child development – Marisa Meidle's Baby Showers

Drawing, coloring and toddlers!

To the casual observer a child who is drawing or coloring in, is merely scribbling. The marks seem to be decidedly random, almost meaningless. But there is more going on in your young child’s mind as s/he engages in the physical act of drawing and coloring.

In fact, examining children’s drawing may give us important insights into how drawing fits into the overall physical, emotional and cognitive development of the young child. From toddlerhood through to primary school, children choose to draw and color, but the process actually starts much earlier – during toddlerhood.

At around the age of a year and a half toddlers become interested in scribbling. It seems to provide sensory enjoyment, but the child is also interested in the marks that are made. The act of scribbling can serve several useful purposes for the young child. Small muscle coordination and control improve with practice, cognitive abilities are exercised, opportunities for social interaction arise, and the physical movements provide emotional release.

Because a toddler’s small muscle control is not fully developed, he or she may approach the coloring sheet by grasping the marker with his or her fist and may well find it difficult to place the marks exactly where he or she wants them. Movements are typically large, involving the entire arm with very little finger or wrist control. This is due to the fact that the pattern of physical development proceeds from the center of the trunk outward.

With practice, your child will naturally improve his or her control. Full control, however, will not be achieved until much later. A few toddlers rest the forearm on the drawing surface to give them additional control. A repetitive scrubbing motion is common among two-year-olds. This provides them with sensory enjoyment and making drawing a very physical act.

By providing children with the materials and opportunities to scribble we can promote physical skills. Just as babbling is a natural way to gain language, scribbling is the precursor to muscle control and coordination.

Form an intellectual point of view young toddlers care about both the process and results of their art. They do not intend to represent objects at first. Instead, they are mainly concerned with color and line. However, they may look at the marks and scribbles they have made and, in surprise, recognize a shape and name it. While they may not have intended to draw a car, a house or a tree, the scribbles suggest the shapes. Children interpret, rather than intend. This is called fortuitous realism and becomes common as a child approaches three years of age.

As a parent you can encourage your child to draw and color by offering him or her opportunities to do so. Let them loose on blank sheets of paper or provide them with a coloring book or coloring sheets, many of which are available online. Little boys may enjoy coloring images of cars and trucks or of favorite characters such as Spiderman and at sites like Spiderman Coloring you’ll find Spiderman Party as well as coloring pages, funny pics and more. For little girls search for coloring pages of princesses or fairies or anything else she may be interested in such as Disney characters or even trucks!

Remember however that toddlers need constant supervision while coloring due to the choking hazard that crayons pose.

Alternatives Help with Parental Control

Most parents must have encountered this situatioin at one time or another. Your child is doing something that is potentially dangerous, or annoying, and when you try to stop them they throw a tantrum.

This is always one fo the biggest trials that any parent must face. Positive parenting involving tolerance and lots of praise is well known to contribute toward the development of social competence and self confidence. But parents need to assert their authority and remain in charge.

The typical toddler will, on average, face up to 20 restrictions on their activities every hour. Nione of us would like to be told what to do or not to do every three minutes?

Parental control is often needed when a child is doing what comes naturally but putting themselves or their peers at risk in the process. Putting a sharp metal knife in their mouths, fighting or poking one another in the eyes are all common examples of how children will test boundaries while investigating the world around them.

Giving the child an alternative can be an excellent way to allow them to continue to safely investigate and learn. You may, for example, sway the metal knife for a safe spoon or maybe a plastic knife. Or let them find out how much it can hurt to be poked in the eye.

Alternatives can provide an effective way to head off a potentially tense situation, but they don’t always work. The first thing to do is to acknowledge what the child is trying to achieve and then to introduce the alternative. Engage the child with the alternative by making it appear more attractive than whatever it was the child was doing before.

There will be plenty of occasions when you will not be in a position or able to offer alternatives and these will serve to educate your child that the world has its limits. But providing safe alternatives to potentially risky or harmful behavior can help to reinforce a positive relationship with your children and teach them that other options are often available.

