into learning opportunities.

1. Break routines into a series of small consistent steps, so that there's a shared understanding of how the routine goes.  It may be helpful to visually represent the routine through a series of pictures to make it easier for the child to know what he is supposed to do.
2. Be flexible.  Young children learn best when you follow their lead.  If the child wants to roll on the bed when he's putting on his pajamas, instead of trying to eliminate this behavior, work it into the routine by saying, "First, put on your pajamas and then you can roll on the bed."  If the child sees that there is a reward for following the steps of the routine, he'll be more likely to comply.  And just as much learning can take place in a playful game of rolling on the bed as in putting on pajamas!
3. Label what the child's interested in at the very moment it seems to be his focus.  Studies show that the most important aspect of an adult's language input in helping children's word comprehension is timing.  For example, if the child looks at pizza and the adult labels the cup, what the parent says won't help the child crack the language code at all.
4. Be creative.  Routines can be made out of anything that the parent and the child do together regularly.  Routines can be created around planing flowers, changing a bandage or baking cookies.  The best learning opportunities are the ones that are the most fun.

Make the Most of Play Time

Excerpts taken from an article published in the October 2016 issue of Baby Talk.

Playing with your child in the first three years of life helps the two of you build a warm and loving relationship. Playing together also supports the development of essential social skills (like sharing and turn taking), language skills (like labeling objects, making requests, commenting), and thinking skills (like problem-solving).

For babies and toddlers, play is their “work.” It is through play and repetition that babies and toddlers try out and master new skills. Through play, they learn what can happen as a result of an action, explore their imagination and creativity, learn to communicate, and learn about relationships with other people. Any activity can be playful to young children, whether it’s a game of peek-a-boo or helping you wipe the table with a sponge. And all types of play help children learn and practice new skills.

So what can you do to make the most of your child's playtime? Check out the tips below.

Follow Your Child’s Lead Provide an object, toy, or activity for your baby or toddler and then see what he/she does with it. When your child plays, it's okay if it's not the "right" way...let him/her show you a "new way." For example, when you hand your child a plastic cup, instead of pretending to drink from it, he/she might put it on his/her head as a “party hat”. Support your child’s creativity and join in the birthday play.

Go Slowly It's great to show your child how a toy works, but try to hold off on "doing it for him/her" every time. You can begin something, such as stacking one block on another, and then encourage your child to give it a try. Providing just enough help to keep frustration at bay motivates your child to learn new skills.

Read Your Child’s Signals Your little one might not be able to tell you with words when he/she's had enough or when he/she's frustrated. But your child has other ways— like using sounds, facial expressions, and gestures. Reading these signals can also tell you what activities your child prefers. Reading the signals that come before a tantrum help you know when to jump in or change to a new activity.

Look at Your Play Space Is the area where you play child-friendly and child-safe? Is there too much noise or other distractions? Is the area safe to explore? Is this a good place for the activity you've chosen, such as running, throwing balls, or painting? Checking out your space beforehand can prevent a tantrum, an accident, or a broken lamp.

Play It Again, Sam While doing things over and over again is not necessarily thrilling for Mom and Dad, it is for young children. They are practicing in order to master a challenge. And when your child can do it “all by myself!” he/she is rewarded with a powerful sense of his/her own skills and abilities—the confidence that he/she is a smart and successful being. The more children have a chance to practice and master new skills, the more likely they are to take on new challenges and learn new things. So when you’re tempted to hide that toy because you don’t think you can stand playing with it one more time, remember how important repetition is to your child’s development.

To read the full article, go to  http://csefel.vanderbilt.edu/documents/make_the_most_of_playtime2.pdf

What's Happening To Fine Motor Development?

This article is from Community PlayThings.

Lacking Fine Motor Skills is not "Fine" in Kindergarten 

A new and disturbing phenomenon is rising on the educational horizon. Many children are arriving at kindergarten lacking the basic fine motor skills needed to hold a pencil and write. This lack of dexterity in their fingers and hands can be attributed to theincreased use of touch screen technology and decreased use of crayons, paints, pencils, scissors, clay, and other manipulatives in their daily lives.

