Bird exhibition to promote love and care for Allahs creation

Birds are one of the wonderful creation of Allah. And learning to observe, love and care for Allah's creation is showing our gratitude towards 'The Creator'. 
Having 'Bird Exhibition' at 'Premier School Dhaka' premises was part of learning linked to Science and other subjects.

'Bird Exhibition'  at 'Premier School Dhaka' Uttara branch on 17 August, 2017 was a very informative, fun and interactive event. This event was repeated for 'Mirpur Branch' on 27th and then' for Malibagh Branch it was planned for Thursday, 28th September, 2017. 

The 'Bird Exhibition' was inaugurated by a local hobbyist 'Mr. Tahsin Rahman' who have a 'Face Book' page with the name 'hobby.nature'. He is a bird collector from his childhood and his father who was present at exhibition told us that 'Mr. Tahsin' who runs an agriculture company, created an 'egg incubator and brooder' machine which is a unique invention as well. 

Spring vegetable show and mini master chef competition

Cooking is a development and learning tool adopted by many schools in the world. The best way of learning is by touching, tasting, feeling, smelling, and listening and cooking offers use of all these senses. Children love activities relating to cooking because they can use all their senses.

Our 'Spring vegetable show and mini master chef Plan' was made few days ago, and we decided to add more activities for this evnet. Cooking and baking is part of our curriculum at our school so learning objectives were to teach kids about local and seasonal vegetables, few spices, variety of eggs and then making omelet with these ingredients.

March 3rd, Thursday was not a very bot day but as we arranged all the activities at outdoor, sunlight became uncomfortable after 10 am. Still all kids, few parents and teachers were excited to participate in activities.
In the ground we set up the tables with vegetables, few fruits, different kind of eggs, spices for omelet making, coriander leaves, mint leaves, soy sauce, tomato sauce.

An adventurous and learning tour

Learning can be fun when it is integrated with play or leisure activities and creating links with real life situations and 'Earth House at Kashimpur is the place where it happens. Earth House- Kashimpur (Gazipur District) was created few years back "to be a place where learning in natural environment takes place" 

Our Friday 8 May 2015, trip was part of 'Adventure Journey' program for 'Duke of Edinburgh Awards' and as being an award leader, I was excited too.

Earth House- Kashimpur

We left Dhaka at 7.30 am (morning) and reached there at 9.00 am and the first view of the place was enough to refresh our minds and souls. After breakfast we were ready to explore the place and do some educational activities. The first part was to gather the group of our children and ask them to follow teacher's instruction while following safety rules.

Story of a travel and learning- Part 2

Manali (Himachal Pradesh)Tour:

Manali is a hill station nestled in the mountains of the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh near the northern end of the Kullu Valley, at an altitude of 2,050 m (6,726 ft) in the Beas River Valley. It is located in the Kullu district, about 270 km (168 mi) north of the state capital, Shimla.

This small town, with a population of 8,096, is the beginning of an ancient trade route to Ladakh and from there over the Karakoram Pass on to Yarkand and Khotan in the Tarim Basin.
It has become a tourist attraction in recent years.

Manali welcomed us in morning 9am with cold breeze

The climate in Manali is cold during winters, and moderately cool during summers. We visited Manali during first week of April, and it was cold there. Weather is very uncertain, as within few minutes, you can feel warm sun light and other few minutes, rain starts with cold wind.

Award Leader Training of 'The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award'

Learning can be fun when it is integrated with play or leisure activities and creating links with real life situations. 'Earth House Alternative School' believes that leisure or extra curricular activities play a very important role in the development of life skills such as negotiation, communication, problem solving, presentation etc.As 'Earth House' aims to help children reclaim learning through investigation and play, it matches with the ideology of 'The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award'.

The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (DEA) Foundation Bangladesh arranged a day Long Award Leader Training on Friday, 12 December 2014 held at 'Earth House Alternative School'. Purpose of this 'Award Leader Training was to explain award leader responsibilities practically, so that the participants could supervise the program smoothly and lead the Award participants efficiently in future.

