Women's Home Activities

In keeping with the series on educational activities today I wanted to discuss with you Children’s Learning Activities 5 Tips for Parents of Preschool Aged Kids. From a very young age children are like tiny sponges; they soak up all that is around them, willingly. Their knowledge base begins to expand and grow just as a sponge does when filled with liquid.

This is the time that we as parents and caregivers of these little dynamos really need to focus in and take advantage of creating an environment meant to foster the love of learning. From the time they are babies and continuing on through the pre-school years kids begin to imitate what they see and hear around them. This is all part of the learning process and one that we as adults should be keenly aware of. We want to be sure that our habits, actions and yes even words are ones that will encourage positive learning outcomes for our little ones.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. I had a conversation with our daughter this morning and she was telling me about watching her precious 19 month old get one of his favorite books (that’s right, even at this young age kids do have “favorites”) and he sat down and began to “read” the book.

Now I am not saying that he took and said what was on the page word for word; although studies have shown that this is possible. What I am saying is, as she related the events to me that this small child in his still babbling baby talk started to tell the story he saw in print. Not only that but he also used hand gestures and intonation in his voice as he began to say the “words” just like his Mom does when she reads the book to him. He was imitating what he had “learned” from his Mommy.

So this leads me to emphasize the following:

5 Tips for Parents on Children’s Learning Activities for Pre-school Aged Kids

You know that you want your children to grow and learn as much as they can even from an early age. Here are 5 tips that you as parents can begin to use to help your children continue their path for learning, get them prepared for school and promote the idea of becoming life-long learners.

1.    Develop Daily Reading Habits – I cannot emphasize enough that it is so very important to establish getting in the habit of reading to your children on a daily basis. Even if it is only 15-30 minutes make sure you set aside sometime during the day for this special family bonding activity. Story time is a great way of sharing experiences with your kids and enhances your children’s learning activities.
2.    Let Your Children Choose What to Read – Allowing the child to pick out their favorite choices will help to instill a growing sense of independence. Kids like the idea that they are being given a chance to make decisions. Don’t discourage the child’s selection even if you have read the book lots of times before. It is really a good thing to read a book over and over again because it assists with increasing comprehension skills. Did you know that it takes hearing or reading something at least 7 times before it becomes part of your long term memory? When children hear you telling them the story again and again they become so familiar with the tale that they begin to learn what is in the book. So you see that this will get your kids prepared for future learning activities like understanding phonics and sight words.
3.    Read With Enthusiasm – As you are reading to your toddler or preschool aged child do so in a way that shows that you are truly interested in the book; which in turn engages the children’s attention to what is being read. Make the story come alive while you are reading to your children by changing the tone of your voice for each character. Use different emotions depending on what is happening to help the kids understand what is going on in the story. If gestures are appropriate use those too. For example a story might include a bouncing ball; make a circle with your hands and then pretend you are bouncing the ball as you are reading about it. The next time you read this story, your child might just start imitating this action when he sees the page with the ball.

4.    Discuss What You Are Reading – Point out familiar objects on each page to the kids. Use color, size and shape words to describe what you are reading. Ask them questions about what they see. Have your child point to what you are asking. If something you are reading about makes a noise make the sound. Have the children repeat what the sound is. For instance, say the story has a duck in it. You may ask your child, “Do you see a Little Yellow Duck?” Let the child point to the duck, and then ask, “What does the duck say?” Quack once and see if the child will repeat what was said. Chances are good that they will.
5.    Don’t Over Do It – There comes a time to stop and most children will let you know. If the child’s enthusiasm or attention span has moved on let the reading session end. Remember you want to encourage your children to learn with these reading activities, not turn them off to the possibilities of the joys of discovery that reading and learning can bring. Don’t make reading time become a struggle. Let things happen in a natural flow. Before long most young children will look forward to their story time and will start insisting that you read to them more often than just your set time.