Along with social-emotional skills and curiosity, fine motor skills are among the priority readiness skills for kindergarten. If children arrive at school lacking the fine motor control and finger strength necessary to hold a pencil, they will struggle to master other requirements in kindergarten. This is a huge problem because today’s kindergarten demands so much more writing and desk work than ten years ago.

Children are arriving at school lacking the fine motor strength necessary to hold a pencil.

This predicament cannot be remedied over-night. Like large motor skills, fine motor skills develop gradually over time with much practice and repetition. Perhaps we are more aware of the more visible and exciting large motor achievements: A child first holds her head up, rolls over, then sits, crawls, pulls to a stand, walks, then runs. Fine motor development starts with grasping objects (mommy’s finger, a rattle, a toy), holding a bottle, picking up food to eat, manipulating a spoon, using hands for purposeful reasons like block building and play dough, buttoning and zippering, using art tools to draw and write, and only then using a pencil or pen to write a name or copy words. While these two progressive developmental sequences are normal in child development, if the sequence is impeded along the way, the child will not develop as she should. We are seeing this with fine motor development in today’s five-year-olds who, from infancy, are spending too much time “swiping and tapping” on screens and not playing with a large range of manipulatives.

Technology is not going away, so it is up to adults to limit its use and ensure that young children have normal childhood play experiences. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends absolutely no screen time for children under the age of two, and less than an hour a day for preschoolers. Parents should not give their smart phones to babies in their car seats or strollers. They should not play videos for infants and toddlers to keep them occupied. They should not take iPads to restaurants. Preschoolers should not have televisions in their bedrooms.

Using a pencil correctly is a developmental skill that is preceded by a sequence of other fine motor skills.

Children learn by doing and experiencing, not just passively watching.

Advertising often convinces parents that children are learning from the two-dimensional computer games and applications they use. Children, however, live in a three-dimensional world and need to be learning from interactions with real objects or people. For example, the way children learn what “three” means is to hold three objects, eat three grapes, build with three blocks, see how many sets of three are in a little box of raisins, make a triangle with three pretzel sticks. Children learn by doing and experiencing, not by passively watching.

The classic materials of childhood are time-tested to provide practice in fine-motor skills, strengthening all the little hand muscles. Adults should ensure that children have access to these materials both at home and at childcare centers:

• ­ crayons, markers, chalk, paints, pencils, scissors
• ­ blocks, Lego, other manipulatives
• ­ dolls and stuffed animals for dressing and undressing
• ­ play dough, finger paint, clay, mud

Play dough is an excellent material for building small muscle strength. Learn more here.

Finger games like Itsy Bitsy Spider and Where is Thumbkin? are also excellent in increasing coordination of the fingers and hands.There are so many wonderful and playful activities that adults can do with children with to help build fine motor skills.

The Gesell Developmental Observation-Revised (GDO-R) assessment evaluates many kindergarten readiness skills. In recent years though, teachers have commented that low scores in fine motor skills pulled down the children’s overall developmental age. Some teachers asked if they could ignore the fine motor section of the assessment. The answer is no! Fine motor skills are a very important part of whole child development and are essential for academic success.

Toddlers need lots of experience grasping and building with small, solid blocks.

At-Home Activities for Building Fine Motor Skills

Try incorporating these activities into the daily routine with your child:

Kitchen projects: Making home-made play dough strengthens muscles in the hands and fingers. Roll snakes and balls of all sizes; build with the balls and snakes. Your child can play with play dough at the counter or table while you make dinner.

Make peanut butter or sugar cookies that require the dough to be rolled into balls and smashed with a fork. Meatballs are fun and yummy, too.

Playing Grocery Store: Keep your canned goods on a bottom shelf. Allow your child to play grocery store—take out and rearrange the cans, sort by size, color, or content. This is a math readiness skill, too.

Sorting silverware or setting the table: Sorting silverware into its proper holder is a math skill; as is the patterning your child will do by laying the napkin, knife, fork, and spoon in order at each place-setting.