The Duke of Edinburgh's Award Foundation, Bangladesh offers the world's most prestigious award for young people "The Duke of Edinburgh's Award" to Bangladesh. It is a compact self development program which facilitates young people (aged 14 – 25) to be more worthy of making and leading a better world. It also makes them be enough versatile to experience different tastes of various phases of life.

Benefits of mixed age classroom

Many parents are not aware of term 'mix age classroom' or 'composite class' and they are curious to know it. But this concept is not new, as this method is being applied and adopted in many schools around the world, successfully.
'Earth House Alternative School' adopted this method as being a small school. Whenever teachers arranged a learning session or group work in multi age classroom, it was observed that there was a very friendly and warm learning atmosphere among children. Older children in particularly become "experts" and explaining things to the younger ones. So this kind of social interaction helps all students learn many more things as compared to a regular classroom. In mixed-age classes, older children have opportunities to practice leadership skills and pro-social behaviors, like helping and sharing. Development of social or emotional skills is possible at ease, in a mixed age classroom.

Multi-age classrooms or composite classes are classrooms with students from more than one grade level.

Story telling and cross curriculum links for enhanced learning

New research shows that 70% of what we learn is consumed through storytelling. For centuries, people have used stories to pass on knowledge. When information is embedded in the context of a story, it is transferred to a listener or reader in a unique way.

Students who learn through telling and reflectively processing their stories develop skills that enable them to link subjective and objective perspectives, capture the complexity of experience and bring about thoughtful change to self and practice.
When storytelling is used as a robust mode of inquiry, student learning is enhanced in multiple ways.

Stories bring learning to life in early years. A head teacher said: “I realized that this is truly inclusive learning – the impact is as significant on the gifted and talented as it is on reluctant and disengaged children – they all achieved together.”

Meaningful storytelling processes and activities incorporate opportunities for reflective dialogue, foster collaborative endeavor, nurture the spirit of inquiry and contribute to the construction of new knowledge. In addition, cultural, contextual and emotional realities can be acknowledged, valued and integrated into storytelling processes.

Last two weeks early year classes of 'Earth House Alternative School' were learning in an interactive way using the theme from famous story 'The Tiger Who Came To Tea'

Field trip to a bakery shop

For generations, in Bangladesh people knew that bakery means baked bakarkhani, pithas etc used as snacks. But now a days cakes, pastry and other food items that are sold commercially are replacing traditional homemade pithas, especially in urban areas.
Our children are in love for breads, cakes, tarts, pastries etc, but our traditional snacks still have value in our society.

More about our traditional snacks:

Bakarkhani(also called Bakorkhani, Bakharkhoni) breads are legendary and have been in existence in Dhaka from around the middle of eighteenth century. Bakarkhani or Pithas are often eaten at small meals, such as breakfast or as a snack with tea.

Pitha refers to a indigenous food and food tradition of Bangladesh. For pitha/peetha there is no similar word in English. To explain others in English we interpret pitha/peetha as a rice cake or pie. Pitha/peetha is a part of life and culture of the Banglis, but it is not part of our daily menu.
Most pithas/peethas are seasonal, specially prepared in the winter season because of some ingredients which are available only in winter season.

A field trip to dentist

Monday, 10th of November, our field trip to dentist started at around 9.30 am in the morning showing a Sesame Street video to children about oral/ dental health at school. They also watched the rhyme 'Every day I brush my teeth'.

Before starting our field trip to dentist, we learned about oral health or role of a dentist.

We knew what 'dentist' do. "Dentists are doctors who specialize in oral health/hygiene."
Oral hygiene is the practice of keeping the mouth and teeth clean to prevent dental problems, most commonly, dental cavities, gingivitis, and bad breath.
The responsibilities of a dentist include:

• Diagnosing oral diseases. 
• Promoting oral health and disease prevention. 
• Creating treatment plans to maintain or restore the oral health of their patients. 
• Monitoring growth and development of the teeth and jaws. 
• Performing surgical procedures on the teeth, bone and soft tissues of the oral cavity.

Early years nature walk

Our School is situated at the end of "Dhanmondi Lake" branch. It takes few minutes to reach at the side ways of the lake, though you need to turn towards the back of the school building.