I know these 5 Tips for Parents of Preschool Aged Kids will help you with your Children’s Learning Activities as well as fostering family bonding time. This activity will create memories for both you and your child. Instilling the love of learning is a gift you can give your children that will last a lifetime. Creating and sharing this special time together is good for both the mind and the heart.

Let me know what you think and if you have other questions that might be able to assist you with when it comes to your child’s reading needs. Check back again for our future posts on educational learning. I look forward to hearing from you.

Poems, books, movies and even songs have been written on the subject of showing others your gratefulness for having them in your life. In fact it was a song that inspired this week’s Thankful Thursday post on Making a Declaration of Gratitude. As you can tell with the all of the gratitude posts submitted on Women’s Home Activities we have made a commitment to share with you our own sense of showing those we love and care about just how grateful we are for them and today’s post is no exception.

As much as we love to read, my husband and I also share an appreciation for music. We have dozens and dozens of cds, tapes and yes even old LP records we both have collected over the years. My husband plays guitar and has written many songs including one he wrote for our wedding. It is a beautiful love ballad and I am so thankful for his talent. It brings a tear to my eye to remember him playing that song and what the words meant to both of us on that special day. I am a blessed woman for sure.

I tell you all of this to illustrate the point of today’s message on gratitude. None of us know for sure how long we have on this precious Earth and I for one have learned that you can’t take time spent with those you love for granted. I am sure many of you have heard the song that prompted this post, although there may be some of you who haven’t. The song was written by Ronan Keating and performed by Garth Brooks who made it famous. I am talking about “If Tomorrow Never Comes”. This is a beautiful example of what I am talking about when declaring your gratitude for loved ones.

The chorus includes the following lyrics:

“If tomorrow never comes
Will she know how much I loved her
Did I try in every way to show her every day
That she’s my only one
And if my time on earth were through
And she must face this world without me
Is the love I gave her in the past
Gonna be enough to last
If tomorrow never comes”

Those heartfelt lyrics really got me thinking about how truly important it is to let those we care about know how grateful we are to have them in our lives. My husband and I are very dedicated to showing each other our love to one another on a daily basis. I know I am blessed with his love and commitment to me. This song also made me consider how often I let those outside my marriage know how much I love and appreciate them.

So in keeping with the spirit of the season of love, after all Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, I have come up with another family bonding activity for you all to give a try. Why not show each of your loved ones just what they mean to you by making a declaration of gratitude on a homemade Valentine.

You can simply cut a red heart out of construction paper and write a message to each person telling them just how grateful you are for them and what they mean to you. Sometimes we don’t realize just how much simple little notes of thankfulness can touch others around us. This is also setting a good example for our children in showing them how to declare their gratitude for those who make a difference in their lives. Spreading the wealth of gratefulness creates even tighter family bonds. It will surely aid in bringing families and friends closer together.

The song said it best when it stated:

“So tell that someone that you love

Just what you’re thinking of

If tomorrow never comes”…

Now what are you going to do about it? Me, I am off to find my scissors and red construction paper. Ta Ta for now!

I want to let you know about what to expect over the next several weeks of posts that I will be sharing with you here at Women’s Home Activities. These will be a series of informational tidbits on a subject very near and dear to my heart. I will be writing about Childrens Learning Activities because as those of you who have visited here before my background is in education. Educational Activities for kids has been in my blood for as long as I can remember.

For those of you new to this site I’ll fill you in with a little of my own personal history. I was a teacher of learning disabled students for over 20 years and even though I am not currently teaching my love for helping kids learn has never left me. I guess the old saying, “once a teacher; always a teacher”.

Our kids are grown but we have grandchildren, one school age, one pre-school age and one toddler. The “Grammie” and teacher in me can’t help but stay involved in the growing and learning process of these special blessings (our grandchildren). Thankfully their parents are keenly engrossed with promoting their children’s educational opportunities and not only invite me to assist them but encourage my input. I am grateful for the chance to be involved and to play an active roll in helping them with each of the childrens learning activities.

