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9 Simple yet Effective Parenting Techniques for Raising Confident Toddlers

When parents are asked what they want most for their children, the common reply is that they want their children to be healthy, confident and happy. This is why, parents need to consider what is best for their children’s long-term well-being and development, in addition to their immediate outcomes.

So it is important to strike a balance between what’s best for children and what sort of effective parenting techniques will make them confident and happy as they are growing up. Fortunately for us, scientific studies indicate that being confident and happy is a learned behaviour. It is much like a muscle that we can help our children learn to exercise and build.

Fostering self-esteem by creating a supportive and positive environment at home, praising the efforts of children, encouraging curiosity, and acknowledging their achievements are all a part of the framework of effective parenting techniques. They provide the right stimulation that go a long way in raising a self-confident child.

1. Be confident & happy yourself

The first step to ensuring more confident and happier children depends upon how confident and happy parents themselves feel. For example, babies and infants who get used to the feeling of well-being are more likely to strive to keep this feeling as they get older. Can parents do the same?

Children tend to cope better with life’s setbacks because they are motivated to repair their sense of well-being, which is already integrated into their idea of self. This is why even when children fall down a lot, they are always back on their feet quickly and easily. Do parents have this level of tenacity?

Remember, a child’s concept of self is intimately tied up with the mother’s concept of herself, and a sort of mutual self-worth-building process goes on subconsciously. Extensive research has established that happy parents are statistically more likely to have happy children. So, what is it that you can do to be confident and become a happier you?

A proven way to achieve a state of happiness is to make time to enjoy the company of your friends and have fun. Hanging out with people who make you laugh and feel good about yourself will be critical. “Neuroscientists believe that hearing another person laugh triggers mirror neurons in a region of the brain that makes listeners feel as though they are actually laughing themselves.”

2. Don’t do for a child what she can do by herself

Doing things for small children begins quite innocuously at first. But in their eagerness, parents cannot but offer to help. Maybe it’s helping their child tie her shoelaces, pouring milk for her, or doing her math homework. This is not a part of raising a self-confident child.

Because pretty soon well-meaning parents have dug themselves into a deep hole – turned themselves into a 24×7 help hand by default. So much so that the child now expects her parent to help or worse, doesn’t believe that she can do a task by herself!

While assisting your child may sound like your job description, doing things for your child is more likely to make her further dependent on a parent. According to Adlerian psychology, “your primary task as a parent is to move your child from complete dependence to complete independence.” When you fail to do this, you will inhibit your child’s progress and make your life even harder for yourself. A dependent child is a demanding child.

“Children become irresponsible only when we fail to give them opportunities to take on responsibilities.” However, the nagging question persists, if we don’t do things for our child, how can we ensure that things will get done completely and efficiently? 

Effective parenting techniques demand that parents make time to teach their child to do things on her own. Don’t underestimate the effectiveness of this simple technique. It will feel like a bother at first, as it takes time to teach. It may even take several repetitions for a child to grasp how to button up her shirt or tie a shoelace. But it will be worth the effort.

The basic problem in raising a self-confident child, is parents don’t always set aside enough time to interact with their child and patiently teach her what they know. Children as young as two or three, for instance, need to be taught to do as much as possible for themselves — getting dressed, making their beds, and even being ready to help themselves to food in the refrigerator when they get hungry.

3. Teach your child how to build relationships

Having positive relationships with parents help children learn about the world – know that they’re loved, know who loves them, and what happens when they cry, laugh or are angry. Children thrive on having healthy, positive connections with others as well.

You have to realize that positive relationships don’t happen on their own. Like most things, it takes intention and practice to cultivate these critical skills and gain a lifetime of benefits. So how can parents help their child learn to create the conditions for supporting these vital connections?

Smart parenting tips tell parents to spend quality time and create a caring environment of trust and respect. By being in the moment parents can teach their children how to listen and understand what is going through the minds of others. Make others see that she cares about them, which is the basis for a strong relationship.

Parents need to resist the urge to give directions all the time. But have to keep an eye on their child, notice what their child is doing and encourage it without judging. Always tune in to your child’s real feelings. Your child will begin to imitate your actions and will try to implement them when interacting with her peers.

Being in the moment with your child is giving her the opportunity to learn how to take the lead. Watch your child and respond to what your child says or does. When your child expresses an opinion, use this conversation as a way to learn more about your child’s thoughts and feelings. Supporting your child’s ideas is a critical part of raising a self-confident child.

This doesn’t take a lot of effort, start by encouraging your child to perform small acts of kindness and build empathy. These acts not only builds essential skills and makes your child a better human being, but research shows it makes them happier.

4. Focus on effort, not perfection

Perfectionism is a double-edged sword. One edge of the sword drives children to be perfect, always pushing themselves to get higher grades, and aiming to become the best in sports. While the other edge of the sword is, perfectionists are seldom happy because no one can be perfect.

Pursuing perfectionism comes with a threat embedded at its centre. It makes children form negative notions, and grow up believing that if they are not perfect, their parents won’t love them. This threat arises because children wrongly connect perfection with self-esteem.

The price children end up paying for not being perfect is immense, its toll is truly destructive. The relentless pressure to become perfect often leads to depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and worse, substance abuse.

Smart parenting tips tell us to avoid pushing our children to be perfectionists. Instead, take it easy. Reward the effort a child makes, and not so much the end result. When we praise children for hard work, they’d want to keep engaging in that process. They do not deviate from the task of learning by a concern with how smart they might look.

5. Teaching your child to be an optimist

As a parent, you need to help your child work through problems, and empower her to change situations for the better. Show and share with your child what exactly you do to minimize your own negative self-talk. This, more than anything else will help your child initiate the process herself. and work towards achieving similar results.

For example, if you cooked something and it turned out slightly burnt, don’t blame yourself by saying, “I’m such a bad cook,”. Instead, be a little positive about it, “It’s not bad. I’m getting better.” Another example is whenever you find yourself in a negative frame of mind, stop. Pausing will help you change your self-talk, “What made me so happy, yesterday?” Your answer will help transform a negative mindset into a positive one. Try it!

A sense of hope is a wonderful feeling for your child to have. When your child makes a mistake, a positive attitude will help her realize that she is one step closer to figuring out a solution to a problem. An optimistic outlook will allow her to regain control.

Once your child learns to think and interpret the world optimistically, she will begin to look at the brighter side of life. Become less prone to depression when things don’t go as planned.

6. Help your child become emotionally intelligent

To understand how powerful emotions really are, try to think clearly when you are upset, angry or very excited. Most will find it impossible. This is why making sure your child has the emotional intelligence to deal with such feelings is important. Remember, emotional intelligence is a skill, not an inborn trait.

If your child cannot process her feelings and deal with them appropriately, she will tend to get ‘stuck’. Every time she finds herself facing a similar situation, she will respond with the same emotions. For example, if your child feels uncomfortable when asked to complete her math homework because she struggles with math, she will always connect math with those negative emotions.

So try not to ignore or deny how your child is feeling in the moment. Instead, help her by mirroring her emotions and showing her how she can label her feelings clearly. Give her the right words to describe them. Stay with her until her negative feelings pass. By giving the right words to describe the emotions your child is feeling, you are helping her to label the feelings she is having, this is how you can help her deal with her emotions intelligently. You could also draw a chart with faces that express emotions such as anger, sadness, and happiness… Get the child to point out her feelings by looking at the pictures. This is particularly helpful for children who are hesitant to talk about their feelings or express them freely.

Children who are emotionally intelligent, experience less stress when faced with challenges. They are aware of their feelings and have developed the vocabulary to name the feelings they are experiencing. They communicate positively, responding calmly and in a more mature way.

Relate to your child, help her identify what she is feeling and let her know that those feelings are okay, even when bad behaviour might not be so. Put your child on the path of developing empathy, as this will help her form deeper relationships with others.

When a child can imagine what it feels like to be in someone else’s shoes, she is more likely to respond better in situations which trigger uncomfortable feelings. Being able to label negative feelings and stay in control of emotions leads to happier children who feel safe and secure.

7. Helping your child develop happiness habits

Creating positive habits can help us move toward any goal we set for ourselves, whether it’s building stamina at the gym or learning how to stay calm and remain centred in tense situations. All it needs is practice, and when we do things regularly without having to think about it, it becomes a habit.

A specific habit that helps master an emotion and become happier can easily be cultivated. The “Hand on Heart” habit, for instance, is effective and really works. Before going to sleep, get your child to put one hand on her heart and the other on her tummy. Ask her to keep her eyes closed and to breathe deeply a couple of times, allow her breathing to deepen and feel how calm she becomes.

The important point is to help your child continuously practice this for at least three weeks. After this period, whenever your child puts her hands on her heart and tummy she will automatically begin to feel calm and peaceful. This habit doesn’t take a long time to form and can help your child to calm herself when she needs it most.  

The main problem is to remember to do habit-forming exercises on a daily basis. Saying “I’ll never forget to do that”, makes you even more likely to forget to do that again. Close to 40% of the actions we perform in a day are out of habit. You can overcome this autopilot mode of behaviour by replacing bad habits with good ones.

Here is a powerful routine to follow and build your happiness habits:

Get rid of distractions and put away temptations or hide them.

Tell your friends about what you want to do. Social pressure will ensure that you stick to what you promised.

Set one goal at a time. Too many goals become overwhelming. Achieve one happiness habit before adding another one to it.

Keep reinforcing. Forming good habits take time. There will be relapses, but that’s normal. So keep at it!

8. Teach your child self-discipline

From choosing to turn off the video game, to resisting an extra cookie, self-discipline is the key to help your child turn into a responsible adult. Self-discipline helps children delay gratification, resist unhealthy temptations, and learn to bear the discomfort of achieving long-term goals.

Effective discipline techniques help your child learn how to make healthy choices, where you as a parent have to be firm about your intention. This approach works best because it will help your child understand the reasons for having rules.

There is no point in telling your child, “do your homework” in a threatening tone of voice, instead give her a reason why she needs to. This is more likely to help your child rationalise and understand in her own mind that rules are good for her as they serve a purpose.

Try not to force a child to do something, as this doesn’t teach self-discipline. A simple experiment will demonstrate an effective way to teach self-discipline. For example, studies have proven that when a reward is covered up, 75% of the children were able to wait a full fifteen minutes for their second cookie. None of them was able to wait this long when the reward was visible.

Children who can resist temptation are more likely to have higher intelligence, predict school success, and have better social skills later on in their lives. This is because self-discipline facilitates learning and information processing. In addition, self-disciplined children are able to cope better with frustration and stress and tend to have a greater sense of social responsibility.

9. Having more time for play is better

Play strategy defines play as children and young people following their own ideas and interests, in their own way and for their own reasons. Findings of research showed that play enhanced early development by anything from 33% to 67%, it also increased the willingness to adjust, improve language skills and reduce social and emotional problems.

Playtime isn’t goofing off but is essential to helping your child grow and learn. Unstructured play helps children learn how to work in groups, share, negotiate, resolve conflicts, regulate emotions and behaviour, and be able to speak up for themselves. Unfortunately, these days, “maximizing instructional time and minimizing unstructured play time” has become the order of the day. Many of the reasons for reducing play time come down to a matter of convenience – less congestion and a quicker journey home. Needless to say, this benefits only adults, and not children.

Today, children spend less time playing both indoors and out. More importantly, researchers believe that this dramatic drop in unstructured playtime is in part responsible for slowing a child’s cognitive and emotional development.

This article originally published on MyGym Blogs

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Why Is Play Important For Your Child?

Play is the highest expression of human development in childhood for it alone is the free expression of what is in a child’s soul.” – Friedrich Froebel

Play-based learning is not only crucial to children’s creativity, it is also fundamental to their growth and well-being. Through play, parents will be able to unify all domains of a child’s development, including cognitive, social-emotional, language, and physical growth.

However, despite its many benefits, statistics show that the amount of time children get to engage in play is on the decline. Tightly structured family schedules, both parents working, fewer safe places for children to play, and high levels of time spent on digital devices are among the primary reasons why play takes a backseat.

We are all guilty of this as we find ourselves deeply engaged with the digital world and relentlessly stare at screens – gaming, texting, and watching favourite movies. This trait often results in a general decline in health and a reduction in physical activities that is necessary for the well-being of young children.

“The right to play is enshrined in the UN Convention and the importance of ensuring children have opportunities and spaces to play where they feel safe and can enjoy themselves”, is seen as a basic necessity.

Every child wants to learn

Your child is unique and what she can do rather than what she cannot, is the starting point for her to begin her learning. This is why participating in physical development in early childhood helps your child to learn by doing things independently and becoming more aware of her own learning. This is why each child deserves to be respected for who they really are, as well as feel valued and rewarded for their efforts.

Physical development in early childhood is actually a preparation for the next stage of learning. This is why childhood is an invaluable period where learning can truly begin and several important skills for relationship building can be acquired and nurtured.

Play helps a child to relate to her inner world of feelings, ideas and lived experiences and takes her to higher levels of thinking, feeling, imagining and creating. It is also a resource a child can draw upon in the future. All you really need to do is offer your child the freedom and guidance to enrich her play and put it in a learning context.

Through play and physical development in early childhood, children get to flex their minds and bodies, instead of just whiling away their time noting down rigid facts and figures. Play is also how children discover new ways of thinking, creating, working together and testing ideas. In effect, a child gets to practice skills she would be needing to thrive throughout her life.

So, the sooner parents bring learning through play into their daily routine at home, the sooner they’ll begin to enable their children to get set for a brighter tomorrow. Whatever that tomorrow may hold for them.

The power of play

A child comes into the world ready to experiment, and use what she discovers, this not only adapts the structure of her brain but also strengthens the skills she’d require to continue to remain engaged, and become a flexible learner throughout her lifetime.

When children play, they have fun, they experiment, and they don’t worry about getting things wrong. Play gives children a safe space that they need to pick up skills that’ll help them thrive today and as they grow up. This in essence is what the joy of learning actually means.

A child’s brain literally changes as she plays and learns. New neural networks are formed, connect, and grow stronger through active usage. It is in essence, all about learning through discovery.

Play sparks the brain’s reward centres, triggering a feel-good chemical called dopamine. Higher levels of dopamine are linked to aiding better memory and increasing attention spans, creativity, and mental flexibility.

Playful learning is meaningful when it links new experiences – such as watching a horse gallop in an open field – to familiar ones, like the horse in a child’s favourite picture book. Making these connections expands a child’s grasp of the world. And it lights up a number of different areas of the brain: motivation, sense-making, reflection and memory.

Holistic skills for a holistic world

Every day we carry out most physical actions without even thinking as these have become second nature to us. From working out how to get from point A to point B, to doing quick mental maths, to simply chatting with friends, colleagues and loved ones. The fact is we use more than one skill to achieve anything we want to do.

It’s the same when it comes to children. Take, for instance, a toddler learning to walk. As well as the physical strength of using her muscles in a new way, she would need the cognitive skills to coordinate her arms and legs, and acquire depth perception to navigate the path ahead of her. What is important to note is our world never stops changing, so the best thing to do is to prepare our children to navigate it efficiently. Play-based learning provides the right opportunities to be able to do just that — think, negotiate, adapt to new rules and try again when things don’t go to plan.

Physical skills:

Involving children in play-based learning activities from an early age ensures the growth of the brain and body as a child develops. It helps in a child’s overall development and growth. Children who are involved in physical activities develop better coordination, balance, and strength. They also learn to understand their own bodies and how they move in space. This can also help improve their self-esteem and confidence.