Getting ready at school ground for a nature walk outside the school

Every year, early year class teachers take their students for a walk to that area. Many parents reside around the Dhanmondi area and may be those children also visit nearby places but it is a special occasion for them to visit these same places with their class mates and teachers.

Peeling peanut shells and sharing

Doing some activities such as counting the peanuts etc

Teachers busy with students in groups

Exploring and enjoying nature watch with teachers

Now it's time to go back to school

Students still exploring on sideways whilst going back to school 

Today only girls of Play Group and Nursery all sections went for nature walk and tomorrow all boys will be taking part in this fun and learning outdoor activity.

Why nature walk?
To fulfill the objectives of:------
Exploring the nature that surrounds us in our day to day life.
 • Exploring the nature like flora and fauna and the sunshine and clouds.
 • To find flowers of all colours, shapes and sizes, as well as leaves of different shapes, colours and sizes.
 • To feel the different textures of all the things we found including the bark on the trees.
Listening skills: As we walk we can listen out for different sounds. The most common sounds we hear are birds, cars and buses, dogs barking, people talking, the wind.
 • Weather: Season late winter, dry leaves, winter
 • Safety rules: Follow and listen to the elders. Walk in a line and side of the road.

Main activities:
 • Sitting at ground or sideways to watch the nature. Peel the peanuts (badaam and count how many nuts they find inside it. Two friends will count together (addition) in trays.
• Collecting leaves and discover the shapes, size and texture of these leaves. Strips of papers (wrist band) and sticking leaves on these strips. We will name those strips ‘nature bands’
 • Discuss opposites ie clean/dirty, light/deep green, shadow/light, long/short.
• Relation to Green Deen (Earth): We keep our road, city clean. Dirty water, clean water.
• Flowers (Bangla related) Gaada, Daalia, Gulaab, Chandro Molika. Colours and sizes of the flowers
• Phonics sound: B-Bridge

Art and crafts Planning:
 • Students sat down in class with paper and pencils and  teacher asked them about the things they had seen, heard, touched or smelled whilst on their walk, then they drew them. They had drawings of birds, flowers, trees, clouds, the sun, and the bridge or buildings around the lake. Tomorrow insha Allah I will include those nature pictures in my post.

 Learning outcomes for nature walk:
 • Children become socially responsible and show respect for the environment.
• Children develop positive dispositions for learning such as curiosity, cooperation, confidence, creativity, enthusiasm and imagination.
 • Children resource their own learning through connecting with people, place, technologies and natural processed materials.
• Children express ideas and make meaning using a range of media (conversation, drawing)
• Learn to develop communication skills and vocabulary relating to their subjects such as English and Bangla.

• Learn number relationships (as they count and do the addition while peeling peanuts)
• Learn to develop imaginary skills as they draw coming back to classroom, what they explored their nature walk.

Alhamdu Lilla we could successfully meet our objectives today and tomorrow our journey is continued with boys group-----------!

Video tutorial sites for teachers

Many educators are still novice to computers or internet and they want to develop their skills to get most from modern technology. This article is for all teachers who love to learn by watching video tutorials. These free tutorials are mostlty created for teachers to help them for skill development.
Good news is that these all sites offer all the tutorials free of charge. Moreover you don't need to register or sign in to watch videos. You are also free to upload your videos at thsee sites.
Most of us know that 'YouTube' is a very effective learning site where you can search and find numerous videos, although there are more sites with video tutorials. I am quoting few of the sites which I usually search or browse for video tutorials.

*** 'Khan Academy' is a non profit organization providing learning opportunities to students,teachers, home-schoolers etc. They have around 3600 videos covering K-12 math, science topics such as biology, chemistry, and physics. Each video is a digestible chunk, approximately 10 minutes long, and especially purposed for viewing on the computer.

*** 'Teacher Tube'
is a place for professional development with teachers teaching teachers. As well, it is a site where teachers can post videos designed for students to view in order to learn a concept or skill.