Our kids come to me a lot asking questions and looking for advice on promoting and encouraging our grandbabies to learn. So Grammie of course jumps on the charge and the hunt begins to find programs that will assist the children and even more involve their parents in educational activities for their kids at home.

I will be sharing with you all these learning activities and the programs that will help not only my own grandchildren but ones that will give you ideas for your own home educational activities to perform with your kids. Keep coming back as I am currently gathering the information now and will be releasing the first post soon.

As always I am filled with gratitude to be able to share my thoughts and ideas with you on the topic of children’s learning activities and all the grateful moments here on Women’s Home Activities. Blessings to you and yours and be on the lookout for these new and exciting posts.

As I was formulating this week’s Thankful Thursday post on Showing Gratitude Even For the Small Things I received an email notice from one of my own personal favorite websites to visit. I’ve mentioned this site before in a previous post and even have it listed on my blog roll to your right.

Christy Jordan’s Southern Plate is one of my favorite “foodie” sites to visit. However I don’t just go to this site for the recipes that she is so willing to share; although I love these recipes and prepare many of them for my own family. I like this site so much because Christy tells great stories too. Her down-home, true to life writing style inspires me. She is just as honest as can be and as we say in the South, “as country as cornbread”. That is a compliment by the way in case y’all are wondering. I was even privileged enough to have met her once when she spoke at a local college here just a month or so ago. What a wonderful lady she is!

You can tell that very post she makes comes straight from the heart. I admire that quality and even strive for it here.  I hope you all can see that when you are reading my posts. Christy reaches out and touches her audience giving them a warm feeling, a smile on their face and even an occasional tear in their eyes as they leave her site. I am very grateful for having found her site and for the inspiration she gives me when working on my own site. Thanks Christy!

Now I’m not telling you about Southern Plate because I want you to “jump ship” and head right over there right now. Although I do recommend that you check it out for yourself; I don’t think you will be disappointed. The reason I mentioned Christy and her site is as the old saying goes, “great minds think alike” which leads me into reason for starting today’s Thankful Thursday post in the first place.

In her post this week Christy talked about why interruptions are the key to success. I had already been thinking about this very subject and Christy help me pull my thoughts together and think about how grateful I am for the small things in life and the “interruptions”.

We all live very busy and hectic lives these days but it is so very important to remember that we should be grateful for all things that happen around us. Take for instance a phone call right in the middle of some project or other you might happen to be working on. Now you might not exactly feel grateful at the moment when that happens but what if you never got any calls? Think about how lonely that would feel.

I am thankful that my love ones call me because I know that means they care enough to find out what I am doing, need advice or an ear just to listen to them, have exciting news to tell and they want to relate this all to me. I actually feel very privileged knowing that they want to share with me the events in their lives. I probably don’t reach out enough myself to those I love and care about and I plan on remedying that as part of my goals for showing more gratitude this year.

Showing Gratitude Even For the Small Things

What are some other ways of showing gratitude for even the small things? Here’s a list that I’ve come up with:

• The cold winter days – while some may bemoan the fact that it is freezing outside lately, I am grateful for the chance to snuggle up on the couch with my sweet hubby and watch a movie together.

• Sunday brunches – I am thankful for sharing the time and yummy waffle brunch with our daughter and grandson that came to visit this past weekend. Times like these I treasure because they are all too fleeting and I don’t want to miss a moment of them.

• Thankful Thursdays – I am grateful to be given the chance to share with you a set time each week to let you know what I am thankful for and look forward to hearing from you what moments of gratitude are happening in your lives.

These are but a few things that are on my gratitude list currently. So now tell me, what are you Showing Gratitude for, even if it is a small thing? I’d really love to hear from you. As always, count your blessings. I know that I do!