Physical activities and play-based learning also provide an opportunity for children to practice their gross motor skills such as running, jumping, and crawling, as well as fine motor skills such as manipulating small objects and using their fingers and hands with precision.

Play-based learning has a positive impact on a child’s mental health and well-being. Studies have shown that physical activity can reduce stress and anxiety, and improve mood and overall emotional well-being. Children who engage in physical play also have better sleep and are less likely to suffer from obesity and related health problems.

It is important for parents to encourage their child to participate in physical activities and play, both inside and outside of the home. This will help children to develop physically, mentally and emotionally, and lay the foundation for a healthy and active lifestyle in adulthood.

Language skills:

Language is one of the most important skills children learn as they play. When children play with others, they have the opportunity to practice their social skills, including sharing, cooperation, and negotiation, all of which are essential for later success in life.

Play-based learning also provides a safe and supportive environment for children to experiment with language, try out new words, and make mistakes without the fear of being judged or corrected. This is why it is so important for parents to engage with children during play and provide them with a positive and encouraging atmosphere.

Additionally, parents can support their child’s language development by reading to them, singing songs, and engaging in conversation. It’s also important for parents to respond to their child’s communication efforts, even if they are not fully formed sentences, as this reinforces their efforts and helps build their confidence in speaking and expressing their true feelings and thoughts.

Physical development in early childhood is a powerful tool for language learning and a child’s overall development, and it’s never too early to start engaging with your child and supporting their growth.

Cognitive skills:

Play-based learning is a natural and enjoyable way for children to develop their cognitive skills, and it should be encouraged as part of a well-rounded and balanced childhood. When learning is playful, children would want to stretch and push their imagination to its limits.

Play-based learning helps build a child’s cognitive abilities, including problem-solving, critical thinking, and decision-making skills. Additionally, play activities improve memory and concentration by challenging your child’s mind to recall information and stay focused for longer periods of time. Through play, children are able to explore their environment, experiment with new ideas, and practice different skills in a fun and engaging way.

Different types of play have different effects on a child’s cognitive development. For instance, imaginative play, when your child acts out scenarios and creates her own stories, you get to help build her creativity and imagination. Games that require strategies, such as board games or card games, can help to improve problem-solving and decision-making skills.

Since we don’t know what the future holds, flexible thinking is what will help children adapt to whatever new careers and life challenges the grown-up world has to offer them. Playing with your child is important as it also helps build a deeper relationship between you and your child.

Creative skills

Creativity is a vital aspect of our lives. It’s not just about artistic expression, but also about innovative thinking and problem-solving. Creativity helps us to approach challenges and tasks with a fresh perspective, and enables us to come up with unique solutions.

Developing creativity in your child will allow her to express herself in a manner that is true to who she truly is, and this can have a profound impact on her sense of identity and self-esteem. By engaging in creative activities, your child will be able to tap into her imagination, explore new ideas, and find fulfillment in the process.

In today’s rapidly changing world, the ability to think creatively is becoming increasingly important, as businesses and organizations look for individuals who can bring new and innovative solutions to the table.

Being creative can help your child to stand out, and leverage the world of opportunities, both personally and professionally. So, it’s never too late to start exploring and developing your child’s creative skills. Start right away!

Social skills

The process of interactions and building relationships during early childhood development is how children learn and develop conflict resolution skills, show empathy towards one another and understand how to effectively work together with their peers.

This is the reason why so many games are better when played with friends and siblings.When children play and work together to solve problems, they learn to think through new ideas, listen to others and even negotiate. Play allows children to explore and understand feelings, learn how to express them, and develop self-control.

Playing together helps build empathy by forcing children to think about their teammates. It’s also an essential skill for grown-up life as well. Being able to collaborate helps children improve their own mental health and well-being too.

Emotional skills

Play is a crucial aspect of children’s development, as it provides opportunities for them to learn valuable life skills. When children play, they have the chance to explore and experiment, to work through challenges, and to develop their emotional and social skills. Through play, they learn how to collaborate, compromise, and communicate with others, all of which are important skills that will serve them well as they grow and mature.

More importantly, losing in a game or project can help children build resilience and develop a growth mindset. They learn that setbacks are a natural part of the learning process and that they can overcome obstacles and continue to grow and improve. This experience helps them develop a sense of perseverance and determination, which will be useful to them in many other areas of their lives as well.

In other words, they come to know when their buddies feel happy, annoyed or upset. And, learn how to stay the course together. They also get to learn that play is not just about having fun and enjoying the moment. It’s about developing critical life skills that will help children succeed and thrive in the future.

This blog is originally published on MyGym Blogs

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All of us strive to become the kind of parents we’ve always wanted to be: Confident, Optimistic, and even Joyful. But we find ourselves confused and often frustrated by the seemingly endless challenges we experience when it comes to connecting, interacting and building deeper relationships with our children.

Why is it so? Why do we feel so inadequate? And feel so frustrated?

During early years, children feel a range of emotions, but often cannot express, interpret or process them. To help children make sense of this, and have the best effect, children need to be approached with empathy, supporting and guiding them to identify and deal with their emotions effectively.

Research shows that experiences and adult responses are the primary influencers of how children self-regulate and deal with their emotions. Meeting children’s emotional needs is critical, even when some of these are harder to understand or when they evoke strong feelings in us.

Being present in the moment

Every child is special and deserves to be treated as a full-fledged individual. And the only way this can happen is when parents realize the importance of being present for their children, despite the overwhelming pressures of modern-day living and the demands it makes on their time.

Right from the time a baby is born, she is already dealing with her own emotional reactions in response to what is impacting her. A baby expresses her frustration, hunger or pain by crying. As she continues to grow and learn, a child is further exposed to even more complex experiences that trigger unpredictable emotional reactions that are difficult to process and impossible to manage with them at first.

This is where you as a parent can be of great help. Being present with your child means you are not only physically present, but you are also acting as an emotional sounding board for your child.

Bonding in the present

This is what emotional maturity is all about, helping you to connect effectively with your child. While it is a skill a child will also develop as she grows, the ability to understand, express and cope with these emotions need to be nurtured throughout early childhood by parents.

The first step in this direction involves getting your child to accept her emotions and to start learning how to label them. For instance, you could say, “You look really thrilled”, after coming back from a visit to the zoo. Or when your child is upset, you could enquire, “You look sad, is something bothering you?”. Once your child learns to label her emotions, she will have the right words to describe how feels about them.

The advantages of teaching labelling skills and being present for your child are many. Suffice it to say, with free exchange and flow of emotions and information, communication becomes easier. The chances of misunderstanding are minimised. And the reasons for a child to act out her emotions to tell you how she is feeling disappear. Simple?

Other ways to be present for your child

Thoughts, feelings, actions. When you are with your child, never miss an opportunity to help replace negative thoughts with positive ones. This is also the best way to share with your child how thoughts, feelings and actions actually influence each other and show her how to help break the chain. Especially, after a traumatic event.

Sit down with her, make it a point to face her squarely and maintain eye contact. Tell her to take a deep breath, and repeat this exercise a couple of times. Once your child feels relaxed and comfortable, ask her about the event that made her feel so anxious or afraid.

Thoughts make feelings

Exploring her thoughts and feelings together is important. For instance, an event that was upsetting. This may have been a test your child prepared for and didn’t get the results she wanted. This made your child to conclude, “I am not good at anything. I’ll never get a star”.  She begins doubting her own abilities and begins to feel scared about future tests.

Feelings affect actions

When you ask your child what she did as a result of such thoughts, she might say that the next test is making her more anxious and is finding it more difficult to prepare for it. Thoughts about how bad she felt the last time keep coming back, making her put off studying altogether!

Actions influence thoughts

Ask your child: What if she thought about this event in a different way instead? Example: What if she decides to focus and prepare for the test? This way, instead of giving in to a situation, you are helping your child tackle the situation head-on. Get her to start thinking “I will keep trying until I do well. Earn my star!” This automatically sets in motion a chain of hope and positive thinking.

Remember, feeling let down or bad is completely normal. But, it’s important to remind your child that not every thought or feeling is necessarily true, even if it feels that way in the moment. It is always helpful to try and change the way we think about or react to events we encounter.

Go beyond just listening to your child

Express interest in what your child is saying. Whether it seems trivial or big should have any bearing. Listen with full attention, and observe her body language, actions, sounds and words carefully. By being present emotionally for your child, you are validating your child’s true feelings and your own responses.

It will be helpful to allow your child to talk freely about her feelings, like anger or wanting something so badly that she snatched it from her sibling’s hand. Ask what made her angry? Why didn’t she wait for her turn to come? Her answers will help you respond in a clear and positive way and allows you to set limits without sounding harsh.

Reflecting statements back to your child acknowledges and provides words to describe her feelings more accurately. Validating your child’s feelings is also extremely important because it tells your child that you care about how she feels deep inside.

Be an empathetic parent

To best meet and support your child’s emotions, be sympathetic, warm, accepting and curious. The more you lead with empathy, the more inspiring you become to your children.

As you are someone they trust, make it a point to overcome the barriers you may have of your own — busy schedules and daily office pressures. Commit to working tirelessly to help your children be happier, more resilient and more confident.

Be present to get your children through their daily adventures. Support self-expression throughout the day, through stories, painting and drawing, crafts, roleplay and general play. Encourage active physical movement and lots of opportunities for conversations.

As part of helping children to self-regulate and deal with emotions, it’s important to set expectations and boundaries for them. They need to understand the importance of following rules as it makes them more friendly, open and easy to play and talk to.

Finally, have fun. Help your children stay away from electronic devices. If that is not possible, minimize screentime, and remind your child about it on a daily basis. Get her to read books or paint or just doodle. If your child is very young, reading to her will expose her to a new world and stimulate her imagination.

Get her to be adventurous. Visit parks, galleries, and museums. Take her to concerts. Try out new ways to enjoy and turn these into unforgettable experiences. More importantly, be present while spending more time together. Remember, your time is hers to drive, and not the other way around!

This post originally published on MyGym Blogs

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Every child needs attention, affection, and reassurance from their parents. Learn More about parenting styles of both Present parents and Absent Parents.

The difference between being “present” parents and “absent” parents is like having a child grow up in broad daylight and leaving a child to fend for herself in the dark and alone. The outcome of the latter course of action is often disastrous as it severely impacts a child’s development and well-being.

The Good: Being “present” parents

The need for both parents’ involvement in children’s care and control means that they are able to constantly provide positive input, guidance and support as children grow and learn. There are other innumerable benefits of being “present” parents as well:

1. They can provide a nurturing and supportive environment for their child. Children thrive when they feel loved and supported, and “present” parents can help create this type of environment by being attentive, responsive, and involved in their child’s life.

2. Children are able to model positive behaviours and values taking cues from parents who are present. Children learn by watching and imitating the adults around them, and a “present” parent can provide a positive role model by showing their child how she needs to behave, communicate, and make good choices.

3. “Present” parents stay connected with their children and be aware of what is going on in their lives. By being present in a child’s life, parents can stay up-to-date on their activities, moods, and development, and can better understand the needs and how to support and fulfil those needs.

The Bad: Being “absent” parents

Being absent parents means being less involved in a child’s life, either because of work, other commitments, or a lack of interest. There are several other potential downsides to being absent parents:

1. A child may feel neglected or unloved. Every child needs attention, affection, and reassurance from their parents. When they are absent, a child will have no one to interact with or turn to for help or advice. This will eventually lead to feelings of sadness, and insecurity and lead to growing up with low self-esteem.

2. A child will be without the support and guidance of her parents when she needs it the most. And when unable to navigate through the challenges of growing up, a child will be exposed to traumatic experiences which can have a lifelong impact on the child.

Needless to say, without the guidance of parents, it will be impossible for a child to face and overcome serious behavioural issues. Imagine this worst-case scenario of a child growing up and not being in a position to build meaningful relationships at all!

3. Children learn how to regulate their emotions through interactions with their parents. Without parents to guide them, a child is literally at sea, struggling with self-regulation and self-control problems. A child will also be struggling to learn how to go about developing these critical skills.

“Absent” parents will not be able to provide this type of guidance, leading to problems where behaviours such as rampant impulsiveness thrive, frequent outbursts of anger prevail, and a total lack of self-control leads to negative reactions to situations – for instance, throwing a tantrum in the middle of an aisle at a food court, a shopping mall, an amusement park…this will be just the beginning of such dramatic instances.

The Ugly: The impact of “absent” parents on mental health

Parental care in early childhood is one of the most important factors and helps foster the cognitive and non-cognitive abilities of children. Studies show that the absence of parents when their children are still very young negatively impacts their development in health, daily behaviours, and academic performance when they are at school.

The negative effects of being absent parents can go beyond just the feelings of neglect or a lack of guidance. Children with absent parents are more likely to experience mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety, or low self-esteem.

These problems, amongst others, can have long-term consequences and impact a child’s ability to form healthy relationships and succeed in social interactions at school and at work.

Finding the right balance

Being “present” parents or “absent” parents is not an either/or proposition. It’s important for parents to find the right balance that works for an individual family unit, and to be aware of the potential impact of their parenting style on their child’s well-being.

While parents communicate directly through verbal and body language cues, it’s emotions that guide how these exchanges are received and interpreted, especially by young children. Remember, parents and children ultimately engage with each other through the use of their emotional vocabulary.

This not only helps fulfil individual emotional needs but also empathises with those needs even if parents are unable to support them ‘in’ the moment. Please note that children need constructive role models to provide the reference points that help them to engage with others in true empathy.

This is why “absent” parents deeply wound the emotional well-being of a child consciously and subconsciously. Growing up with emotionally unavailable parents invariably leads to the inability of young children to be emotionally present and empathise when they are interacting with others. [Source]

So when you are “absent” parents, it’s important to make the most of the time you do have with your child and find new ways to stay connected and supportive even when you are unable to be physically present for her.

When you are “present” parents, it’s important to make sure you are providing a nurturing and supportive environment, while also giving your child the independence and autonomy she needs to grow and learn.

This post was originally published on MyGym Blogs

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What are the different ways to be a more present parent not only physically present but also acts as an emotional sounding board for a child.

All of us strive to become the kind of parents we’ve always wanted to be: Confident, Optimistic, and even Joyful. But we find ourselves confused and often frustrated by the seemingly endless challenges we experience when it comes to connecting, interacting and building deeper relationships with our children.

Why is it so? Why do we feel so inadequate? And feel so frustrated?

During early years, children feel a range of emotions, but often cannot express, interpret or process them. To help children make sense of this, and have the best effect, children need to be approached with empathy, supporting and guiding them to identify and deal with their emotions effectively.

Research shows that experiences and adult responses are the primary influencers of how children self-regulate and deal with their emotions. Meeting children’s emotional needs is critical, even when some of these are harder to understand or when they evoke strong feelings in us.

Being present in the moment

Every child is special and deserves to be treated as a full-fledged individual. And the only way this can happen is when parents realize the importance of being present for their children, despite the overwhelming pressures of modern-day living and the demands it makes on their time.

Right from the time a baby is born, she is already dealing with her own emotional reactions in response to what is impacting her. A baby expresses her frustration, hunger or pain by crying. As she continues to grow and learn, a child is further exposed to even more complex experiences that trigger unpredictable emotional reactions that are difficult to process and impossible to manage with them at first.

This is where you as a parent can be of great help. Being present with your child means you are not only physically present, but you are also acting as an emotional sounding board for your child.

Bonding in the present

This is what emotional maturity is all about, helping you to connect effectively with your child. While it is a skill a child will also develop as she grows, the ability to understand, express and cope with these emotions need to be nurtured throughout early childhood by parents.