*** 'School tube' is created by 'National Education Associations' for use in K-12 to empower students and teachers through the use of video. SchoolTube content is student and teacher produced, and is approved through an innovative process.

 And last one is the link to other sites where you can find more tutorials.

* 47 Alternatives to Using YouTube in the Classroom

Among these sites I miss only 'Teachers Tv' which is unfortunately closed, though you can find some of the tutorials at 'Teach Find' site which is a search site to find teaching resources, lesson plans and CPD materials using a simple search tool.

Online tutorials for learning Microsoft Word

I have learned the basic computer knowledge from computers itself. Microsoft Word is a popular word processing software for producing documents. I started using Microsoft Word few years ago and still learning as there is a lot to learn for effective use of this software.
Using computers, reading related books, surfing through computer magazines is the easiest way to learn it although it takes time to master the basic computer skills. Many people still spend months and even years, just to gain PC knowledge skills. Microsoft Word is one of computer t

Now you can get access to 'YouTube' or free online tutorials to learn basics of computers.

Tutorials for teachers - Learning about software programs and how to install them?

While I was taking the computer training session for my co-teachers, I noticed that teachers are enthusiastic about use of computers and internet. During online search for education materials, we need to save our documents, but often it becomes difficult to open that file.
What kind of files we need to open?
Mostly these files are in Word, PDF, PowerPoint, Zip, Rar format. So if your computer doesn't have specific software to open these files, you cannot get results from your search. I am listing here essential software programs which are helpful to open specific kind of files.

Building block play helping build learning skills among kids

There are so many benefits of play building blocks. Playing with building blocks helps in educational skill developmental and mental stimulation for kids.
It has been more than 200 years since it was determined that wooden blocks aid the development of young children through play with building blocks of various kinds.


They can be wooden, plastic, cardboard and even foam in vibrant colors and different shapes like cylinders, squares, arches, triangles and more.                                      

They may help your child develop and enhance

• motor skills
• hand-eye coordination
• spatial skills
• creative problem-solving skills
• mental stimulation
• social skills
• language skills

More Educational benefits of playing blocks:

Physical benefits: Toy blocks help in improvement of eye-hand coordination. Building blocks help build strength in little fingers and hands especially when using sets that involve pieces that snap together and pull apart.

Social benefits: Block play encourages children to make friends and cooperate, and is often one of the first experiences a child has playing with others. Blocks are a benefit for the children because they encourage interaction and imagination. Creativity can be a combined action that is important for social play.

Intellectual benefits: Children can potentially develop their vocabularies as they learn to describe sizes, shapes, and positions. Math skills are developed through the process of grouping, adding, and subtracting, particularly with standardized blocks, such as unit blocks. Experiences with gravity, balance, and geometry learned from toy blocks also provide intellectual stimulation.

Creative benefits: children receive creative stimulation by making their own designs with blocks. Building blocks inspire and encourage imaginative and creative play.

Blocks teach problem-solving skills through the discovery of how stacking and matching can produce different results.

One study found that kids who played with blocks scored higher on language tests than kids who had no blocks. Perhaps the children with blocks simply spent less time on unproductive activities such as watching TV--but the end result was good for them in any case.
Kids can integrate their own constructions into pretend play scenarios. And there is evidence that complex block-play is linked with advanced math skills in later life.

Blocks are also helpful for children with ADHD. Blocks are now available categorized by age for infants, toddlers, preschoolers, early school age and older school age children.
Useful links:


* Educational benefits of playing blocks

* Toy blocks - A guide at 'Parenting Science'

* Lessons to teach while playing with blocks

Interactive way of learning doubles with origami and crafts

I love to experiment new ways to make my teaching interactive. Last week I teach them addition with doubles. Kids do the addition sums from 1-10 in different ways and doing it with doubles makes the sum solving process easier.
Thursday was our art and crafts class and my project was to teach them origami double boat. We all know that learning origami helps in development of eye and hand co-ordination. So mixing of origami with drawing and maths results in an interesting and interactive activity.

Normally the origami boat creating process is difficult to follow for my class kids (age group 4 plus) and I try to find the ways to make it easier.


How to create double boat?              