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I recommend camping as a great way to bond with children, to provide them with freedom to investigate the world around them and engage with their parents or carers. But always remember to ensure safety by using the right camping equipment. You may like to take part in a bushcraft course where children will learn a variety of skills including how to handle a bushcraft knife, start a fire without matches and tracking skills.

As easy as ABC – Teaching the alphabet to your pre-schooler

Letters are important – they are the building blocks towards a lifetime of reading, writing and learning and should not be taught solely with paper pencil worksheets. Instead, parents can plan entertaining yet educational activities their child will enjoy taking part in. There is no better way to help kids learn the letters of the alphabet than by making the learning fun.

Any alphabet learning activity you begin with your child should last only five to ten minutes per day depending on your child. As a parent, you already know the length of your child’s attention span and can time each activity accordingly. Also, plan only one activity per session introducing five letters at a time. Learning the alphabet in no particular order is difficult for children, howevert is a key skill needed for their success as readers. Keeping activities short and engaging will make an enormous difference to children as they begin to learn the basics of reading.

Here are some ideas you might like to try at home.

Letter of the day

Nominate a letter of the day – for example the letter S – and plan a couple of activities around that. For example, print and color coloring sheets of a favourite character such as Spongebob Squarepants whose initials are SS and at sites like Spongebob Coloring Pages you’ll find the best Spongebob colouring. Also, eat food beginning with S such as sausages or sweetcorn and do some of the other activities mentioned in this article involving the letter S.

Bath time foam letters

Parents can purchase a bucket of foam letters from any dollar store. These letters are fabulous fun for a young learner in the bathtub. Parents can place letters on the side of the bathtub, spell our words and review letters.

Shaving cream letters

Parents take a cookie sheet or spray shaving cream directly on your kitchen table. Ask your child to smooth out the cream to form a square. Hold your child’s index finger and assist him with forming a letter. Then ask your child to wipe that letter away and begin again.

Letter art

Using bingo dabbers or finger paints have your child create one large uppercase letter filling the entire space of an A4 piece of paper. Create each letter following the alphabetical order and decorate the child’s bedroom or playroom with these letters. The art your child creates will mean so much more to him than any store bought alphabet poster.

Magnetic letters

Place five magnet letters on a cookie sheet and tell your child the letter you would like for her to find. Be sure to alternate turns when your child has mastered all letters.

Rice printing

Spread out a thin layer of uncooked rice on a cookie sheet. Choose a letter with your child and ask him to draw it in the rice. Repeat this with other letters. This will give a child who enjoys sensory learning another way to internalize letters.

Child development – fine motor skills

Parents of toddlers have no doubt heard the term ‘fine motor skills’ as it is often bandied about when talk turns to child development and preschool goals. Fine motor skills involve all the small muscles of the body that allow functions such as writing, grasping small objects and fastening clothing. Fine motor skills involve strength, fine motor control and dexterity.

Fine motor skills, are skills that involve a refined use of the small muscles controlling the hand, fingers and thumb. The development of these skills allow a person – at any age – to be able to complete tasks such as writing, drawing and buttoning.

The preschool attainment goals that are expected of children include their ability to hold pencils and markers with a mature grip, the child’s ability to draw recognizable shapes and objects and a child’s capability to cut out shapes while turning the paper as necessary. Fine motor skills are important in most school activities as well as in life in general.

Limitations in fine motor skills can greatly impinge on a child’s ability to eat, write legibly, operate a computer, turn pages in a book and perform personal care tasks such as dressing and grooming.