The first step in this direction involves getting your child to accept her emotions and to start learning how to label them. For instance, you could say, “You look really thrilled”, after coming back from a visit to the zoo. Or when your child is upset, you could enquire, “You look sad, is something bothering you?”. Once your child learns to label her emotions, she will have the right words to describe how feels about them.

The advantages of teaching labelling skills and being present for your child are many. Suffice it to say, with free exchange and flow of emotions and information, communication becomes easier. The chances of misunderstanding are minimised. And the reasons for a child to act out her emotions to tell you how she is feeling disappear. Simple?

Other ways to be present for your child

Thoughts, feelings, actions. When you are with your child, never miss an opportunity to help replace negative thoughts with positive ones. This is also the best way to share with your child how thoughts, feelings and actions actually influence each other and show her how to help break the chain. Especially, after a traumatic event.

Sit down with her, make it a point to face her squarely and maintain eye contact. Tell her to take a deep breath, and repeat this exercise a couple of times. Once your child feels relaxed and comfortable, ask her about the event that made her feel so anxious or afraid.

Thoughts make feelings

Exploring her thoughts and feelings together is important. For instance, an event that was upsetting. This may have been a test your child prepared for and didn’t get the results she wanted. This made your child to conclude, “I am not good at anything. I’ll never get a star”.  She begins doubting her own abilities and begins to feel scared about future tests.

Feelings affect actions

When you ask your child what she did as a result of such thoughts, she might say that the next test is making her more anxious and is finding it more difficult to prepare for it. Thoughts about how bad she felt the last time keep coming back, making her put off studying altogether!

Actions influence thoughts

Ask your child: What if she thought about this event in a different way instead? Example: What if she decides to focus and prepare for the test? This way, instead of giving in to a situation, you are helping your child tackle the situation head-on. Get her to start thinking “I will keep trying until I do well. Earn my star!” This automatically sets in motion a chain of hope and positive thinking.

Remember, feeling let down or bad is completely normal. But, it’s important to remind your child that not every thought or feeling is necessarily true, even if it feels that way in the moment. It is always helpful to try and change the way we think about or react to events we encounter.

Go beyond just listening to your child

Express interest in what your child is saying. Whether it seems trivial or big should have any bearing. Listen with full attention, and observe her body language, actions, sounds and words carefully. By being present emotionally for your child, you are validating your child’s true feelings and your own responses.

It will be helpful to allow your child to talk freely about her feelings, like anger or wanting something so badly that she snatched it from her sibling’s hand. Ask what made her angry? Why didn’t she wait for her turn to come? Her answers will help you respond in a clear and positive way and allows you to set limits without sounding harsh.

Reflecting statements back to your child acknowledges and provides words to describe her feelings more accurately. Validating your child’s feelings is also extremely important because it tells your child that you care about how she feels deep inside.

Be an empathetic parent

To best meet and support your child’s emotions, be sympathetic, warm, accepting and curious. The more you lead with empathy, the more inspiring you become to your children.

As you are someone they trust, make it a point to overcome the barriers you may have of your own — busy schedules and daily office pressures. Commit to working tirelessly to help your children be happier, more resilient and more confident.

Be present to get your children through their daily adventures. Support self-expression throughout the day, through stories, painting and drawing, crafts, roleplay and general play. Encourage active physical movement and lots of opportunities for conversations.

As part of helping children to self-regulate and deal with emotions, it’s important to set expectations and boundaries for them. They need to understand the importance of following rules as it makes them more friendly, open and easy to play and talk to.

Finally, have fun. Help your children stay away from electronic devices. If that is not possible, minimize screentime, and remind your child about it on a daily basis. Get her to read books or paint or just doodle. If your child is very young, reading to her will expose her to a new world and stimulate her imagination.

Get her to be adventurous. Visit parks, galleries, and museums. Take her to concerts. Try out new ways to enjoy and turn these into unforgettable experiences. More importantly, be present while spending more time together. Remember, your time is hers to drive, and not the other way around!

About My Gym & Abrakadoodle

My Gym aims to lay a firm foundation for personal, academic and future growth by involving your child in age-appropriate, structured and unstructured physical activities. Helping strengthen neural networks within the brain and developing a child’s thinking and problem-solving skills.

At Abrakadoodle, process art learning experiences inspire toddlers and young children to help articulate their thoughts and feelings. Children also discover visual art is the easiest way to relax and meditate. Doodling, scribbling, painting and drawing help children to think differently, be innovative, and explore new ways to grow their minds.

This blog post is originally posted on MyGym Blogs.

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Learn more about being involved in physical development activities creates healthy habits and has numerous benefits for the child.

“Children think better on their feet than on their seats.” — Mark Benden Professor, Texas A&M University

(Ergonomics, Sedentary Behaviour, Physical Activity, Occupational Health)

Active children learn better. It is also a fact that physical development activities not only improve a child’s overall health and fitness but also enhance a child’s mental development and well-being. This in turn has a positive effect on a child’s capability to learn and perform better when the time comes to join a formal school.

Being involved in physical development activities creates healthy habits and has numerous benefits for the child. It helps improve confidence and self-esteem and in developing healthier social, cognitive, and emotional skills. It is recommended that toddlers are involved in physical development activities on a daily basis for a minimum of 180 minutes.

But children don’t just learn all the skills they need just by playing. There are some skills that need to be taught to support an active healthy lifestyle. Active children tend to have better health and cognitive outcomes when compared to those who have been less active during their early years.

An increase in movement and physical activity creates healthy habits. What parents need to keep in mind, however, is the activities they shortlist should be interesting for a toddler to want to engage. The absence of activities for physical development in early childhood impacts their readiness for school, impairs social development and retards academic achievement.

Children tend to struggle because of poor gross and fine motor development. Both these skills are critical as they underpin hand-eye coordination and handwriting because this includes the larger muscles in the torso, shoulders and neck, as well as the finer group of muscles in the hands, wrist, and fingers.

Activities for physical development in early childhood improve gross motor control and enables children to sit up, sit still, sit cross-legged on the floor, and hold their heads up for extended periods of time, while fine motor control strengthens and supports extended periods of written work.

If parents can teach their children to move well, they help them develop the motivation they need to lay the foundations for a lifetime of physical activity and better mental health.

Create a safe space for play

Before you begin planning play activities for your toddler, you first need to create a safe environment where your child feels comfortable and is familiar with the surrounding. At this age, toddlers are in an exploratory stage and will head towards wherever their curiosity prompts them to go.

When you are setting up a play area, it pays to see the space from a toddler’s point of view. See the world they will play in from their height and eye level. It helps if you can first move through the play space by crawling or walking on your knees. This will help identify spaces that might interest and tempt your child’s curiosity.

It will be important to consider how you place the furniture in the play area. As toddlers are still developing their gross and fine motor skills, they may find it difficult to navigate narrow spaces. However, a large open space may encourage them to move fast, leading to trips and collisions. The ideal solution is to use furniture that has round edges, toy organizers and other larger furniture items to divide the space into smaller play areas.

It will be of great help to your toddler if you can organize play items where she can find them easily. This will encourage your child to explore independently. Use open bins where she can go through items and sort them out according to her interest and what she wants to play with.

Remember, by creating a play area with your toddler’s interests and actions in mind, you will allow her to explore and play in safe ways and add to her mental, physical and social development.

Focus on developing basic physical skills first

Amongst the most effective way to ensure your toddler takes part in physical development activities is by planning around the basic physical skills – for example, jumping, crawling, bending, galloping, skipping and catching.

Involvement in physical activities from a young age has various benefits which go beyond only physical development. It can help a child improve physically, mentally, socially and emotionally as well. Identify three or four skills you want to focus on first, and plan activities based on these skills on a daily basis. Remember to keep adding new physical activities to this list on a regular basis.

Make sure interactive physical development activities for infants involve multi-sensory activities that create an enabling environment for active learning experiences in a fun yet creative way. Such activities will encourage and help your little one to be unique, resilient, and confident. Engaging in physical development activities promotes bonding, teamwork and a love of learning from an early age.

By involving your child in new and exciting themes, you will encourage her to be ready to explore her emotions, interact with her peers, bond with her caregivers and lay the foundation for strong and independent learning.

Ideas for babies

Tummy time can be made more fun and interesting for babies by placing them on surfaces that have different textures, fluffy blankets, towels, and play mats. Spread toys of varying shapes, sizes, and colours around the baby. Place them just out of reach to encourage her to lift her head up, look around, try to reach, roll and belly crawl. Don’t forget that you can function as a piece of climbing equipment by lying down in front of her so that she has to climb over you to reach the toy she wants. Repetition of activities for a baby is good for her.

Ideas for toddlers

A toddler is always full of energy and sometimes you might find it difficult to keep pace with her. Your toddler may love things that she shouldn’t play with — crockery, TV remote, display shelves, plug points. (always make plug points childproof by covering the holes with tape). Keep her toys, readily available in the play area. Keep introducing a variety of safe household items for her to explore — wooden spoons, pots, and plastic cups. Remember to actively play ‘hide-and-seek’, and ‘peek-a-boo’ as these will always excite your child to interact actively.

Ideas for pre-schoolers

Think of combining learning with physical development activities. For example, counting while doing hopscotch or skipping, playing ‘statue’ to practice balancing. Pre-schoolers enjoy ball games that allow them to learn to bounce, roll, kick, and catch a ball. They can learn these skills by tossing a balloon into the air and giving it wack. Or practice dunking a paper ball into a wastepaper basket. Consider involving your pre-schooler in household chores; we may not enjoy it ourselves, but helping out with the dusting, laundry or sweeping the floor is another way to keep her moving.

Physical Activity for Mental Development

Toddlers don’t just magically learn all the skills they need just by playing. Parents can help create a play-based curriculum so their toddlers will have lots of opportunities to learn. Some skills can be taught, and these skills are also the ones that are needed to play many of the games and sports later on to support an active healthy lifestyle.

Boost brainpower & enhancing cognitive ability

When you engage in physical development activities, the flow of blood to the brain increases. This greater flow of oxygen-rich blood to the brain assists in the creation of new brain cells, which helps to improve overall brain performance. It enhances brain function and helps to focus, and improves memory and thinking skills, which are all major milestones in a child’s developmental progress.

Accelerate academic learning

A positive correlation exists between a child’s performance and her level of involvement in physical development activities. This demonstrates quite clearly that toddlers who regularly exercise develop a better ability to learn new things and are likely to perform better in school. Physical activity triggers the release of active brain proteins which help increase levels of concentration and decision-making. Motivating a child to learn more and apply what she learns in positive ways.

Stabilise moods & reduce anxiety

When a body is exercised, it releases chemicals called endorphins. These “feel good” hormones trigger a positive lift to the mood. Children experience reductions in stress and anxiety as these endorphins help to moderate the brain’s response to stress and elevate feelings. When a child’s overall health and fitness improve, it also boosts her self-esteem and gives a sense of accomplishment and positivity.

Develop and improve social skills

When your child takes part in physical development activities, it allows her to meet new people and create new relationships, enhancing your child’s language and communication skills. A different kind of bonding comes into play, giving children a sense of belonging and companionship, with the potential to decrease loneliness and improve their socialising skills.

Taking creativity to a higher plane

Focused physical development activities daily stimulate brain activity, sparking creative impulses and helping overcome mental blocks. Triggering bursts of creative thinking and enhancing imagination. Hence it makes sense to engage children in any form of physical activity, and then involve them in a creative activity, such as arts and crafts or creative writing.

Maintaining mental balance

It is worth noting that young children begin to establish behaviour patterns from an early age which has a bearing on their immediate and long-term mental health. Involving them in multi-sensory programs helps create an enabling environment for active learning experiences in a fun yet creative way. By engaging children in regular physical development activities. from an early age, you are ensuring that they maintain a healthy mind and healthy lifestyle in the future.

Nurture lifelong habits

Young children burn more calories through physical development activities than any other type of action and make a positive contribution to a wide range of health benefits. It also helps children to understand their bodies for what they can do rather than what they look like. This helps young children to have a better body image, self-confidence and a greater sense of achievement.

Physical development in early childhood is important to stay fit and healthy. Physical play gets your child moving, from making big movements like running and jumping to small movements like picking up a pencil or tying a shoelace.

Physical development in early childhood is the growth and development of both the brain and body and involves developing control of muscles and physical coordination. This control is used in a whole range of skills of daily functioning and encompasses a child’s ability to do a range of different tasks, such as speaking, making friends and understanding the world around them.

About My Gym

My Gym involves children in dynamic games, physical activity and movement that help in building neural networks in the brain. Customizing its enrichment programs and workshops to make it easier for children to acquire intellectual skills, navigate complex social situations, and nurture emotional development.

Please visit any of our centres to learn more about how My Gym supports “whole-child development” through bespoke physical activities. Choose a day when you will be relatively free and come over with your child in tow. Your child could be an infant (as young as 6 months), a toddler or a preschooler, age is not a bar for enrolling.

My Gym has perfected the art of developing physical activities to improve gross and fine motor skills and has specially designed programs that will lay a firm foundation for personal, academic and future growth by involving your child in age-appropriate structured and unstructured physical activities and developing thinking and problem-solving skills.

Please note: My Gym classrooms are thoroughly sanitized every day — the tables, the chairs, the children’s activity stations and everything else the child might touch is made safe and clean. Please wear a mask, wash your hands frequently, and practice social distancing.

This blog is originally posted on MyGym Blog.

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Find out how fine motor activities for preschoolers are designed to help little children in grasping, manipulating, and developing hand-eye coordination.

When we are nurturing and educating our little ones, our focus is usually on developing key areas such as forming words, recognizing shapes and colours, and counting numbers, while relegating the development of fine motor skills to a back seat, or worse overlooking them altogether.

This lapse can lead to irreparable damage or delay the development of fine motor skills in a child. The activities to develop fine motor skills help connect small muscles with the brain and the central nervous system, which in turn helps control the movement in areas such as the hands, fingers, lips, tongue and eyes and more.

Fine motor activities for preschoolers are designed to help little children in grasping, manipulating, and developing hand-eye coordination. Your baby, for instance, uses her fingers and thumbs to pick things up. She is able to feel and taste objects with her mouth and lips.

An older child will use her fine motor skills for actions like pulling up a zip or using a pair of scissors to cut paper. These important skills contribute to your child’s overall development and independence across all areas of growing up and improve her capacity to learn.

Research shows that activities to develop fine motor skills depend on the simultaneous development of gross motor skills as well and that a coordinated approach to the development of both skills is vital. Needless to say, little children need many opportunities to develop their fine motor skills alongside gross motor skills so they can become confident to explore the world around them.

Create the right play environment

You can help children develop motor skills by providing an environment, experiences and activities that encourage a coordinated approach to overall physical development. It is also essential to ensure that the activities to improve fine motor skills create rich and varied opportunities for large and small movements.

For babies this may involve providing materials that they can grasp, grip, squash, squeeze and poke such as play dough, paper, wooden spoons and stretchy fabric. For older children, provide activities that require hand movements such as climbing a monkey ladder, stirring a pot, drying washing on a line or exploring wet and dry sand.

Create interesting experiences which help your child practice motor skills. Involve her in weaving, fixing and making things, as these are all good examples of activities that promote the use of tools and help make small movements more accurate and precise. Learning finer manipulative control skills provides an ideal foundation for holding a pencil for drawing, mark-making and writing when the child is developmentally ready.

Make sure that your child is supported during the process of developing her fine and gross motor skills. When your child faces difficulties, encourage her by making changes to the materials she uses or modifying the activities. Ensure that you are constantly and gently giving praise and encouragement.