This unique dual hulled traditional boat is called 'catamaron'. If you can make origami house then you can easily make this fold. It is made by inside reverse fold. You need to learn valley and mountain-fold.

Link: 'Make traditional catamaron boat'

You can see the process of creating crafts with double boat from the pictures. First they fixed the boat at their art book. Following pictures show the cut and paste (strips of light, and deep blue color poster paper)

I asked them to add double clouds at sky. A child came up with idea of drawing a rainbow which was liked by all kids and they followed it.

My students love to work at crafts projects. I feel that they may forget the 'addition with doubles' but they won't forget making or creating 'double boat'.

I hope to share more experiences with my readers. So keep in touch and don't forget to submit your comments.

More ideas while teaching doubles:

This is simple double house fold which is easier for young kids to learn and  drawing makes this origami project more interesting.

This is also a combine work of maths and crafts. Kids loved creating this crafts and they were happy to do addition sums while doing this activity.

Finished work

Useful links:


* Learn origami for the development of creative skills

What is brain gym and how to integrate it in classroom to enhance learning abilities of students?

Teachers can use 'brain gym' activities or exercises to enhance the learning abilities of students. My kids of Nursery class love brain gym exercises and I ask them to do it usually before starting my maths class. I have noticed that when students are introduced to brain gym, kids become more focused and more enthusiastic for learning.

What is Brain Gym?
Brain Gym was developed in the 1980s by Dr. Dennison, an American teacher with an interest in the effect of movement on his students’ ability to learn.

Brain gym is an energising program of movement designed to release tense muscles, improve brain and body communication, create a state of active relaxation, and improve concentration, organisation and co-ordination.
Brain Gym movements prepare the brain and nervous system for optimal performance. They are ideal for anyone undertaking a learning activity.                                      

This movement-based system activates and integrates the brain and body by:

* Enhancing learning ability and academic performance
* Balancing emotion and behavior
* Improving physical coordination and sports performance and
* Developing an overall state of wellness and momentum in any area of life

Those educators who have incorporated the techniques and activities into their classrooms report good results.

How to integrate Brain gym into the classroom?

• Many exercises can be performed while sitting at a desk. Children can be taught to engage in them when they feel their attention drifting or when they are feeling fatigued.
• These exercises can be done as a group during a lesson break.
• Brain gym helps in developing motor coordination and skills to follow directions.

Benefits of brain gym for learning:

* Academic skills - for example, reading, writing, spelling and maths
* Memory, concentration and focus
* Physical co-ordination and balance
* Communication skills and language development
* Self-development and personal stress management
* The achievement of goals - both professional and personal

This movement-based system offers additional assistance to children with learning difficulties and helps them achieve the best of success in their academic paths.

Useful links:

* Brain exercises that keep your brain sharp

* http://www.poipassion.com/DyslexiaBrainGym.htm

* Brain Gym International

* Brain and Body Connection

* Brain Gym - Simple Body Movements to Boost Learning Process

* Brain buttons

Crafts and origami learning with kids

It is fun to teach crafts and origami to kids ( at early years).  I teach easy origami to kids in my Nursery class. I believe that origami helps in development of fine 'motor skills', intellectual abilities and creative abilities. As kids in our Nursery class are from the age group of 4 to 5 plus, even easy origami projects are sometimes difficult to follow, and kids need help at later steps for completing these tasks.

As you can notice from facing picture that I have mixed the drawing and origami together to make an interesting crafts.

As the outcome of this crafts was amazing, we selected it as a folder cover which we hand over to parents at 'Parents teachers meeting' as a record of kids learning.

How this crafts project was created?

1- First I teach them to make a simple house.
2- In second art/crafts class I told them to make a tree.
3- Third stage was to fix both origami projects at art book and finish it by drawing clods, grass, flower etc.
4- We fixed some pencil carving at the roof of the house to make it more attractive and appealing.

Early year display boards

In reception years, we teachers decorate our bulletin boards for display at the occasion of parent teacher meeting. Parent teacher meeting is held after every two months in a year. As we have completed our first term (Whole year is divided into two terms), our bulletin boards were showing the process of learning.