As children improve their motor skills, they are better able to help themselves by completing daily activities independently. For instance, children between the ages of 2 and 3 are able to put on and take off simple articles of clothing. They are able to ‘operate’ clothing with zippers, use spoons, string together beads with large holes and open doors that have doorknobs. When children are between the ages of 3 and 4, they are able to dress in clothing with larger buttons, use scissors to cut paper and can copy simple lined shapes using a pencil. By the ages of 4 to 5, children are able to dress and undress themselves without assistance. They are also able to manipulate a fork and have increased their dexterity to cut around shapes with a pair of scissors. Finally, by age 6, a child is able to cut soft foods with a knife and can tie his or her shoe laces.

Because all children develop at their own rate, the ages given are not an exact timeline because every child will acquire their fine-motor skills in a different timetable – however there is much you can do to support a toddler’s acquisition of fine motor skills. In fact, the more your preschool child uses his or her fingers in activities that help to strengthen their hand coordination, the sooner they will master dexterity.

Develop fine motor skills by drawing and coloring with your child using markers, pencils, crayons and even pavement chalk. Drawings need not be perfect – scribbling is great fun – and coloring pages of a favourite TV or movie character should encourage even the most reluctant colorer to literally try his or her hand at coloring. At sites like Spongebob Coloring Pages you’ll find the best Spongebob colouring pages while little girls would perhaps enjoy the coloring sheets at Fairy Coloring Pages.

Despite parents’ best efforts however, sometimes children need some assistance when developing their fine motor skills. This requires parents to find diverse strategies in order to assist children with their development. Occupational therapists are the true experts in the field of fine motor and handwriting development, therefore, if you think that there may be an issue with the fine motor development of your child, you should ask for an evaluation by a licensed occupational therapist.

Toddlers – the importance of drawing and coloring

To the casual observer a child who is drawing or coloring in, is just scribbling. The marks seem to be haphazard, almost meaningless. But there is more going on in your young child’s mind as s/he engages in the physical act of drawing and coloring.

In fact, examining a child’s drawing gives us important insights into how drawing fits into the overall physical, emotional and cognitive development of the young child. From toddlerhood through primary school, children choose to draw and color, but the process starts much earlier – during toddlerhood.

At around the age of 18 months, toddlers become interested in scribbling. It seems to provide sensory enjoyment, but the child is also interested in the marks that are made. The act of scribbling can serve several useful purposes for the young child. Small muscle coordination and control improve with practice, cognitive abilities are exercised, opportunities for social interaction arise, and the physical movements provide emotional release.

Because a toddler’s small muscle control is not fully developed, he or she may approach the coloring sheet by grasping the marker with his or her fist and may have difficulty placing the marks exactly where he or she wants them. Movements are typically large, involving the whole arm with very little finger or wrist control. This is because the pattern of physical development proceeds from the center of the trunk outward.

With practice, the toddler will naturally improve his or her control, full control, however, will not be achieved until much later. A few toddlers rest the forearm on the drawing surface to give them additional control. A repetitive scrubbing motion is common among two-year-olds. This provides them with sensory enjoyment and making drawing a very physical act.

By providing children with the materials and opportunities to scribble we can promote physical skills. Just as babbling is a natural way to gain language, scribbling is a natural gateway to muscle control and coordination.

Intellectually toddlers are concerned with both the process and results of their art. They do not intend to represent objects at first. Instead, they are concerned with color and line. However, they may look at the marks and scribbles they have made and, in surprise, recognize a shape and name it. While they may not have intended to draw a car, a house or a tree, the scribbles suggest the shapes. Children interpret, rather than intend. This is called fortuitous realism and becomes common as a child approaches three years of age.

As a parent you can encourage your child to draw and color by offering him or her opportunities to do so. Provide them with blank sheets of paper to let their creativity run wild or supply a coloring book or coloring sheets – many of which are available free of charge online. Little boys may enjoy coloring images of cars and trucks or of favorite characters such as Pokemon and at sites like Pokemon Coloring Pages you’ll find the best Pokemon to colour in

Little girls on the other hand tend to prefer images of fairies and princesses and these too are plentiful online.

Remember to always supervise toddlers while they draw and color – due to the choking hazard that crayons pose.