Establishing & building a framework

While fine & gross motor skills develop naturally from birth, you can aid and accelerate this process through constant practice and play. Participating in activities that involve lacing, stacking and squeezing will help to support this developmental area whilst children can also have fun.

Activities to improve fine motor skills are all about the small muscle movements in the fingers, hands and forearms. As children improve these, they will be able to perform controlled and stable movements as well as learn to do more things with their hands independently.

Involving your little girl in drawing and painting will be a fantastic way for her to learn to grip objects and make shapes on a page, this will later translate to helping her grip a pencil or a crayon correctly and form letters and numbers as well as to doodle and draw.

So begin with sensory explorations and focus on the development of your child’s strength, coordination and spatial awareness. Actively encourage your child to use paints and sponges, and indulge in finger painting. Your child will love to play using those oversized chalk pieces to draw pictures and make marks on concrete surfaces.

Creating a collage of images cut from magazines, and threading small items such as pasta or beads will also challenge your child to improve her grip and hand-eye coordination. Connecting dot-to-dot pictures and colouring them will help your child to become more confident with her pencil grip.

Repetitive movements and involvement with varied opportunities to explore and play with puzzles, engage in arts and crafts and practice using small tools, will increase control over small movements and improve precision.

Regular feedback and constant support will allow your child to develop proficiency, and gain control and confidence. This will not only facilitate the development of early literacy but will also help your child learn to fasten buttons, pull at Velcro, zip up and learn to dress up on her own sooner than you expect.

There are a number of other games and physical activities that are ideal for developing fine motor skills. Playing with pegs, building blocks, putting shapes into appropriate slots and clay modelling, lend themselves well to strengthening hand muscles and improving hand-eye coordination.

Helping develop fine motor skills at home

When it comes to fine motor skills, most of your child’s development will happen naturally as they learn and play. But you can help your child improve these skills by carefully choosing the right games and activities to improve fine motor skills.

For developing fine motor skills, you don’t have to do anything fancy or buy expensive toys. Most children can practice and improve their motor skills through play and normal everyday actions at home.

For instance, you can invite your child to help you in the kitchen and around the home. Help knead the dough, pour their own milk, set the table, and help clean up their room. You can also let them practice their fine motor skills by using tongs to turn a pancake, or practice putting rubber bands around a can.

Enjoy playing with dough for hours

Using play dough to play is such a useful activity for improving fine motor skills. You can make playdough at home in a range of colours and different scents can be added to create an excellent sensory experience for your child.

To create excitement and maintain interest, your child can mold play dough in time to music and get her to perform different actions such as pinching, rolling, flattening, and pressing each individual finger into the dough.

Playdough is a soft and flexible sculpting medium, perfect for mess-free creative play. Its granular texture also makes it ideal for sensory play, and whenever it shows signs of drying out, just spray a little water on it, start to knead, and it is ready to be used again and again!

Squeezing, squashing, rolling, and manipulating it to form shapes, strengthens the key muscles of little hands and fingers, and improves coordination required to perform precise movements that will be needed to help in gripping a pencil and writing.

Fishing for alphabet & numbers

This fishing for magnetic letters and numbers is a perfect learning activity that ensures maintaining high interest levels and improves focus. Your little one will have great fun singing, recognizing, and counting as she catches and fishes them out one by one.

Use different colored papers, it has to be thick enough to stay stiff and not curl or fold. Cut the paper into large squares. Write the alphabet A to Z and the numbers 0 to 9 on separate square pieces. Make sure they are big and easily seen on both sides of the card with a thick marker pen.

Attach a paper clip to each square and place all of them in a bowl. For the fishing rod, attach a piece of string with a magnet tied to one end of the stick. Your fishing game is almost ready. All that is now required is a player.

Rope in your child to join you and encourage her to use the fishing rod to catch letters and numbers. Ask her to find a specific letter or a number, this will encourage her to make focused and controlled movements.

You can decide which number or alphabet card to catch, and hunt for it before catching it. Catch the fish in order A to Z and 0 – 9. Say aloud the alphabet or the number that is caught. Make a word with the letter that was fished out. Or count the number using your fingers. Improvise as you go along to make the game exciting.

You could also use fishing to learn higher numbers or new words. The fishing rod is perfect for letting your little girl experiment with magnetic/non-magnetic objects too! You could talk about magnetism in simple terms and explain why magnets attract.

Turn into a super sorter

By teaching your child to sort small plastic balls by their colour, you are essentially making her learn to concentrate, improve dexterity, and ensure fine motor development. Sorting also helps your child learn to work with a tweezer when she is ready for it. But to be able to use a tweezer, your child has to master using tongs first.

Sorting balls or beads or anything using tongs teaches your child to be patient, as it takes balance to put all of the beads into separate bowls. This elementary exercise is also an indirect way to prepare your child for reading and writing from left to right. The larger bowl with all the balls inside is placed on the left-hand side and the other bowls are left on the right-hand side. Your child will use small tongs to shift the balls from left to right as well.

Tongs also help your child to develop the pincer grip which involves using her thumb and index finger together to grab things. The pincer grip is a must-have skill as it is needed to hold and write with a pencil.

Stringing the alphabet in a sequence

Parents celebrate their child’s mastery of the ABCs as an important milestone on the road to reading and writing. But, there’s much more to learning the alphabet than rendering it in a cute way.

Learning the alphabet is a rite of passage in a child’s literacy journey. This is why being consistent in your messaging about letters, how they sound and opportunities for repetition, and the right sequencing of the alphabet is important. Needless to say, letter by letter your child will get there.

This is where being able to string the alphabet correctly will be of great help. It combines lacing with literacy skills and encourages children to thread different letters and words. This activity also strengthens hand and wrist muscles as well as develops the pincer grip.

The letters are easy to handle and threading them correctly for the sake of a fine motor skills activity is another way to help a child get even more familiar with the alphabet.

Hanging the laundry out to dry

This imaginative wash line play is so simple to put together, yet so effective for a child to pretend. Remember, children often learn by watching, and imitating others perform an action while absorbing these experiences by engaging in pretend play.

All you will need is a piece of string (a skipping rope will do), a plastic basket with small clothes or dolls clothing, a few pegs and two chairs to tie the string between. The aim of the game is to let a child and her friends hang out all of the laundry on the line ‘to dry’.

Manipulating and pinching the pegs are great for strengthening finger muscles and working on those fine motor skills and also improve eye and hand coordination by holding the clothes at the same time as watching what they are doing with the pegs.

Digging for spaghetti worms

Through this play activity, you will combine fine motor skills with exploration. Find a large, shallow tray, cooked spaghetti, a plastic container, tongs and slightly moist earth.

Place the damp soil into the tray and bury the spaghetti worms. Give each child a pair of tongs and get them to start searching! Ask the children to carefully pick the worms, count them and place them in the container.

This activity combines sensory play, discovery and fine motor skills for a rich learning experience. Small tongs feature ergonomic depressions to guide the correct grip and will help develop fine motor control and build pencil holding skills and help in developing handwriting skills.

About My Gym

My Gym involves children in dynamic games, physical activity and movement that help in building neural networks in the brain. Customizing its enrichment programs and workshops to make it easier for children to acquire intellectual skills, navigate complex social situations, and nurture emotional development.

Please visit any of our centres to learn more about how My Gym supports “whole-child development” through bespoke activities to develop fine motor skills. Choose a day when you will be relatively free and come over with your child in tow. Your child could be an infant (as young as 6 months), a toddler or a preschooler, age is not a bar for enrolling.

My Gym has perfected the art of developing activities to improve fine motor skills and has specially designed programs that will lay a firm foundation for personal, academic and future growth by involving your child in age-appropriate structured and unstructured physical activities and developing thinking and problem-solving skills.

Please note: My Gym classrooms are thoroughly sanitized every day — the tables, the chairs, the children’s activity stations and everything else the child might touch is made safe and clean. Please wear a mask, wash your hands frequently, and practice social distancing.

This post originally publish at My Gym Blog

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Learn more about how enrichment classes make learning fun and also help in building a character.

Education is not just about scoring an ‘A’ in English or maths or the sciences — it’s also about being involved in activities that enhance your child’s character by exposing her to new learning opportunities and experiences. Take your own experiences for example. What is it that you remember most fondly from your school days? Is it mastering math or being a whiz at general knowledge, or are your fond memories all about that unforgettable zoo excursion you and granny went on? Or was it that particular incident when you stood up to the class bully and showed him his place using your kung-fu skills?

Such real-time, real-life experiences are known as enrichment and are an important part of a child’s education as well. As a matter of fact, enrichment basically means making an activity more meaningful, rewarding and memorable. Creating new experiences, expanding your child’s learning, and making life more fun.

Enrichment classes also help build what we call character. Character is a set of attitudes, skills and behaviours one acquires through experiences – such as self-control, confidence, social skills, motivation, and resilience. These social and emotional skills play a vital role in helping a child respond correctly to difficult situations, work well with others, build relationships, and manage emotions. All are fundamental to success later in school and beyond.

Enrichment classes during early years matters

Enrichment programs set the foundation for the development of critical social and emotional knowledge and skills. They also teach children leadership as well as group skills. Furthermore, it is a natural tool that children can use to build their resilience and coping skills.

Conception to age 2

With adequate stimulation, a child’s brain forms neural connections at a pace of at least 1 million per second. These connections happen even faster in a loving and caring environment and contribute to positive socio-emotional development.

3 to 5 years

Often referred to as the “preschool period”. Children’s language, socio-emotional and cognitive skills are rapidly expanding. During this period, the stimulation and learning that come from play, reading, singing and interacting with peers and caring adults at home and in quality early education settings are essential. Play in the preschool years enables children to explore the world around them, develop their imagination and trigger creativity.

6 to 8 years

Play-based learning continues to be critical even when in primary school. However, play is relegated to a back seat as the focus shifts to academics. Yet, in this period, active, play-based learning approaches can transform the educational experiences of children and strengthen learning motivation and outcomes.

Why enrichment is such a big deal?

Children find enrichment activities exciting and provides them with a well-rounded, culturally rich means of education that enhances their learning. Enrichment gives children opportunities to try new and a variety of engaging activities that may not strictly fit into any curriculum. It helps develop their resilience and the motivation to pursue higher goals. It teaches life skills and inculcates an appreciation for teamwork and a commitment towards social responsibility.

Increased sense of the self

Many people who are bored don’t understand why they are bored. They often question why they aren’t as engaged as some of the people they know. They may even worry that they have some type of issue. Similar is the case when it comes to young children, except in this case, it is their parents who are concerned and worried.

To put it in a nutshell, enrichment programs help children understand why they are feeling so under-stimulated and offer an effective solution to overcome the feeling of being disengaged. These programs relieve any anxiety about feeling different from others while helping improve confidence once a child is able to see her true potential.

Improving study skills

Enrichment programs teach study skills in the right way, including time management and test preparation. They also promote and prepare young children to acquire self-directed learning skills. These basic study skills help toddlers as they grow up and move into kindergarten as class material becomes more advanced.

Increasing interest In learning

When students are disengaged, their passion and interest in learning decrease. They don’t get excited about involving themselves in play or going out and may even “switch off.” Enrichment programs work to re-ignite a child’s interest and ensure deeper engagement with the material they are handling.

Raising motivation

Young children are more motivated to succeed when they feel challenged. With an enrichment program, parents get to present their young children with concepts that both challenge and engage them, resulting in higher motivation overall.

Bespoke learning

Whether parents like it or not, young children learn at their own pace and resist being pushed. They feel more motivated to learn when there is less pressure. With enrichment programs, you as a parent can customize play sessions to suit a child’s own pace.

Learning through play

Play is one of the most important ways in which young children gain essential knowledge and skills. For this reason, play opportunities and environments that promote play, exploration and hands-on learning are at the core of effective enrichment programs.

Play is meaningful and children play to make sense of the world around them and to find meaning in an experience by connecting it to something already known. Through play, children express and expand their understanding of their experiences.

Play and learning are not static. Children play to practice skills and discover new challenges, leading to deeper understanding and further learning. It also allows children to communicate ideas, understand others through social interaction, and pave the way to build deeper and more powerful relationships.

Children are ‘hands-on’ learners and acquire knowledge through playful interaction with objects and people. For example, by playing with geometric blocks they grasp the concept that two squares can form a rectangle and two triangles can form a square.

Making enrichment happen at home

You probably already do a lot of enrichment activities at home without realising it. Reading together, roleplay games, singing, dancing, painting and drawing all count, and work to make a big difference in the attitude and behaviour of young children.

Interacting and helping your child find answers to her many questions is a form of enrichment. Having patience when dealing with her relentless questioning will feed her curiosity and leads to more questions. Keep your cool and answer as best as you can.

When unable to answer, find someone who can. This will reinforce your child’s confidence in you and makes her understand that she can come to you whenever there is a question that needs an answer.

The idea is to help your child expand her knowledge base and widen the resources that she can access. Participating in enrichment activities is a great way and is an easy path to meet other children and learn from each other.

In early childhood, learning takes place at a phenomenal speed. Apart from this, learning through play builds lifelong learners and supports a child’s overall development.

Don’t wait, start right away!

“Research over the past 30 years has taught us that the most important period of human development is from birth to eight years old. During these years, the development of cognitive skills, emotional well-being, social competence and sound physical and mental health builds a strong foundation for success well into the adult years.”  [Source]

Remember, young children do not only learn in formal settings. The home environment is where young children spend the largest part of their early lives, interacting with parents, siblings, extended family members, and neighbours. These interactions and relationships have a significant influence over how they understand and experience the world around them.

Home environments provide excellent opportunities to promote learning in the early years. Primary caregivers, such as parents, are the biggest supporters of children’s learning, and therefore have an important role in creating the space for learning. Empower them to take an active role in shaping children’s learning and development, as well as to facilitate playful learning at home creating an abundance in day-to-day experiences.

Create a sensory board for your baby

A sensory board is the most effective way to support your child’s sensory experiences and gives you many opportunities to teach. It is a fun way to explore a range of textures and sensations and to stimulate a child’s sense of sight, sound, smell and touch.

Sensory boards encourage natural curiosity and investigative skills and help children to develop their fine motor skills as they coordinate their movements to feel the different materials. Babies and toddlers develop preferences as to which textures they like and dislike. A sensory board can also help children learn new words too as you support them to describe the different things they are feeling.

It is easy to create your own sensory board. All you require is thick cardboard, and items that would intrigue a toddler, buttons, switches, an acrylic mirror, shells, a swatch of silk cloth, leather — anything that might be engaging for a baby and beyond.

Stick all of them in rows with double-sided tape to the cardboard and hang the board close to the ground so that it can be easily reached by your sitting baby. Your sensory board is now ready for your baby!

Help your baby develop fine motor skills

Babies are busy developing their fine motor skills even from just a few months old. It will be great if you can participate and create more opportunities for your baby to practise her fine motor skills throughout the day!

Some great times to work on fine motor skills is when your child is sitting in her highchair or during bath time. When babies begin to eat regular food, give them small finger foods. Watch her pick up the food with her small fingers and lift it up and put the food into her mouth. Developing the fine motor movement of her hand and improving her hand-eye coordination skills.

When in the bath, allow your baby to fill empty containers and spill water. This will encourage her to move her hands and to explore things floating around her. Or blow bubbles and let her try and catch or pop them will also encourage them to use both their hands.

For small infants who aren’t ready for these types of activities, tummy time is the best time to encourage your baby to use her hands. Stacking blocks, pushing blocks through holes, using rattles and noisy toys, and encouraging her to pick up and hold things in her hands.

