Preschool Parenting – Learning Lessons As We Go

destiny — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:16:33 +0000

Destiny baby is three years old now. He’s active and adorable, but there are times when he can be bored at home and we have to figure out ways that he will continue to be entertained, stimulated and continue to learn. We’ve picked up some ideas from books and other resources for teaching toddlers.

We’ve also made up some activities that came to us as we needed. This post is an opportunity to share what we’ve learned and what works for us. (This year has gotten off to a busy start and it’s taken a while to get this post together. Hope you enjoy it! – Mama Destiny)

We’ve divided them into types of activities–indoor and outdoor. This post starts with indoor activities. A future post will cover outdoor activities. As far as inside fun goes, one of the best things you can do for your child is to read a picture book to them, particularly a preschool or prekindergarten aged child who is working on literacy. Reading is one of our son’s most favorite things.

We also look for websites that have online games or him to play. Our little one has become very proficient at playing learning games online. He plays Nick Junior, PBS Kids, even games through Cartoon Network. Their website has games based on the cartoon shows featured on the network (While I’m writing this, he’s actually excited to hear me say each of his favorite cartoons). We bookmark those sites.

The cool thing is that he’s seen us use the keyboard since he was a little baby. He’s grown up knowing the computer and loving to use the keyboard and the computer. In fact, we had a post last year where we compiled a big list of our favorite sites for online educational games.

We’ll have to update it to include the new ones that that we’ve been using, but Literary Center is still a favorite. As Destiny Baby has become more or him more capable with the computer, he’s expanded to play other games.
So far, we’ve covered picture books and computers. Another favorite indoor activity of ours is puzzles and floor games.

Especially good for little hands are the giant floor puzzles and floor mats. When we were out in Los Angeles, we went to the La Brea Tar Pits (home to real live ongoing prehistoric dinosaur excavation pits–a great place for a family outing by the way) gift shop. They sold these wonderful giant floor puzzles of dinosaurs and my son loves dinosaurs. They are a great learning activity in terms of pattern recognition and figuring out shapes and recognizing what goes together and it even help his a dexterity. So that’s another favorite thing we like to do.

We’ve also invested in a set of paints and paintbrushes and art tools, chalk and crayons. At Wal-mart, we found a very affordable all-in-one chalk board and whiteboard, easel that we keep in his room. Sometimes he will wake up and grab one of the large chalks–it’s important to get large sized crayons or chalk for those small fingers–and start to draw whatever is on his mind.

Also posted on his bedroom wall is a set of ABCs. One big thing we’ve learned is that there’s always this emphasis on capital letters in baby and chilren’s learning toys. But =if you think about it, small or lowercase letters are more common and there’s not enough emphasis on that and we find that all of a sudden he’s being given reading and writing activities at preschool, when he hadn’t been really exposed lowercase letters. So we always make sure that any alphabet posters or books that we bring to him now feature upper and lowercase letters.

The easel has been great. Sometimes he will just draw free flow whatever he likes, and that’s important for learnin. Other times, we can direct his activities by pointing to his alphabets, numbers and shapes on the wall and say okay, draw that.

There are other fun things we like to do indoors. One activity happened because he had to come up with Valentine’s day gifts for his preschool class. Being new parents, we didn’t realize that there is this whole industry of kid’s Valentine cards that are sold in stores featuring cartoon characters and he actually got a lot of those kind of premade Valentine’s cards featuring cartoon characters kind of like little mini cards and those were really cute. However, we didn’t know about those and so we spent the day making by hand Valentines Day cards for all his friends–all twenty-something of his classmates and teachers.

That actually turned out to be a fun activity, because while mommy was cutting out the shapes, we also had glue and Destiny Baby was able to glue pictures of hearts and fun drawings on the construction paper Valentine’s Day cards. We also gave him crayons to color, that it became a fun kind of group activity for all of us to do.

Because of preschool, he really likes to participate now, and now whenever I make pancakes he joins in to help out. I always have him help with stirring the batter. When it’s time to cleanup he helps to sweep the floor and to pick up things put them in the trash.

All of those are all fun things that we do as primary indoor activities. We also just mess around the light, you know being that my son is only child. We have to be the big kids and play with them. We’re also his playmates say we do engage in pretend play a lot of times he just desperate to play on his own, which is great, but we do also engage in pretend play with. So all in all, we have crafts puzzles pain pain writing play in reading him or I’ll among the some of the main things that we do. We play indoors with with destiny baby.

The next time we’ll continue this series by talking about outdoor activities that were elected it will hopefully do give you some ideas to spark your own creativity!

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Dora or Diego Learning Toys: Does it have to be a choice?

destiny — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 20:09:32 +0000

Both my toddler and I love Dora the Explorer and Go Diego Go! Both are children’s TV shows featured on Nickelodeon, an American cable television channel geared for children. An incident in my local pharmacy the other day got me thinking about the gender divide in our country. I was looking for a new set of flash cards for my two year old (who will be three very soon) and when I looked for the Dora the Explorer products, I wasn’t disappointed. I bought a tin of Dora the Explorer Kidz Cards, featuring four games: Memory, Old Maid, Go Fish and Crazy Eights. A little advanced for a two year old but he loves Dora and can name all the characters, which are featured on the cards in full color.

I grabbed the canister and made my way to the checkout when a woman stopped me and asked if I thought the cards were a good purchase. I immediately started to sing the praises of Dora the Explorer and related products I’ve found and just casually mentioned that my son loves them.

Her face changed suddenly.

“Your son?” she asked, incredulously. “He likes Dora?” I was bewildered by her change in tone. Of course, I said. He loves the music, and all the animal characters, and learns from the show. To my amazement she proceeded to lecture me that I shouldn’t get Dora products for my son and how different men she knows as adults now identify as gay because they loved to play with dolls as children, and how it was encouraged by their mothers. I was speechless, but managed to shrug and say, Well he’s two.

I quickly walked away, but it got me thinking about how early the gender roles are forced on kids. Even baby clothes are divided by color, although I’ve noticed more and more of my friends who are having kids are requesting “gender neutral” colors for their babies (the neutral colors are supposedly yellow, green, purple, orange–anything but pink and blue!)

For my part, as long as my son loves Dora the Explorer I will get the shows toys, videos and games for him. The show, website and associated products are great. Dora features vivid colors, a cast of animal friends and her family, and is interactive, teaching vocabulary and language skills as well as music, and other lessons (math, science, observation and physical coordination). For example, the characters will pause to ask your child a question, figure out something or to name objects. Does it matter that it’s a little girl who’s the lead showing my son these things?

The Nick Jr. online shop offers bestselling and exclusive products from all of your children’s favorite shows and characters like Dora the Explorer, Go Diego Go, Wonder Pets, Blue’s Clues, The Backyardigans, Ni Hao, Kai-Lan, and Yo Gabba Gabba! In fact, we’ve gathered some special deals for you:
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What do you think? Do we have to worry about gender appropriate toys for toddlers?

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Destiny Baby » Personal

Preschool Parenting – Learning Lessons As We Go

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Dora or Diego Learning Toys: Does it have to be a choice?

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