In our play class English board was showing 'Dolche Words':

These colorful display boards are used as a helping tool for learning. 

Free online encyclopedias for learning and knowledge

We all are familiar with the term ‘Encyclopedia’ which is meant to be a source of information. Internet offers lots of useful resources for learning and online encyclopedia is a great tool for information and knowledge.  Most of the encyclopedias are free to use and these are the best places for students, scholars, researchers, and teachers to collect knowledge. For any topic or subject you can access the free encyclopedia sites and search for it.

Do you know what is meant by ‘Encyclopedia’ and what we can get from it?
This article would be useful for students, teachers, scholars or parents, who search the world wide web for information . Included is a list of encyclopedias which you can further search for a specific type of information.


According to the definition by "Wikipedia":

"An encyclopedia is a comprehensive written compendium that contains information on either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge. Encyclopedias are divided into articles with one article on each subject covered. The articles on subjects in an encyclopedia are usually accessed alphabetically by article name and can be contained in one volume or many volumes, depending on the amount of material included.

“ Indeed, the purpose of an encyclopedia is to collect knowledge disseminated around the globe; to set forth its general system to the men with whom we live, and transmit it to those who will come after us, so that the work of preceding centuries will not become useless to the centuries to come; and so that our offspring, becoming better instructed, will at the same time become more virtuous and happy, and that we should not die without having rendered a service to the human race."


Difference between a dictionary and encyclopedia?

-  ‘A dictionary primarily focuses on words and their definitions, and typically provides limited information, analysis, or background for the word defined.’
 - ‘ An encyclopedia treats each subject in more depth and conveys the most relevant accumulated knowledge on that subject or discipline, given the overall length of the particular work. An encyclopedia also often includes many maps and illustrations, as well as bibliography and statistics.’

Free encyclopedia

The concept of a new free encyclopedia began with the Interpedia proposal on Usenet in 1993, which outlined an Internet-based online encyclopedia to which anyone could submit content and that would be freely accessible.

The English Wikipedia became the world’s largest encyclopedia in 2004 at the 300,000 article stage. As of July 2007, Wikipedia has over 2.0 million articles in English and well over 8 million combined in over 250 languages.

Wikipedia is one of the first "user generated content" encyclopedias.

•  List of online encyclopedias from ‘University of Wisconsin-Stout
•  List of Encyclopedia from ‘Wikipedia
•  List from ‘Librarians Internet Index
•  List of online encyclopedia’s from Wikipedia

Famous Encyclopedias:

Upto now Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a leading provider of learning and knowledge products. It is one of the world’s most trusted sources of information on every topic imaginable - from the origins of the universe to current events and everything in between.

- Encarta encyclopedia  from msn article centerProvides more than 42,000 articles on the world of knowledge–from aardvark to zither.

* HighBeam Encyclopedia provides you reference entries from credible, published sources like Britannica, Oxford University Press, and Columbia Encyclopedia.

At HighBeam Encyclopedia, you get free access to nearly 200,000 reference entries from sources you can cite. Plus, more than 50,000 topic summaries feature related pictures, videos, topic summaries, and newspaper and magazine articles from around the world. HighBeam Encyclopedia also provides innovative tools that allow you to rate and sort the reference content you find to be the most useful.

* AskTheBrain.com is the world’s first computer generated encyclopedia. All vital stats information has been inferred based upon text on the subject.

It is an automated encyclopedia that brings together the best information from around the web on over 200,000 topics. Try searching for anything at all in the search box provided. The entire database is made available free of charge from the website.

Kids Encyclopedias:

* From Yahoo

* Kids.net.au kids safe portal for children, parents, schools and teachers.

* Britanica for young children

* List of encyclopedias for kids from ‘dmoz’
* 5 Free Online Encyclopedias Suitable For Kids
Note: Article published at 'factoidz' few months ago.

Ideas to teach good manners to your kids with the help of toys

Toys are meant to play or have fun but toys can play a role of a teacher when you use them as a learning tool. Toys can keep the kids busy for hours while calming them down at some annoying moments. Toys can also help children teach good manners. This article offers tips and ideas to learn how you can use toys as a tool to manage your child's behavior.