Hopping on to coloured circles

Gross motor activities for toddlers are generally very simple to create and don’t require a lot of prep time. Here is one that combines learning with movement and helps toddlers retain what they learn. Draw large coloured circles on the pavement with chalk and fill them in. And the game is ready for your toddler.

The most effective way to involve your toddler in this colour recognition game is to start playing it yourself. Hop onto one colour circle and call out the colour, do it a couple of times and your toddler will almost always want to join in the fun!

Shape activity for toddlers

first art activity because it uses motion, and toddlers love to move. The tube fits easily in the palm of their hands, too.

It also helps keep some distance between the paint and the hands. Some toddlers might not like the queasy feel of the paint. Your goal is to make your toddler feel comfortable. There are times when other toddlers use cardboard tubes as telescopes. Give credit to their imaginations!

Threading a pasta necklace

This is one of those activities that your toddler will love because she can make it all by herself too! And the necklaces are so easy to make. All you need to do is thread the string through each pasta piece. Show your child how this is done.

You will also love making it together with your child. While making these gorgeous pieces, talk about the colours, teach her about patterning and ask to whom she wants to give the necklace to. This activity extends to developing her fine motor skills as well.

Learning numbers by filling them

Number filling activity is an excellent idea for your toddler to practise. While this activity is super easy to prepare, it will keep your toddler busy and learning at the same time! All you need is a piece of paper, coloured markers, ear buds and washable paint. You can set it up in under five minutes! You first outline the numbers zero to nine using the marker and then ask your child to fill in the outlined number using the earbud dipped in a colour. As she fills the outline, get her to say the number aloud. Remember to use a different colour for each number she fills. Filling in colours is fun and an excellent way to improve pre-writing skills, and helps your child familiarize with numbers, and colours at the same time!

Using Post it to learn the Alphabet

Bear in mind that children get to learn the alphabet at different ages. Some will learn the alphabet by the time they are at two years old. Some others pick them up when they are attending a preschool. While still some others will get down to it around the end of kindergarten.

No need to fret though. Because there’s no better way to recognize and memorize the ABCs than by playing with the ABCs, and doing this at home! Here is how you can begin.

Roll out a long sheet of wax paper and cut it. Tape the sheet onto the dining room wall, and start writing the alphabet A to Z in one long row in all-caps. Spacing each letter leaving one Post-It note wide. Here’s why.

Children often see the alphabet all broken up, be it in puzzles or books, and rarely do they see the alphabet written in one long line. Seeing them in one long line will help your child get the sequencing right without getting confused.

Then on 26 separate Post-It Note sheets, write the alphabet in capital letters, and stick them on your dining room table, mix them up. Get your little girl ready to go and match each Post-It with an alphabet written on it to the sheet of wax paper stuck on the wall. It will not only be a challenge that will be a little intriguing but also full of fun for both of you!

Alphabet posting is a tested and proven way for your child to learn the alphabet without pressure. Not ready for letters yet? No worries! Try matching shapes (drawn on the Post-Its) to shapes drawn on the wax paper. Matching practice is awesome, no matter what.

Activities like this are great because it involves a little gross motor and fine motor element to the learning: running back and forth from paper to table is a perfect moving activity for your child. And manipulating the Post-It Notes takes some intricate hand and finger movements.

About My Gym

My Gym involves children in dynamic games, physical activity and movement that help in building neural networks in the brain. Customizing its enrichment programs and workshops to make it easier for children to acquire intellectual skills, navigate complex social situations, and nurture emotional development.

Please visit any of our centres to learn more about how My Gym supports “whole-child development” through bespoke enrichment classes. Choose a day when you will be relatively free and come over with your child in tow. Your child could be an infant (as young as 6 months), a toddler or a preschooler, age is not a bar for enrolling.

My Gym has specially designed enrichment programs that lay a firm foundation for personal, academic and future growth by involving your child in age-appropriate structured and unstructured physical activities and developing thinking and problem-solving skills.

This post originally publish at My Gym Blog

[mygym123stuff]

Learn more about different ways to promote cognitive development in Toddlers

Our sense of individuality begins to form during infancy, a time that is rich with activity and experiences. Using actions, infants give structure, order, permanence, and predictability to their experiences and begin to paint their versions of reality. They are active, self-motivated learners.

As a matter of fact, what you witness in the crib is the greatest mind that has ever existed, the most powerful learning mechanism in the universe slowly taking shape. A mind learning to make sense of an experience. You will see an infant indulging in cognitive development activities and creating her own reality — bringing meaning to each event and each action. You will also see a personality emerging, If parents watch carefully, they will witness a mental state that is constantly changing, becoming more complex, yet maintaining continuity with its past at the same time. To watch infants engage in this process is to watch growth itself.

What are cognitive skills?

When parents think about cognitive development activities, they usually mean learning academic skills and building a knowledge base. This understanding limits them to know about colours, recognizing shapes, learning the alphabet and the “3Rs” – reading, writing and arithmetic.

But what cognitive development activities really means is a focus on the way changes occur within the brain and relate to how a toddler thinks and learns to grow. Toddlers and young children do not just know less than adults do, there are major differences in the very way they think about and understand their experiences.

Remember, cognitive skills are not the same as the subjects taught in a classroom at school. Academics comprise having knowledge about different subjects like math, history, and science.

This is why most of us are often surprised to find out that there is a clear distinction between what is meant by cognitive and academic skills. Actually, this difference is really huge.

Cognitive skills are inherent mental capabilities of the brain that are needed to successfully learn academic subjects. These underlying cognitive skills must function well for a child to efficiently and easily read, think, prioritize, understand, plan, remember, and solve problems.

Cognitive development in early childhood helps solve a persistent learning challenge by strengthening the child’s basic processing or cognitive skill set. When these individual mental skills are weak, academic learning turns into a stressful, anxiety-inducing struggle. When cognitive skills are strong, academic learning becomes a breeze — fast, easy, efficient, and enjoyable!

Cognitive development in early childhood may seem mysterious because it is not easy to see or recognize, but without them, a child will not be able to process the information she receives from sources around her through her sense of sound, touch, sight, taste, and smell.

Learn to foster cognitive development early

As a parent, it is important to focus on nurturing your child’s cognitive development as soon as she is born, because doing so lays the foundation for your child’s success later in life. Research shows that children who are able to distinguish sounds at an early age are better at acquiring the skills for learning to read by the time they are three and four years of age.

The reason why participating in cognitive development activities in early childhood is so critical is that it helps lay a solid foundation for learning. The brain is at its most receptive phase during the first five years of a child’s life, which leads to early experiences having a bigger impact on the development of neurological connections and improving brain functioning.

Improving your child’s cognitive development depends on actively engaging in quality interactions every day. She learns more if parents and adults make a purposeful effort to help her. So speak with your baby as much and as often as you can. Do this by pointing at and naming commonly used objects, as well as singing and reading to your baby. The more you talk, the more she will learn new words and understand what every word means.

Most of the cognitive skills are learned. This means cognitive skills can be improved, strengthened, and enhanced through practice and the right training, regardless of a child’s age. Cognitive development in children involves the building of learning skills, such as attention, memory and thinking.

These crucial skills enable children to process sensory information and eventually lead to learning to evaluate, analyze, remember, make comparisons and understand cause and effect. Strong cognitive skills are critically important to success in life!

Work on increasing attention spans

When your child learns to pay attention, it enables her to concentrate on one task or conversation for an extended period of time. Learning to pay attention is an important cognitive skill that your child will use effortlessly when it comes to all her future learning.

Children below five years of age are likely to have shorter attention spans. By the time a child reaches eight years of age, she should have an increased ability to focus on one thing for long periods and needs to be more adept at ignoring distractions to complete tasks.

Parents can help a child develop her ability to focus by pointing out things that seem important or interesting and then asking the child to comment on her observations. For instance, when visiting the zoo, ask pointed questions such as, ”which animal is your favourite?” or ”Why did you like that specific animal?” Questions like these help the child pay closer attention to what she is exposed to and also challenge her ability to choose specific words to describe her thoughts.

Helping build a strong memory

Memory is an important cognitive skill that equips a child to retain what she has learned and experienced and therefore helps build a future base of knowledge. Children who are less than five years old find it difficult to retain in their memory what they may have learned. But, as a child grows up and progresses into the school years, her long-term memory increases and allows the child to progressively build on the previous knowledge.

A useful technique for facilitating memory in young children is by teaching content with rhymes or catchy sayings or putting content to music. For example, a common way to teach children the months of the year is through a rhyme: ‘Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November. All the rest have thirty-one, Excepting February alone, And that has twenty-eight days clear, And twenty-nine in each leap year.’

Teaching to think clearly & differently

Thinking clearly enables a child to find the right reasons to sort tasks and find the right solutions easily and quickly. This cognitive skill helps a child to know whether she’s accomplishing what she set out to do or whether she needs to ask for help.

For example, when a child reads a story, thinking skills will allow her to determine for herself whether she understands what she’s reading or repeat it by going over what she is reading all over again. Look and find additional clues, observe more closely the pictures that are made available, or ask for help to grasp the intended meaning of the passage she is reading.

Studies have shown that young children who were not provided with enough mental stimulation were prone to negative behaviour issues, possessed lower self-esteem, and experienced higher levels of insecurities that could last well beyond childhood.

Over-reliance on computers and handheld devices is the main cause of children’s failure to acquire language and social skills in the way that they normally would. Many parents assume that playing “educational” games or watching “educational” TV for hours every day helps to develop children’s cognitive skills.

Research has clearly shown that interaction with peers, parents, and other caregivers over the first five years is far more educational and vital for cognitive development.

Activities to help cognitive development in toddlers

Throughout the history of mankind, babies were thought of as passive beings. They were often seen simply as miniature versions of adults. It wasn’t until psychologists and modern thinkers proposed that children actually think differently than adults do. This is what made parents view early childhood as a unique period of growth and development.

The remarkable cognitive skills of infants and very young children indicate that babies are in fact born to learn. Even newborn infants are actively thinking, and exploring the world around them, absorbing information and learning new things about themselves and the people and the world around them.

While the brain can be influenced at any age, it is most impressionable in the first five years of an infant’s life. You will be surprised at how easy it really is to help boost your baby’s natural cognitive skills. Incorporating simple yet effective cognitive development games into your daily routine can help your child in the areas of memory, focus, and concentration, and enhance the power of their senses.

Encourage your child to sing songs:

It will be great to get into the habit of playing your baby’s favourite songs and music in the house and when out on a drive in the car. You will be pleasantly surprised when your child begins to sing along on her own! This is an effective way to develop memory and word recognition.

Practise counting throughout the day:

Do this when at home and when you are out in the park with your child. For example, count the number of clothes in your child’s wardrobe or the number of slides in the playground. Pretty soon, you could have your baby begin counting everything with you.

Learning to recognize alphabets:

Reading alphabet books and playing with alphabet puzzles will help your child recognise letters. Create your own alphabet puzzle by cutting out separate pieces of letters from the cardboard and colouring them in vibrant colours. Jumble them up and stick them up on different surfaces around your home.

Walk your child through the alphabet, encouraging her to look around the house and discover the next letter. Help your child tape each alphabet on the wall in the correct order. Then walk her through the letters, calling out each alphabet aloud together. Make it fun by turning this activity into a game.

Identify shapes & colours:

When playing in the living room, you can remark, “That is a round, green ball,” or when approaching a stop sign say “That sign is an octagon.” Then describe what an octagon is in simple terms, an octagon has eight sides. ” You follow this up by asking your child to explain each shape to you.

Picking up toys exercise:

After every play routine, ask your child “Which toy should we pick up first when we clean up the living room?” Or explain “why should your child come down the stairway slowly.” These are simple but effective ways to help your child learn to think for herself. You may help your child learn how to solve problems and better understand the surroundings by asking her questions.

Improve decision making:

Ask your child when she is about to dress up, “Would you prefer to wear a pink or a blue skirt?” Or whenever the opportunity arises, ask, “Would she want to pack a cheese sandwich and a chocolate milkshake in her picnic box?” Asking questions go a long way in making your child become confident and make the right decisions.

Playing with common household objects:

Encourage your child to match different-sized spoons, set a table, or match table mats. Or play a fun game, have her look in the mirror and point out her nose, mouth, eyes, and other facial features. saying it aloud and describing what each one does!

Offer hands-on experiences:

Indulge in your child’s interests, and take her out to a local museum, art gallery, or vegetable market. While you’re exploring, ask them questions and listen to their replies. These interactions will not only increase bonding opportunities but will expose you to valuable learning experiences.

About My Gym

My Gym involves children in dynamic games, physical activity and movement that help in building neural networks in the brain. Making it easier for children to acquire intellectual skills, navigate complex social situations, and nurture emotional development.

To find out more about how My Gym supports “whole-child development” through cognitive development games, please visit any of our centres. Choose a day when you will be relatively free and come over with your child in tow. Your child could be an infant (as young as 6 months), a toddler, or a preschooler, age is not a bar for enrolling.

My Gym has specially designed whole-child development programs that lay a firm foundation for personal, academic, and future growth by involving your child in age-appropriate structured and unstructured physical activities and developing thinking and problem-solving skills.

Please note: My Gym classrooms are thoroughly sanitized every day — the tables, the chairs, the children’s activity stations and everything else the child might touch is made safe and clean. Please wear a mask, wash your hands frequently, and practice social distancing.

This post originally publish at My Gym Blog

[mygym123stuff]

Learn more about how you can teach life skills to young children through fun and educational preschool games.

The preschool period is a time of rapid growth along developmental measures, not the least of which is a child’s thinking abilities, and cognition. Ideas for preschool games are much more than just fun for children. They help a child bond with her parents and siblings, expend excess energy, help reduce anxiety and pave the way for acquiring social skills to face life.

Life skills are a set of basic skills, which are acquired through learning and play or acquired through direct life experiences that help young children to effectively handle issues. It is through play young children get to also learn about the world they live in, about themselves and about each other.

The positive effects of play on preschoolers are far-reaching. It impacts young children’s mental, and physical activities and lays the foundation for an emotional state that is most conducive to encouraging and fostering the learning brain.

All that your child needs for learning through play is the time, space and freedom to explore games and ideas that interest her the most. So no matter what it looks like when children play, they learn.

Games nurture respect, trust & love

Children develop trust when their needs are met positively and consistently. Being sensitive and responsive to children strengthens this relationship and influences their development. To put it in a nutshell, Every child needs to be loved in order to thrive.

This is why it is important for new moms & dads to learn how their child communicates or signals what she needs and wants. Start by observing how your child communicates when she is hungry, tired or excited. Respond to these needs quickly and with care.

Remember, learning and responding to your child’s signals is like learning to dance with a new partner. Your baby leads with expressions, movements and sounds. You as a parent watches and respond. Together, a caring bond is created and matures into lifelong experiences of sharing, cherishing and learning.

Games build imagination & creativity

Free play in early childhood contributes to the development of children’s creative thinking and problem-solving skills which call for divergent thinking including flexibility, fluency, and originality. Learning through play provides children with opportunities to develop their creative thinking skills, such as allowing them to view situations from different perspectives, thinking of alternate strategies to resolve a problem, and practising thinking in different ways.

Through free play in early childhood, children exercise their brains and stretch their imaginations. By creating make-believe games or getting lost in pretend worlds, young children act out different solutions while boosting their confidence. They also make up their own rules and learn how to follow or adapt these rules as they see fit. These skills come in handy when navigating life and establishing relationships with peers and adults.