I’ve spoken previously about how making a list helps you stay accountable when setting goals and keeping your resolutions. On today’s Thankful Thursday post I want to carry on those thoughts but I’d like to “take them up a notch or two”, like Emeril Lagasse says. Don’t y’all just love him? I might not try everything he makes but I sure like the way he delivers his message…BAM! But I digress; let me get back to the matter at hand.

I’ve been writing a lot about resolutions lately because I am working hard to fulfill my commitments that I’ve made. One of the most important vows I started at the top of my list is about showing more gratitude for all the blessings in my life. I’ve decided that in order to practice what I preach that I would share with you all the promise that I’ve made to myself by writing down what I am grateful for on a daily basis. That’s right; I am beginning to write a journal on gratitude. So now I just have to ask, Have You Started Your Gratitude Journal Yet?

Starting a Gratitude Journal

Starting a Gratitude Journal is really a very easy process. Breaking down the steps to building your gratitude journal writing as I see it goes something like this:

• Choose a Journal to write in
• Pick a time of day to write about what you are grateful for
• Take 5-10 a day totally devoted to writing your journal entry
• Write, write, write
• Reflect on what you’ve written
• Allow yourself to feel the joy of gratefulness you have just written about
• Smile and be grateful for these moments…carry on the process daily

Since the first step in the process is to choose a journal to begin writing in I thought that I would share with you a few examples of types of journals. Some of these journals go along with the book titles that I have shared with you in previous Thankful Thursday posts on gratitude. These types of journals you may find both inspirational and give you that little boost you need to get started writing as they will help guide you through the process.

Some journals are decorated nicely on the cover of the book and then leave you plenty of room to write your thoughts on the inside. The decision is totally up to you; it really comes down to a manner of preference.

Sampling of Gratitude Journals

Simple Abundance Journal of Gratitude

Jack Canfield’s Gratitude Journal

Treasured Words in Peach Journals

Serenity Journal

Inspirations Journal

Personally I have both types of journals, mainly because I like to write; I know, you can tell. I have been journaling for quite sometime now. I just never set a separate journal up that just dealt with gratitude. I won’t tell you the journal I chose because I think you need to decide which journal reflects your own personal choice. The main thing is that you get started writing what you are grateful for on a daily basis.

The next part of the process is about starting to write down your thankful thoughts. Some people may have a little trouble knowing just how to get started with this part. Let me just put your mind at ease by saying that these statements of gratitude do not have to be elaborate; writing something simple is just fine. Most importantly be yourself. You aren’t writing this to win any contest. This is your own private journal unless you choose to share it with others. Not a bad idea by the way, it may just be a great activity for your family bonding time. You set the example for other family members by starting your journal of gratitude first and have them follow suit!

Here is an example of a couple of basic gratitude journal entries:

1. I am grateful for the smell of fresh brewed coffee in the morning.
2. I am thankful that my children hug and kiss me before leaving for school.

In the beginning your journal of gratitude may only have a few things written in it. Try to starting with 3-5 things that you can say that you are grateful for today. This is a good starting point and you can build from there and remember to keep track of things you are grateful for every day.

You just may surprise yourself before long and begin running over to your journal more often throughout the day to jot down your most current feelings of thankfulness. That is something that I have learned about gratitude; the more you practice it, the more it breeds. Pretty soon you will find yourself being grateful for all kinds of things you may have taken for granted before you gained your “gratitude awareness” movement.

You know what else gratitude does? It attracts happiness and joy. When people around you begin to see the changes you are making, they too become inspired to feel and act the same. I know this because I am seeing it happen in my own life. The more I show thanks for even the “little” things around me, the more I notice others I am close with practicing acts of gratitude too. They smile more and are more loving, all because they are grateful for what is surrounding them.

What a wonderful and inspiring aspiration. So I’ll ask again, Have You Started Your Gratitude Journal Yet? There’s no time like the present to begin. Be thankful for the moment!