Toys make amazing rewards that can encourage kids to behave. Toys can be used to encourage general good behavior or you can use them to teach manners, stop phone interruptions and more.

The power of kid’s toys is utterly amazing when you start using them as leverage for positive behavior.

How Kid’s Toys can Encourage Overall Good Behavior?

Get three of anything. It can be three pennies, three rocks, three trivial toys etc… Put the three items in a drawer. Put your child’s name on a plastic cup. When you see your child doing something good like using manners, treating his sibling nice or more then place one of the three items in your child’s cup.

Tell your child that he earned 1 point for his good behavior and compliment him on a job well done! Let him know that if he earns 3 points that day that you will play with him and his favorite toy at the end of the day. Now if you find that it’s too easy for your child to earn 3 points consider bumping it up to 5 or more. When play time arrives, count up the points and if he’s earned the right quantity let him go and get his favorite toy of the day and play with him for at least 30 minutes. You’ll find that doing this will improve your child’s behavior very quickly and once he learns that you’ll play “his way” for 30 minutes he’ll be very determined to earn those points every day!

Using Kid’s Toys to Teach Manners

If your child has a favorite stuffed animal or doll then you’re in luck! You can use his furry friends to help teach him good manners. You’ll first need to write down a list of manners that you want your child to learn. Do you want to teach him table manners and help him learn to say please and thank you often? Do you want him to know how to address adults like Mrs. Smith instead of using first names? Do you want to teach him how to say hello and goodbye on the phone and in person? What you teach your child is up to you, but it’s a good idea to write a list and practice often till it sinks in.

To teach table manners, have your child bring is favorite stuffed animal or doll to dinner. Ask him how his doll should be sitting and have him place his doll in the appropriate sitting position. Then ask your child to do as doll does. Then ask him to tell you what his doll should do if he wants to talk, but has a mouth full of food. Use his doll as an example for every table manner you want to teach your child. You can even have him place a napkin on dolly’s lap. You could have your child roll play his “inside” voice talking through his doll and even talk about how dolly could use his manners at a restaurant.

Later, go to the family room and have your child and doll sit on the couch. Have your child tell you how dolly can use the words please and thank you throughout the day. Roll play with the doll. Encourage your child to have fun with the roll plays to really “show off” his knowledge of good manners. Let him add lib and make things up and ask him to have dolly show you all the good manners that he has. This can be very fun, as well as, quite educational and effective at teaching manners.

Using Kid’s Toys to Stop Phone Interruptions

Everyone has been on the phone and had their child run up making tons of non-stop noise! This is annoying for mom and annoying to the caller, but it can be prevented by simply creating a phone call kid’s toy box. First step is to get a box. You can choose a pretty basket or plastic bin depending on where you want to keep the container. Get a box that’s big enough to fit 2 or 3 kid’s toys. Then you’ll want to choose some toys to put in it. I’d advocate choosing toys that encourage long-time play such as: blocks, pretend play toys, puzzles or anything else that will keep your child’s attention.

Talk with your child about the importance of not interrupting you while you’re on the phone. Let him know that he now has a special “phone toy box” that can only be opened when you’re on a phone call. Show him the box and the special toys inside. Tell him that every time you’re on the phone he can play with those toys. Let him know that if he’s really good you’ll let him choose some new toys every 2, 4 or 6 months (depending on what you decide and your budget) that he can put in his phone toy box.

If he’s quiet while you’re on the phone then he can keep playing with his special toys until the call is over. If he interrupts, then the toys go back up on the shelf straightaway. If he needs to tell you something “important” you can practice teaching him how to interrupt the nice way. Have him walk over to you and place his hand on your arm or knee and wait till you excuse yourself from the call. Teach him not make noise as he approaches.

As you start using toys as rewards you’ll ascertain how much fun it can be to teach your child good behavior without having to use negative consequences. These techniques are a win/win for you and your child because each of you will get what you want in the end!

Author: Kim Proulx, a Certified Parent Coach.