Symbolic play is the ability to imagine one object as another. For example, an empty cardboard box can become a car to drive around the room or become an astronaut’s helmet to wear and travel to the moon. Or if their friend loves eating pasta, they may believe that eating pasta will make someone Italian.

When your child engages in more complex pretend to play she is actually demonstrating higher intellectual development and is more likely to grow and become more socially competent. This form of play is an important part of healthy development. It helps children build skills they would be needing for future learning and problem-solving. It also improves creativity, which contributes to success throughout an individual’s life.

Albert Einstein once said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Knowledge is limited to what we already know and understand, while imagination sets us free to embrace an entirely new dimension of learning and knowing without any bias or limits.

The key to developing this ability is through investment in time, the intensity of engagement, the extent of exploration, and discovery. These are also the means through which preschoolers progress in their thinking and reasoning skills.

Games foster cognitive growth

Free play in early childhood is also important for developing cognitive skills – that is, your child’s ability to think, understand, communicate, remember, imagine and work out what might happen next. Playing games is essential to fostering the growth of a healthy brain.

Children at this age are generally self-centred, they are unable to independently shift away from their own perspective. For example, children are more likely to say that grass grows so that they do not get hurt when they fall. An extension of this will be their belief that everyone shares the same viewpoint as them.

Unlike adults, a young child’s logic is guided by perceptions as opposed to reasoning. As a parent, you will notice how your child’s thoughts are dominated by fantasy. She will happily demonstrate her magical thinking capabilities, by imagining that if she wishes for something, her power of magic will make it happen.

This is an ideal time for you to introduce your child to unstructured and structured games to show some fun ways to develop your child’s sense of cognitive development and of course, understand the phenomenon of cause and effect. Both categories of play are important for instilling in a child a sense of curiosity and purposeful learning.

Unstructured play is the time when a child feels in charge and decides how she plays. In this form of play, your child is not bound by schedules or activities. Structured play, on the other hand, involves following rules or instructions to ensure a particular outcome.

Games ensure emotional & behavioural stability

Just like when adults feel overwhelmed, they retreat into activities to calm and reduce anxiety, young children too feel the same way and need to do the same thing. Play is more than a distraction for them, it is an effective way to connect and keep children grounded.

Play is an excellent teacher. A daily routine of involving children in games is a must as it helps reduce stress and irritability. It also helps boost the sense of joy and increase self-esteem. Through games, children learn how to navigate the world in a way they can understand and process. Helps them work in groups, share, negotiate, resolve conflicts and be able to express themselves freely.

Parents who observe children at play get better at understanding these emotions. Listening and asking questions shows children that adults care. It also communicates that their feelings and experiences are important to grown-ups too.

Games improve literacy

Children are born wired to learn a language. Starting from birth, they build language and literacy skills through play and interactions. Babies and toddlers pick up new words when parents describe what they see, hear and do. Stories, songs and rhymes help a child develops listening skills and learns about the sounds in words.

Through play, preschoolers learn about communication. They get to practise interactions even if they can’t speak! Stories teach how language works and how narratives are structured.

Games are also useful. Playing with small toys helps build the fine muscles in the hands and helps in writing. This helps with writing. Games such as “I Spy” develop abilities for observation and maintaining attention. These skills support comprehension by helping children understand and apply what they’re reading.

Research shows preschoolers tend to pay more attention after an unstructured play break. Play enhances curiosity and a curious mind is always on and is ready to learn.

Games encourage independence

Your child spends much of her day being told what to do, when to do it and where she has to go. In the world of play, however, she has the opportunity to set the rules and be the one with the power. She leads while adults listen and take directions.

Playing on her own is as important as learning how to play with others. It helps your child develop a stronger sense of independence. When she is comfortable with solitary play, your child will also feel more capable of tackling other tasks on her own and figuring out how she can fit in.

Playing games allows young children to experiment with creativity and their own ideas. Practical life skills for toddlers allows young children to find new and exciting ways to stimulate their mind. As Albert Einstein said, “the monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulate the creative mind.”

Games promote physical fitness

Children have a very strong desire and a need for physical activity, which is any type of play that gets them moving. It’s part of how they learn to use their bodies and strengthen connections in the brain. It’s also a great form of physical exercise, which promotes fitness.

Regular, active play throughout a child’s life has a positive and far-reaching impact. It sharpens reflexes, works on movement control, strengthens and improves gross & fine motor skills, helps develop a greater sense of balance and all the while, have fun!

No matter the level of a child’s abilities, interests and opportunities, learning and development through physical play will keep your child relaxed, healthy and happy.

Games that teach life skills

If you’re like most parents, you want to ensure that your child is in the best possible learning environment at all times. This is what games that teach life skills ensure and are more important than you think. So while your child might seem like she is just having fun playing, she is actually learning life skills that can help her in the future.

So whenever you have a weekend coming up or have some free time on hand, invite your neighbours’ toddlers over to your house and host a games party. There are many exciting games you can search for on the Internet and adapt to suit the age of your child. These can be great fun, as well as help you teach children some handy life skills.

Here are a few classic games to help get your party on to a great start. Don’t be surprised when such games activity turns into a routine. A happy time spent together and making new friends will be an add-on bonus!

Duck, Duck, Goose:

This is an excellent game for teaching strategy to young children. Participating children sit down on the floor in a circle. One child stands up and walks around, tapping each child’s head and saying “duck.” Then suddenly stopping behind one child, taps on his and says “goose,” and scoots around the circle with the goosed child chasing after him. Reaches the just vacated space before the “goose” can catch up with him.

The more children play this game, the easier it becomes to start thinking about how to spot a potential “goose” (such as spotting a child who isn’t paying attention), which will give them a better chance of getting back to their seats without getting tagged.

Duck, Duck, Goose teaches children to plan ahead and gives them immediate feedback on the quality of the decisions they make.

Simon Says:

This game helps children learn to pay attention and listen to instructions carefully — an important skill for acquiring leadership skills. In Simon Says one child asks their friends to do fun stuff by saying “Simon Says perform a cartwheel” or “Simon Says make a silly face”. This should result in other children following the instruction.

Children will find out very quickly that if they do not listen or pay attention they will not be able to keep up with the others in the group.

Musical Chairs:

This is another classic game which promotes patience, conflict resolution and dealing with loss. To play this game, children need to stand behind chairs set in a circle – there is always one less than the number of children playing. Proceed by switching on the music and the children walk around the chairs.

Each time the music stops playing the children must try and sit down on a chair. Whoever is left standing is out of the game and then another chair is removed. The game continues until there is only one chair left and 2 children standing. The winner is the last child who is able to sit down on a chair.

By playing this game, children will learn how to cope with the disappointment of being out of the game while also teaching them patience as the game continues. One of the biggest skills that a child will learn is conflict resolution as disputes will arise about whose chair is whose and who sat down on the chair first. They will also learn how to communicate and resolve these issues while playing the game.

Hide & Seek:

This is a fantastic game to teach problem-solving in the most efficient and simplest way possible. The aim of the game is to stay hidden for the longest period, while a chosen child looks for the children who are hiding. Children need to assess the options that are in front of them to find the best hiding spot in a very short space of time.

This helps children build up awareness of their surroundings which will allow them to make quick decisions. More experience is gained when children start to make more in-depth assessments which will aid them in making better decisions, such as not hiding in well-known spots but finding and hiding in the most unexpected of spaces.

Hopscotch:

Hopscotch is a popular pavement game that is excellent for developing critical thinking skills. Children draw a multi-square shape on the pavement with a piece of chalk and take turns in throwing a stone on the squares drawn on the ground.

The child must hop on the squares on the pavement avoiding the square where the stone has landed and return to the starting position. This game is a means to teach the child in planning and think ahead so that she can get through the whole course faster than others.

About My Gym

My Gym involves children in dynamic games, physical activity and movement that help in building neural networks in the brain. Making it easier for children to acquire intellectual skills, navigate complex social situations, and nurture emotional development.

To find out more about how My Gym plays a key role in supporting “whole-child development,” please visit any of our centres. Choose a day when you will be relatively free and come over with your child in tow. Your child could be an infant (as young as 6 months), a toddler or a preschooler, age is not a bar for enrolling.

My Gym has specially designed whole-child development programs that lay a firm foundation for personal, academic and future growth by involving your child in age-appropriate structured and unstructured physical activities and developing thinking and problem-solving skills.

Please note: My Gym classrooms are thoroughly sanitized every day — the tables, the chairs, the children’s activity stations and everything else the child might touch is made safe and clean. Please wear a mask, wash your hands frequently, and practice social distancing.

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Learn more about how the play improve your child physical, cognitive, emotional, and social skills, along with creativity and imagination skills

How does the child come to know, understand, relate to, interact and explore the world around them? The answer is simple – through play. It is an important childhood activity that helps master all developmental needs. Play is a critical need of every child!

Putting it in another way, infants, toddlers, preschool and school-age children all grow and develop over time with tremendous potential and opportunity. These opportunities are found in creativity and self-expression, connections to others, building, maintaining, and sharing play experiences, and more importantly, coming to know more about themselves and the world around them, all of which are at the heart of free play in early childhood.

Playtime is not just about having fun – it’s all about active learning. When your little one recites a nursery rhyme, she is working on language development skills. When she tosses a ball up in the air and catches it on the way down, she is building important gross motor and hand-eye coordination skills. And when your child is involved in pretend play, she is exercising her imagination. This in essence is what play-based learning is all about.

Free play in early childhood comes naturally to children and is an important tool for their cognitive, physical, social and emotional development as well as their imagination and creativity. This is why most parents encourage toddlers and preschoolers to engage in free play and make it a part of their child’s daily routine.

It is through play that toddlers and young children learn to think, create, imagine, communicate, make choices, solve problems, take risks, build physical skills and take on a variety of roles as they interact socially. Children who learn healthy play skills are most likely to feel capable, enjoy success, make friends and learn non-violent ways to interact with others.

When children play, they learn

There are times when children play with friends and sometimes want to be left alone to play on their own. Sometimes they may speak aloud while at play and at other times, be silent in their heads. Sometimes their play is messy or risky and other times, quiet and relaxed.

Free play is when children have full freedom to play in whatever way they want. They have the freedom to select their play materials and to choose an area that is of interest to them. Even begin to take pictures of anything, if that is what catches their fancy. These kinds of pursuits are very important for children as they enable children to express themselves in the ways that they want.

Free play is also important for learning problem-solving skills. Your child may prefer to try and solve a problem or come up with a solution on her own to express her way of thinking. These skills develop rapidly when a child has the habit of playing independently. When a child is playing on her own, she is keeping busy and engaged and is using her imagination and creativity in childhood.

Encourage this kind of activity. Building your child’s independence at a young age will prove to be immensely beneficial later on in life. And the earlier you start, the better it will be for your child. Studies indicate that approximately 80% of brain development is completed by age three and 90 % by age five. This means a child needn’t wait for primary school for learning to begin.

Benefits of different types of play

As stated earlier, play is among the most important ways in which children begin learning. While there are many characteristics of play, it is sufficient to know that through play children get to practice and develop key physical, emotional, thinking, and social skills, including creativity, imagination, and problem-solving.

Free play in early childhood also lays a solid foundation for formal learning in a regular school environment, enabling children to develop a sense of achievement and increase their feeling of self-worth and confidence. What is important to understand is that parents need not actively teach the lessons their child will learn through play. They just want to be aware of the fact that their child will discover and learn about concepts and skills on her own as she plays.

Psychological research has broadly established that there are five fundamental types of play, commonly referred to as physical play, play with objects, discovery play, creative play and imaginative play. Each type of play supports a range of cognitive and emotional developments, which is why maintaining a good balance of play experiences is considered to be a healthy play diet for children.

Physical play involves movement:

When kids play they are physically exercising their bodies, they get to use the large muscles of the legs, arms and back to move. Physical play is important in order to promote and maintain your child’s health, but also to connect with each aspect of her development and growth.

Physical exercise improves brain activity by getting fresh air into the bloodstream and flowing through the brain cells. Physical movement helps a child learn through her senses about pace; spatial awareness; height; weight and the surrounding environment. A child’s language, communication skills and social skills improve as she starts to use an extended vocabulary, learns to share and take turns and plays together with other children.

Physical play also enables a child to develop stamina, strengthen muscles, maintain balance and increase coordination. Physical play gives the child more confidence, a sense of freedom and adventure and an opportunity to release energy and tension.

Playing with objects:

Also known as parallel play, it involves children playing alongside each other, but not quite together. Playing with objects helps your child develop her fine and gross motor skills when she learns to fit building blocks together and put pieces of puzzles together.

Once a child is able to see the results almost immediately and is praised for her efforts, she will be more inclined to reset her goals and aim for attempting something even more complex.  This will further increase her self-confidence and improve her self-image.

Playing with objects encourages your child’s cognitive development as it helps her to think in a clear and logical manner, sort shapes, and sizes and develop spatial awareness. It also creates opportunities for your child to acquire and develop social skills. As your child begins to play with other children her age, she learns what it means to cooperate, take turns and share her playthings.

Learning through discovery:

More learning happens when a child takes part in activities where she gets to convey her own ideas using materials with new textures and shapes — sand, water, stones, and shells. You can use a wider range of materials to promote discovery through play.

You can make it relevant even for babies when they are able to sit but are not yet mobile. Encourage your baby to discover by using her senses. But make sure the materials offered are safe and age-appropriate. Amongst the many benefits of discovery through play, the biggest one is that a child develops creativity, as she has the freedom to explore.

Expressing through creative play:

Creative play enables the child to experiment and express herself by giving your child an opportunity to paint, draw, sketch, dance and sing. Remember, it is the process of doing and creating something that is important, rather than the end result of the activity. This type of play enables the child to practice physical skills and coordination, and develop relationships with others. Creative play also helps the child to develop cognitive and language skills, and to build confidence.

You can promote your child’s cognitive development as she will begin to explore textures by using her sense of touch or sensitize her hearing by asking her to listen to the sound of pouring water. Children will get to practice and develop their language and social skills by communicating with the other children and whilst playing, by taking turns and sharing.

Imagining role-playing:

Imaginative play or role-playing is when children think and act out their feelings and emotions, as well as by speaking to toys and by other objects around them. This helps children to develop their language and communication skills and is also connected to every other aspect of child development e.g. physical, intellectual, emotional and social.

There are different kinds of imaginative play. But remember, it needn’t be elaborate or expensive. Depending on the age and development stage of your child, one day she may want to play the role of a doctor. While on another day she’d want to stage a drama cooperatively by involving other children. Or indulge in fantasy play, where she might want to play the role of Wonderwoman, the character from her favourite television show.

Making a range of materials available for play is important, and make sure you don’t offer too many choices at once, as this may overwhelm a child. However, items need to be changed regularly so that imaginative play does not become repetitive.

About My Gym

My Gym involves children in dynamic games, physical activity and movement that help in building neural networks in the brain. Making it easier for children to acquire intellectual skills, navigate complex social situations, and nurture emotional development.

To find out more about how My Gym plays a key role in supporting “whole-child development,” please visit any of our centres. Choose a day when you will be relatively free and come over with your child in tow. Your child could be an infant (as young as 6 months), a toddler or a preschooler, age is not a bar for enrolling.

My Gym has specially designed whole-child development programs that lay a firm foundation for personal, academic and future growth by involving your child in age-appropriate structured and unstructured physical activities and developing thinking and problem-solving skills.

Please note: My Gym classrooms are thoroughly sanitized every day — the tables, the chairs, the children’s activity stations and everything else the child might touch is made safe and clean. Please wear a mask, wash your hands frequently, and practice social distancing.