Eating with chop sticks: This is a more advanced fine motor skill, but not impossible to teach. Children in Asian countries learn quite young. Use chopsticks to pick up cotton balls, round cereal, or other small objects.

Folding clothes: Start with folding washcloths or towels. Fold in half, then fold again to make a quarter.

Stringing things: Make bracelets and necklaces by threading pasta, Fruit Loops, or beads onto pipe cleaners or thick strings. Add a pattern and you add math!

Playing dress-ups: Putting on coats and gloves, zipping up, snapping, buttoning, and tying shoes all help with building fine motor strength. Dressing a doll or stuffed animals is just as good, too!

Practicing with scissors: Start with safety scissors and a 4" strip of paper to snip, snip, snip with and make fringe. Later, draw a path on the paper to cut along. Make confetti by cutting little snips of various colored, textured, and shiny wrapping paper. Cut pictures out of magazines and make a collage. Play dough is an excellent soft material for beginners to practice scissor skills on. Roll snakes and cut them into pieces.

Coloring and drawing: Encourage creativity by providing a variety of art mediums. Color with hard pressure, color with soft pressure. Outline the object hard, color soft inside. Instead of coloring, have the child fill the space with little controlled circles—pointillism—a captivating art technique.

Limiting technology: Put away the electronics. Or, better yet, create your own “TV program” by making a story scroll. After drawing out the story, scene by scene, on a long piece of paper, roll the paper tightly onto a cardboard tube. Make a "screen" by cutting a window out of a cardboard box. Mount the scroll inside the box on the left. Stretch the beginning of the story across the screen and tape it to another empty roll mounted on the right side of the box. Turning the right tube to make the scroll move helps develop fine motor skills too.

November Community Activities and December Community Activities Information

November Community Activities:

November 6th - Daylight Savings Time Ends!  Remember to turn your clocks back and get an extra hour of sleep!

November 28th - Centerville Festival of Lights at Founders Park.  Lights turn on at 6:00 pm.  Enjoy entertainment, Santa and treats!

November 28th - Kaysville Christmas Light Parade on City Hall Block at 5:45 pm.  Enjoy the lighting of the Christmas Tree and Electric Parade down Main Street with delicious hot chocolate!

Hogle Zoo Free Days:
Free admission to Hogle Zoo on November 30, December 28, January 25, and February 22.

Tracy Aviary $1 Admission:
You can visit Tracy Aviary for $1 per person on all Wednesdays November through March!

December Community Activities

Parents teach their children every day in a variety of situations and environments – they are the ones who make the most difference in their child’s development.  In order to support parents in all situations and locations, we provide an opportunity for families to receive support and learn strategies to make outings successful through December Community Activities.  This is a billable service.  Davis Early Intervention has coordinated with several community agencies to participate in activities that are available to Davis County Residents.  You will receive a list of available activities and be given the opportunity to select an activity in which your family would like to participate.  Our Early Intervention staff will be present at the activities to provide support and strategies for your family to have an enjoyable and successful experience.  There are many benefits of receiving services in the community.

·         A child is more likely to generalize skills learned in natural environments.  Parents find themselves in an ever changing variety of settings and children need to learn how to succeed in all environments.

·         All children learn to understand and accept differences.  Children with delays and disabilities are able to participate in the same activities as other children in the community.  Children who don’t have disabilities also benefit from playing and being with children who do have disabilities.

·         A child is more likely to learn appropriate and effective social skills.  Children with delays and disabilities need the opportunity to learn by imitating and participating in the play and social interactions of their typically developing peers.

·         Every child has an opportunity to participate in his or her community.  Every child should be able to participate in activities that allow them to interact in the community.

·         Communities recognize that children with special needs are children first.  The community benefits from opportunities to become acquainted with families and their children with developmental delays or disabilities.

·         Children and families experience a sense of belonging.  Shared activities provide opportunities for children and their families to build friendships and increase natural supports.

·         Children receive the opportunity to practice their skills.  Community activities allow the child and family to shift the focus from acquisition and practice of developmental skills to functional and social competence.