This post originally publish at My Gym Blog

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What is Cognitive Development & it’s importance in child’s growth?

Cognitive development is used to define the process of how children think and explore. Know answers for all the questions related to cognitive development.

Between the ages of 0 to 5 years old, children grow rapidly across four main areas of development – Motor skills, Language and Communication, Cognitive skills and Social/Emotional abilities.

Cognitive development is the term used to define the process of how children think, explore and figure things out on their own. It is the development of knowledge, skills, problem solving and decision making, which allow children to think and understand the world around them.

As parents and educators, it is vital for us to foster cognitive development in early childhood, because doing so provides the foundation for their success in school and beyond. For example, children who develop the ability to distinguish sounds at the age of six months find it easier to acquire reading and writing skills when they are around four or five years of age.

There are two important questions that we need to answer to get a better understanding of Cognitive Development –

How do nature and nurture interact to impact cognitive development?

What are the stages of cognitive development?

Nature & Nurture

Nature refers to each individual’s biology – the genes received from parents. Nurture refers to the social and physical environments that influence growth & development – from the womb in which the baby develops before birth to the homes & societies in which they grow up, the schools & activities they attend, and the people with whom they interact. Every aspect of development is a result of the interaction of genes and environment.

For young children, their parents largely determine the kind of experiences that they will encounter – whether they attend day care, which children they will have play dates with, which books they will have access to, and so on. In older children and adolescents, their parents’ preferences play a far smaller role in shaping their experiences. This is why it is important to set them on the right path from early childhood.

Stages of Cognitive Development

The milestones of developing cognitive abilities represent the important stages in a child’s development. Here are some broad indicators on what you can expect to witness in your child during different ages through their developmental journey.

Birth to 3 months

Anticipatory behaviors, like suckling at the sight of a nipple or bottle

Detect differences in pitch and volume of sounds

Focus on moving objects

See all colors of the human visual spectrum

Distinguish tastes, from sweet, salty, bitter, and sour

Respond to their environment with facial expressions

3 to 9 months

Imitate facial expressions

React to familiar sounds and faces

Respond to facial expressions of other people

Understand the difference between animate and inanimate objects

9 to 12 months

Enjoy looking at picture books

Imitate gestures and basic actions

Maneuver objects by turning them over, placing them on top of each other, etc.

Respond with gestures and sounds

1 to 3 years

Identify similar objects

Imitate actions and words of adults

Learn through exploration

Understand and respond to words

Match objects with their uses

Respond to simple directions from parents and caregivers

3 to 5 years

Ask questions to gain information

Demonstrate awareness of past and present

Maintain longer attention spans

Organize objects by size and shape

Name and identify many colors

Learn to rhyme

While these milestones are indicative of cognitive development through various stages of early childhood, it is important to understand that each child is different, and through the right exposure to mentally stimulating activities, social interactions, and the freedom to explore their surroundings in a nurturing atmosphere, every child will discover and enhance their own unique skills and capabilities.  

At My Gym, our award-winning early development programs are designed to provide children with “structured play”, where children dive into a range of exciting, engaging, and fun activities, under the expert guidance and supervision of our experienced teachers.

Find the right program for your little one, based on their age group, and set them up for success from an early age!

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How To Begin Preschool Activities at Home | My Gym

Looking for preschool activities at home? Here are some of the fun activities thus help automatically stimulate your child to indulge in the play.

Children start to learn early, beginning as early aswhen they are still in their mother’s womb. Having said that, let’s see what really are the essential skills that are expected in pre-schoolers. Especially at a time when life is full of wonder and moments that will be cherished by both you and your baby. Even the word ‘awesome’ will be understating this experience.

Beginning creative learning activities with speech and language will be simple and easy. In fact you would have already discovered doing this as most mothers often do. Whispering and talking to your baby…  about how she is feeling, what she is thinking and what she would be doing once you begin to spend time together. Needless to say, these would be about the most deeply cherished moments which a mother would not want to share with anyone else.

Never too early to start preschool activities

Being practical in life pays rich dividends later on as the baby begins its growth journey. You could focus on developing the skills to speak clearly, understand others and to express ideas and interact. The sooner you starton creative learning activities, the better it will be for your child when she is ready for school.

Children are always keen on fun activities, likelistening to stories, singing, listening to music. Very soon, you will begin to notice that even babies less than an year old can anticipate and respond to what they hear. Even acting out the characters in stories or start dancing to music they like.

They begin to answer the “how” and “why” questions in response to stories or events they experience. As a matter of fact, this is how babies learn to tune in to what others say and respond accordingly. They are able to do this even if they are engaged in another activity.

Babies always look for support

By offeringyour child speaking and listening opportunities through everyday conversation and practical fun activities, you will be encouraging language development. In fact you will begin to notice that your little girl is forming her own narratives and explanations by connecting ideas or events.

Your child learns best by observing and imitating adult behaviours, hence it will of great help if parents and siblings model good speech and language skills. Such good practices include:

Getting your child’s attention and making eye contact, even getting down to her level whenever necessary)

Speak clearly and calmly

Use words and articulate in a simple language

Repeat what the child has said

Always remember to describe and comment on what is happening

Listen carefully when your child speaks, and be patient. Give her plenty of time to respond and find her own words to express

Use all the senses. Gesture and coordinate your tone of voice with matching facial expressions

Question, but be careful not to badger. This can make your child uncomfortable.

Setting the pacefor preschool activities

Recognizing all the different letters of the alphabet is a fundamental building block and will come in handy when it comes to learning how to read.While doing this little exercise at home, make sure your child has something physical to hold onto or play with while doing this. Like letter stamps or letter cutouts or anything the child can easily connect the sound she hears with what she is seeing. Make it fun.Some ways to support this activity:

Play find the letter games with the children.Like a letter hunt, letter match, letter sort, or even a letter of the day.

Make letters with your child. Use dough, paint the letters and stick magnets on the back.

Stories play a major role

Every home needs to have a good stock of story books. Simply reading to your child has plenty of value in itself. Or better still, you and your child can read the story together. The most effective confidence building activities for pre-schoolers is by making story time more interactive and helpingdevelop your child’s comprehension and communication skills. Like if the story you are reading together happens to be Cinderella, talk to your child:

Talk about the story while you’re reading it. Ask your child, “ what is going to happen next ?”, or “ will she overcome her feelings that are making her sad?” Or “ is there another way to look at her situation ?”

Acting out the story with your child will be even more exciting and fun. Encourage your child to participate. Engaging and interacting will enhance comprehension.

Photocopy pages from your story book. Mix them up and then ask your child to lay it out in order, telling you the story as she is doing it. Celebrate when she gets it right.

Rhyming and calling out the word at the end of the sentence will be something your child will get a hang of easily. In fact, she will be able to guess faster than you can. Try it out.

Ask your child’s help to put together a lucky dip story bag. Use pictures or drawings and stick them onto a card. Get her to dip into it and pull out a card, and make up a storyand tell it in her own words.

Children respond to sounds

Bring the sense of sound into preschool activities by exploring words, playing with rhymes and building your child’s vocabulary and assist her in becoming confident with her speech. Here are some ideas to help you get started:

Paraphrasing nursery rhymes together will be great fun. Make up rhymes, pick a funny line from a poem such as, “the cow jumped over the moon…” or something else you can come up with can trigger and set the mood.

You could write pairs of rhyming words on pieces of card, or use pictures cut out from magazines or just draw. Play a memory game (cards face down) or as a pairing game (cards face up). Make it a part of your fun activities both of you will indulge in.

By seeing pictures and describing a story, your child will pick up and learn new words. That’s why spelling the word and explaining what it means always helps. Asking your little one to say them out aloud, will make it easier to remember the words easily.

Learning to grip firmly

Depending on how old your child is, you can plan activities to develop fine motor skills– these are movements made by using small muscles in her hand and forearm. This is crucial whenyou want to help your child how to write.If your child is too young, she first needs to learn how to hold and control a pencil or thread a beador tie her shoe lace using her tiny fingers.

To be able to do all these on her own, she needs to practice. Here are a few ways to help her get started and gain full control over her hand and fingers:

Among the many activities to develop fine motor skills in pre-schoolers, threading beads onto a string is among the most practical. Talking to your child calmly and in a singsong wayyou can encourage her to play. She will be even more happy initially, when you join her in the activity.

Start with those big ready-made wooden beads with holes drilled into them, you can find these in any toy shop. Once your child learns to thread these, you can shift to smaller glass beads in different colours. Make this into sensory activities that will stimulate her sense of colour.

Ask her to sort the beads by colour. Showing how she can pick each bead using a tweezer and dropping it in a plastic cup. This will strengthen her little fingers and learn to grip better. Once she gets the hang of it, leave her to try threading these beads on her own.

Another of the fun activitiesyou can plan is getting her to play pattern creating using dried beans. But first, involve your child in colouring these beans. A simple way to do this is to grab a handful of beans and drop them into a bowl of coloured water. Once the dye seeps into the beans, spread them out and blow dry them using a hair dryer.

Then both of you can get down to sticking different coloured beans onto a white card. Doing this randomly will soon create a pattern which neither of you could have imagined. This element of surprise at the end will encourage your child to experiment on her own. Have fun.

Preschool activitiesis never boring stuff. However, the initiative needs to come from you. Don’t worry, as the involvement and fun levels increase, it will automatically stimulate your child to indulge in the play. Before you realize it, she will be wanting to do all the stuff by herself!

Just remember,always ensure that your child has access to plenty of resources and opportunities to play, sing, draw, scribble and paint whenever she feels like it. Have fun playing and learning in a way she enjoys the most.

About My Gym

If you want to learn about how you can plan more activities for young children in Singapore, make-time to visit My Gym, and don’t forget to bring your child. Give us a call or email and schedule a visit. A one-on-one interaction with experienced teachers will unravel several insights for better understanding. Besides, you will see for yourself how other toddlers and young children behave and handle themselves in a My Gym session. It will be a big eyeopener.

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How play helps a child acquire social skills | My Gym

Thinking about your child's social skills? Here it is the right platform to make your child understand many other social skills, concepts in an easy way.

When thinking about pre-school, social readiness, not just academic readiness, needs to be your priority. Before you consider pre-school asking these simple questions will help: Can your child be away from you? Is she moving out of diapers? Is she talking about school?

Social skills that are necessary for pre-school include among other skills such as sharing, taking turns, playing with peers, and participating in pretend play. The most natural way for your little one to learn these skills is during peer play sessions, so that your child participates in plenty of board games. So do setup playdates with other toddlers and children and encourage your child. Even join in the play.

Your child’s preschool’s teacher will also be pretty impressed by how well-mannered your toddler is. In fact, greeting others, following directions, and saying please, thank you, and excuse me are all ways your child is showing respect and consideration for others. Best part is, your child learnt all these at home! Fantastic.

Take one step at a time

You could also teach your child to be organized as well. Work with her on ways to care for her clothes, toys, books and things that belong to her. Create space in her room to put away each of these items.You can use inexpensive and colorful bins or old shoe boxes, and storing similar items together are the first steps to being organized.

Talking about why you are putting things away will be of great help for your child to understand faster and be able to do this on her own.

Practically speaking, after every play session, remember to tell your little one it's time to clean up and show her where each item belongs. Make it fun by singing a made up cleaning-up song until her space is tidy. Be sure to praise when a task is done well and quickly.

Playing board games is quality time

Playing board games is great fun and is the most effective way to make your child understand and learn about many other social skills, rules, concepts in a very practical and easy to remember way.

Most board games require a child to count, recognize numbers and learn simple math concepts like addition and subtraction. While they are at it, they also learn reading, as they need to read or listen to instructions, or to find out more about the board game itself.

Fine-tuning cognitive skills

Your child’s cognitive skills will also improve as she will begin to understand the rules, get a hang of what logical thinking means. Then there is learning to face new game problems and solving them. Developing the skill to create a strategy and the excitement of implementing it.

Another important skill your child will develop while playing board games is understanding.For any child, waiting for their turn is a tough nut to crack. But in a board game, they have to wait their turn, there is no choice.So the child learns what it is like to wait, pick it up real fast.on with her play.

Your child will also begin to gain control over her emotions. Realizingfor instance, that it is okay when something wrong happens in her play. Winning and losing are a part of play. Sooner the child learns this aspect of play, the faster she will learn to cope and get on with her play.

Mother of all virtues

Patience is another virtue your child will acquire the more she plays. Your child will not only learn to wait her turn but allow others to take their turn as well. It is all a part of the game and everyone follows certain rules to ensure everyone else enjoys the play and the role of dice.

While everyone loves to win, this is not always possible. Things don’t often go your way all the time. A board game teaches this in real-time. As your child plays more often, she will learn how to be a good winner and a good loser too. That is big lesson in itself. Comes in handy in real life.

Want to learn more? Give My Gym a call or email to schedule a visit. A one-on-one interaction with experienced teachers will provide several hidden insights that may not be so obvious at home.Seeing for yourself how other toddlers behave and handle themselves in a My Gym session will be an eyeopener.

Make-time and visit My Gym together with your child. Your visit will help bring down last of the barriers that might exist in your mind. Give you more ideas that will help prepare your child at home.

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How To Nurture Brain Development In Toddlers - My Gym

Play is essential to assist in the brain development of early childhood. Here are more ways to nurture your child's brain development and wellbeing.

Children learn through play. It is fundamental to a child’s early brain development and wellbeing. In fact, play is one of the most important ways to lay the foundation and promote formal learning.

Learning through play helps children in the development of language, emotional intelligence, creativity, and intellectual reasoning. So essential for a successful future in a formal classroom.

In toddlers, play strengthens powers of concentration, and helps a child exercise gross and fine motor skills as well as become adept at social interactions. So begin early, this blog will assist you get started in the development of the brain in early childhood way.

Nurturing positive outcomes

Keep these five factors in mind for ensuring a healthy body and a healthy mind and how you can enjoy learning through play with your child:  

Make it joy time

Don’t set goals

Make play instinctive, spontaneous & voluntary

Actively engage in conversations

Imagination & make-believe elements raises involvement

Re-imagine Playtime

Remember, play comes naturally to all children and early brain development starts very early in their lives. All you really need do is to reimagine and make playtime as imaginative as it can possibly be. Even leaving a toddler with very few play objects will draw your child into the world of imagination. You will soon discover how a toddler gets lost in her world of make-believe.

Setting aside ample time and space for play is essential to assist in the development of the brain in early childhood. Schedule it into a habit forming exercise. Play is critical for your child as it helps bring her imagination to life. Builds literacy skills and intellectual reasoning. Awareness of their sense of self increases, and self-esteem gets a boost.

Furthermore, early brain development helps the child make sense of the world around her, improves social interaction and makes time fly. With a child, there are no boring moment. Period!

Sand is tempting

Playing with sand is a big opportunity. Scooping, digging, pouring and sifting, feeds a child’s curiosity. Teaches children to learn about how things work. In toddlers, it helps build their muscles and improve coordination. When played in the company of a sibling, the fun aspect multiplies as it then calls for teamwork, sharing, conversing and nurturing social skills.

H2O

Water not only forms a major portion of our bodies, but is also the most enjoyable medium that makes play absolute fun and an unforgettable experience. Like sand, waterplay too helps in the development of the brain in early childhood. Enabling children to enjoy play in a safe and joyful environment.

Waterplay is great for improving movement of legs and hands, in fact every muscle in the toddler’s body gets a tune up. Movement helps increase the efficiency of hand-eye coordination and develops physical strength and builds stamina. Water will end up becoming your child’s favourite play-medium. It is a winner, hands down!

Use these water moments to speak about the basic concepts such as volume, floating, and things like what cold and warm means in physical terms. Keep talking science, or even math, or sing. Accumulate a range of water play ideas you can draw upon at will. Sharing your experience in a meaningful, memorable and fun way.

Much a ‘dough’ about everything

Dough is a great teacher of what playing and learning is all about. It aids early brain development in more ways than one. The things toddlers get to shape with dough is limitless. And all the time developing their fine motor skills, creativity and hand-eye coordination. Taking their skills to the next level.

Dough strengthen toddler’s fingers, preparing for a lifetime of playing, learning and writing. To boost and maintain interest levels, show how your child can stick a bead. Squeeze and knead the dough, roll it into a ball or an oval or a square. While you may do the eyes, brows, nose and mouth get your child to do the ears and stick them. She can make these ears as big as she likes. The bigger the ears, funnier the head will look.

Adding beads to the dough also invites the child to indulge in more fine-motor skill building exercises. Sticking, using a pair of scissors, squeezing the tweezer. Every movement of playing with dough is a learning moment. In terms of pure play-value and in the development of the brain in early childhood, nothing beats dough!

Play-value of drawing & painting

These activities puts every child in a free for all mood. Just let your child be while she goes wild with painting and doodling. Drawing tools allows your child to experience her world through her senses in an exciting and magical way.

Developing self-expression, decision making and developing pre-writing skills are the most critical of factors that your child gets familiar with. Drawing and painting as an activity is also an invitation to learn about colours, mixing and then of course, introducing the good-old tidying up habit afterwards!

We believe, your little one will receive the very best play time moments under your care and supervision. Create space for an art corner in your home. This will soon become the most active space in your home for you and your child.

Do a song & dance about music

For most of us music is life and for brain development in children, it becomes pure magic. And no one is tone deaf. Singing, dancing and music immensely help develop language and will become the very basis for acquiring literacy skills, understanding mathematical concepts such as counting and adding. These activities also instil the habit of developing a rhythm in play and learning and helps refine listening skills.

Dancing helps brain development in children and in building strength, flexibility, and grace, not to mention coordination. Just to get a hang of it, spin a couple of times along with your child. With practice, it can make nausea and dizziness go away!

Movement is the essence of living

Running, jumping, climbing, swinging will fulfil the urge in toddlers and young children to keep moving. Helps in the development of the brain in early childhood. Just make sure there is a safe space for them to do so, and always introduce age-appropriate challenges as you go along.

As gross motor skills receive a boost, you will discover your toddler is able to move faster, pick up and handle objects easily and generally move around and explore her world with more confidence, and enjoy every bit of the process of discovery and the experience it initiates.

At ease interacting with nature

Learning is fuelled by the hi-octane ideas that the great outdoors trigger. Trees, birds, streams, ponds, fish and sunlight add up to make nature playtime immensely popular.

While it is not only helps gain a healthy body healthy mind, nature also teaches children to respect the environment, and introduce them to early learnings in botany, biology and about the living things that share their lives with us so willingly.

These moments with nature puts children on the path of becoming more independent, responsible as they find their natural inquisitiveness is amply rewarded. Nature never lets anyone down, and they shouldn’t either!

The role of role playing

Every role children play teaches them something they didn’t know before. Helping in the development of the brain in early childhood. Imaginative dressing-up in clothes and using props such as Lego sets, boardgames, toy doctor’s kits, for instance lay the groundwork for their imaginations create interesting scenarios, sometimes running wild and going off in tangents.

Role playing imaginary characters enable both girls and boys to develop and improve their verbal skills, encourages imagination and the expression and labelling of feelings.

By dressing up to play the role of a doctor, an engineer, an astronaut, children begin to make sense of the adult world, the roles adults play, and understand their interests, as well as help in social interactions with them.

Apart from this, dressing-up helps to reinforce the physical act of wearing clothes -- buttoning up, tying shoe laces, self-grooming methods. You will be surprised by the speed with which children learn to do these tasks all on their own.

The more the dressing up activity, the more they become familiar, and getting dressed for formal school life will be a breeze.

Finetuning the senses

Sensory play is any play activity that involves touch, smell, taste, sight and hearing. Brain development in children is enhanced when they play with blocks, jigsaws, and shape sorters. Preparing the ground for experiencing spatial thinking, logical reasoning, ordering, and aiding in the recognition of various shapes, sizes, and colours.

Sensory play stimulates the urge to explore and turn into the building blocks for learning science, analyse concepts, investigate events and evaluate solutions children come up with.

More than just a game

Boardgames are for all ages, even adults. Embrace them as they help spend time in an intelligent and constructive way. Toddlers grasp the process of learning through fun, understand themes and concepts of numbers, shapes, colours and acquire verbal skills to articulate their feelings. Starting with monosyllables and soon move on to forming full sentences.Board games help erase social barriers and are vital as they play a major role in teaching young children the value of strategy, get into the habit of waiting for their turn and how to be thoughtful towards others by sharing and promoting social interactions in a positive way.

About My Gym

Always ensure that your child has access to plenty of resources and opportunities to play, sing, draw, scribble and paint whenever she feels like it. Have fun playing and learning in a way she enjoys the most.

If you want to know about brain development in children, make-time to visit My Gym. Give us a call or email and schedule a visit. Your one-on-one interaction with experienced teachers will unravel several insights into the development of the brain in early childhood. More important, you will see for yourself how other toddlers and young children behave and handle themselves in a My Gym session. It will be a big eyeopener.

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Learn more about how the play improve your child physical, cognitive, emotional, and social skills, along with creativity and imagination skills

Why Play During Early Childhood Development Is Important

How does the child come to know, understand, relate to, interact and explore the world around them? The answer is simple – through play. It is an important childhood activity that helps master all developmental needs. Play is a critical need of every child!

Putting it in another way, infants, toddlers, preschool and school-age children all grow and develop over time with tremendous potential and opportunity. These opportunities are found in creativity and self-expression, connections to others, building, maintaining, and sharing play experiences, and more importantly, coming to know more about themselves and the world around them, all of which are at the heart of free play in early childhood.

Playtime is not just about having fun – it’s all about active learning. When your little one recites a nursery rhyme, she is working on language development skills. When she tosses a ball up in the air and catches it on the way down, she is building important gross motor and hand-eye coordination skills. And when your child is involved in pretend play, she is exercising her imagination. This in essence is what play-based learning is all about.

Free play in early childhood comes naturally to children and is an important tool for their cognitive, physical, social and emotional development as well as their imagination and creativity. This is why most parents encourage toddlers and preschoolers to engage in free play and make it a part of their child’s daily routine.

It is through play that toddlers and young children learn to think, create, imagine, communicate, make choices, solve problems, take risks, build physical skills and take on a variety of roles as they interact socially. Children who learn healthy play skills are most likely to feel capable, enjoy success, make friends and learn non-violent ways to interact with others.

When children play, they learn

There are times when children play with friends and sometimes want to be left alone to play on their own. Sometimes they may speak aloud while at play and at other times, be silent in their heads. Sometimes their play is messy or risky and other times, quiet and relaxed.

Free play is when children have full freedom to play in whatever way they want. They have the freedom to select their play materials and to choose an area that is of interest to them. Even begin to take pictures of anything, if that is what catches their fancy. These kinds of pursuits are very important for children as they enable children to express themselves in the ways that they want.

Free play is also important for learning problem-solving skills. Your child may prefer to try and solve a problem or come up with a solution on her own to express her way of thinking. These skills develop rapidly when a child has the habit of playing independently. When a child is playing on her own, she is keeping busy and engaged and is using her imagination and creativity in childhood.

Encourage this kind of activity. Building your child’s independence at a young age will prove to be immensely beneficial later on in life. And the earlier you start, the better it will be for your child. Studies indicate that approximately 80% of brain development is completed by age three and 90 % by age five. This means a child needn’t wait for primary school for learning to begin.

Benefits of different types of play

As stated earlier, play is among the most important ways in which children begin learning. While there are many characteristics of play, it is sufficient to know that through play children get to practice and develop key physical, emotional, thinking, and social skills, including creativity, imagination, and problem-solving.

Free play in early childhood also lays a solid foundation for formal learning in a regular school environment, enabling children to develop a sense of achievement and increase their feeling of self-worth and confidence. What is important to understand is that parents need not actively teach the lessons their child will learn through play. They just want to be aware of the fact that their child will discover and learn about concepts and skills on her own as she plays.

Psychological research has broadly established that there are five fundamental types of play, commonly referred to as physical play, play with objects, discovery play, creative play and imaginative play. Each type of play supports a range of cognitive and emotional developments, which is why maintaining a good balance of play experiences is considered to be a healthy play diet for children.

Physical play involves movement:

When kids play they are physically exercising their bodies, they get to use the large muscles of the legs, arms and back to move. Physical play is important in order to promote and maintain your child’s health, but also to connect with each aspect of her development and growth.

Physical exercise improves brain activity by getting fresh air into the bloodstream and flowing through the brain cells. Physical movement helps a child learn through her senses about pace; spatial awareness; height; weight and the surrounding environment. A child’s language, communication skills and social skills improve as she starts to use an extended vocabulary, learns to share and take turns and plays together with other children.

Physical play also enables a child to develop stamina, strengthen muscles, maintain balance and increase coordination. Physical play gives the child more confidence, a sense of freedom and adventure and an opportunity to release energy and tension.

Playing with objects:

Also known as parallel play, it involves children playing alongside each other, but not quite together. Playing with objects helps your child develop her fine and gross motor skills when she learns to fit building blocks together and put pieces of puzzles together.

Once a child is able to see the results almost immediately and is praised for her efforts, she will be more inclined to reset her goals and aim for attempting something even more complex.  This will further increase her self-confidence and improve her self-image.

Playing with objects encourages your child’s cognitive development as it helps her to think in a clear and logical manner, sort shapes, and sizes and develop spatial awareness. It also creates opportunities for your child to acquire and develop social skills. As your child begins to play with other children her age, she learns what it means to cooperate, take turns and share her playthings.

Learning through discovery:

More learning happens when a child takes part in activities where she gets to convey her own ideas using materials with new textures and shapes — sand, water, stones, and shells. You can use a wider range of materials to promote discovery through play.

You can make it relevant even for babies when they are able to sit but are not yet mobile. Encourage your baby to discover by using her senses. But make sure the materials offered are safe and age-appropriate. Amongst the many benefits of discovery through play, the biggest one is that a child develops creativity, as she has the freedom to explore.

Expressing through creative play:

Creative play enables the child to experiment and express herself by giving your child an opportunity to paint, draw, sketch, dance and sing. Remember, it is the process of doing and creating something that is important, rather than the end result of the activity. This type of play enables the child to practice physical skills and coordination, and develop relationships with others. Creative play also helps the child to develop cognitive and language skills, and to build confidence.

You can promote your child’s cognitive development as she will begin to explore textures by using her sense of touch or sensitize her hearing by asking her to listen to the sound of pouring water. Children will get to practice and develop their language and social skills by communicating with the other children and whilst playing, by taking turns and sharing.

Imagining role-playing:

Imaginative play or role-playing is when children think and act out their feelings and emotions, as well as by speaking to toys and by other objects around them. This helps children to develop their language and communication skills and is also connected to every other aspect of child development e.g. physical, intellectual, emotional and social.

There are different kinds of imaginative play. But remember, it needn’t be elaborate or expensive. Depending on the age and development stage of your child, one day she may want to play the role of a doctor. While on another day she’d want to stage a drama cooperatively by involving other children. Or indulge in fantasy play, where she might want to play the role of Wonderwoman, the character from her favourite television show.

Making a range of materials available for play is important, and make sure you don’t offer too many choices at once, as this may overwhelm a child. However, items need to be changed regularly so that imaginative play does not become repetitive.

About My Gym

My Gym involves children in dynamic games, physical activity and movement that help in building neural networks in the brain. Making it easier for children to acquire intellectual skills, navigate complex social situations, and nurture emotional development.

To find out more about how My Gym plays a key role in supporting “whole-child development,” please visit any of our centres. Choose a day when you will be relatively free and come over with your child in tow. Your child could be an infant (as young as 6 months), a toddler or a preschooler, age is not a bar for enrolling.

My Gym has specially designed whole-child development programs that lay a firm foundation for personal, academic and future growth by involving your child in age-appropriate structured and unstructured physical activities and developing thinking and problem-solving skills.

Please note: My Gym classrooms are thoroughly sanitized every day — the tables, the chairs, the children’s activity stations and everything else the child might touch is made safe and clean. Please wear a mask, wash your hands frequently, and practice social distancing.

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Early Childhood Development - How early years set the tone for future

Know more about the important aspects of early childhood development like cognitive development, social skills, fine motor and gross motor skill development.

In the very initial stage of life, especially from pregnancy to age five, babies’ brains form new neural connections at a remarkably quick rate of more than 1 million every single second. At this stage, babies require proper nutrition, protection, and mind & body stimulation from talk, play and responsive attention. This perfect blend of nature and nurture is what builds the foundation for a child’s future growth and development.

The 5 Aspects of Early Childhood Development

Cognitive Development:

Cognitive functions refer to the child’s ability to think of solutions to solve a problem. A child’s fertile and imaginative brain is always ticking and learning to solve new problems every day. When a young toddler is moving around and experiencing new objects and people, the brain is gathering valuable information about the surroundings. Similarly, an older child of around five years is learning to solve problems like mathematics. Both these scenarios are just different stages of cognitive development in children.

Social and Emotional Development:

An important skill that young children need to learn early in life is how to interact with the people around them. The way a child plays with other kids in a room or how he interacts with an adult varies from child to child. As they grow, children learn to smile and nod, help others when they see the need, or learn to exhibit self-control in certain situations. All these abilities are a part of social & emotional development. For example, a baby who is only a few months old would learn to smile at people, while an older child moves on to more complex interactions like waving or shaking hands.

Speech and Language Development:

Over time, a young child sees how people use words to interact with each other, and his or her own understanding of language also grows this way. At first, a baby will start responding to words with sounds to express their needs. As they grasp more and more knowledge about the language that is spoken around them, they begin to use words for the same purpose. They often start off by learning names of people and objects, and slowly move on to forming sentences as they get older.

Fine Motor Skill Development:

Motion development in humans is connected to the growth of our nerves and muscle cells. The muscles contract and relax in certain ways which enable us to perform the simple movements in our everyday life. A baby’s muscles gradually develop over time to allow for the ability to make these proper movements. Even the simplest motions require complex work in the muscles.

Gross Motor Skill Development:

More elaborate body movements such as standing up, jumping, learning to walk and run, are called gross motor skills. To develop these skills effectively, a child’s muscles need to be strong in order to provide support to the developing body. At the baby stage, the spinal cord, bones, and muscles are not strong enough to allow the baby to sit up. However, as time passes and the muscles and bones strengthen, the child is able to move on to more complex tasks and movements. Proper muscle strengthening and development are essential for a child’s early growth.

As parents and educators, it is important for us to focus on all these aspects of early childhood development, and ensure that the activities and experiences that we expose our children to are appropriate for their age and their stage of development. Children also perform better in a safe, nurturing and encouraging environment, where they also get a chance to interact with other children their age.

This enriching experience is precisely what My Gym delivers to millions of children worldwide. Our award-winning programs are designed to give your child the perfect combination of fun and learning, so they stay engaged, happy, and encouraged as they grow and learn new things.

The skills & attitude that children develop in this early stage of life play a significant role in how they function later as an adult in society. A solid foundation during their formative years gives them the confidence and courage to face any challenge that life throws at them!