Importance Of Play - Promoting Child Development

I have noticed in nursery classes that whenever our students were not given opportunity to play or any outdoor activities, they were inattentive in class and more hyper. Play time allows our children to interact with their environment and gives us a great insight into how they view the world.

We need to make sure we give our children free time so they can direct their own play allowing their imagination and creativity to grow.

'Play is so important to optimal child development that it has been recognized by the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights as a right of every child. Children’s time has become a lot more structured at home and in the schools. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, free play is defined as “child-directed play time with no rules” and is a very important aspect in our child’s creativity, and emotional and social development. Free play is important for promoting physical activity and decreasing the incidence of childhood obesity. When children use their creativity, they are more likely to get up and move.

The scientific evidence shows that opportunity to play is more than simply a right for our children, it is a life essential. This means that if children do not play they will suffer from a condition known as play deprivation, which in mild doses makes children irritable and unhappy but which in more concentrated forms turns children into killers and mass murderers.

Playing is an integral component of the human evolutionary process and play in one of its forms has probably been a part of human behaviour for many millions of years.

Play is essential to brain growth and to balanced neurochemical activity.

It exploits biologically ‘sensitive periods’ during which certain kinds of experiences trigger rapid brain growth. Children under ten years of age are thought to have the potential to grow brains twice the size of those of children over that age. Some scientists regard play as one the main factors that human beings have not yet become extinct because of the flexibility it gives them to adapt to changing environmental and meteorological conditions.

Although play itself is vital to human survival and development and to our identity as a species, and is important for those reasons, because increasingly children around the world are being deprived of the space, time and freedom to play our concerns are with the development of appropriate practical opportunities for children to play too. Developing, operating and maintaining these practical opportunities is known as playwork.
Source: Play education.com

* A report from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) says free and unstructured play is healthy and - in fact - essential for helping children reach important social, emotional, and cognitive developmental milestones as well as helping them manage stress and become resilient.

The report, "The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds," is written in defense of play and in response to forces threatening free play and unscheduled time. These forces include changes in family structure, the increasingly competitive college admissions process, and federal education policies that have led to reduced recess and physical education in many schools.

Get the pdf version: The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds,
Get the html version: The Importance of Play

- Importnace of play at 'blogher'

- Melitsa Avila from www.play-activities.com has some advice for parents on why playing with your kids is time well spent:
The Importance of Play

- Benefits of Play

Tips for parents to help their child's brain development

Parents are always eager to see their child healthy in both ways: physically or mentally. Physical development is possible by providing them nutritious food and physical movements which might be free play or participation in sports or other related activities. But do we think that our children need another thing from us?

Yes, helping them grow their mental skills which nourish their brains. This article is offering tips for parents to help their child's brain development.

Basic brain maintenance for our children, and for ourselves, means making a specific effort, every day, to help our children's brains work normally. Dr. Ingraham urges parents to teach their children every day, by example as well as by communication, so that they develop positive and healthy habits and lifestyles, now and for the future. Children learn best by example

Bed on time: Sleep is brain restoration time. The brain's systems do not function very well without sleep.

Normal nutrition: The brain requires normal nutrition to develop normally and replenish the brain's chemicals.

Regular exercise: Endorphins are the brain's built-in stabilizers. Exercise and physical work stabilize the brain's systems, especially the emotion response and mood regulation systems.

Regular outdoor time: Being outdoors is therapeutic. We humans were not meant to be indoors all the time.

Regular chores and responsibility: Teach your child how to work. Work keeps a child connected to the reality of life. Teaching a child by example how to work helps the brain develop normally. The opportunity to learn to work is crucial. Children who never work never mature.

Tie all privileges to responsibilities: This keeps the child connected to the reality of life, and what life requires for success.

No exposure to violence, in any form: Violence in the family, violence in the environment, violence in TV, videos, video games and movies. Repeated and continual exposure to violence, whether in person or in the media, reprograms the child's primitive brain systems. We want to maintain the normal ecology of our children's brains.

No exposure to greed, extravagance, explicit sex: These are major problems with the media and our value systems, both of which have disconnected our children from reality.

Simplify your life and your family's life: Make your family's life more personal and less driven.

Get in tune with your real values and priorities: Get off the rollercoaster of materialism.

Source: CHILDREN’S HEALTH CARE OF ATLANTA, Georgia Dept of American Academy of Pediatrics and Department of Human Resources.

The Importance of Teaching Children Good Social Skills

Among other skill develpment options, it is noted that social skill is the most important among all. This post would help you learn the importance of teaching good social skills to children.

Your 4-year-old may already know how to tie their own shoelaces and spell out their first and last names. But as preschool looms around the corner, are you worried how well they’ll fit in with the rest of the classroom?

According to a nationwide survey conducted of 1,000 parents by Mom Central Inc. on behalf of Hasbro Inc., the majority of parents feel the same way with 90 percent considering social skills to be vital to their children’s happiness and confidence.

Nearly eight out of 10 parents also think social skills are more important than academic skills when it comes to their child’s overall happiness. As a matter of fact, parents gave social skills a higher ranking than academic skills on the survey in nearly every area of child development.

“More than ever, our children must get along with others to function effectively,” says Stacy DeBroff, chief executive officer of Mom Central, found at www.momcentral.com. “In this age of team sports and structured play, it has never been more critical for our children to master socialization skills. From children’s play groups to collaboration in the classroom, kids today engage in significantly more structured group activities, raising the profile and the necessity for good social skills.”

According to the survey, one in five parents feel overwhelmed with teaching social skills and more than one-third say that teaching social skills leads to frustration. In response, Stacy DeBroff has developed some tips parents can use to help their child learn social skills in a positive and reinforcing way:

* Lead by example.

Children are excellent observers. If they see Mom and Dad using polite language, sharing and being respectful, they will follow their parents’ guidance.

* Play with them in an educational way.

Children love to play games with their parents because it provides them with direct attention. Noodleboro by Hasbro is a new line of board games, which includes storybooks and audio CDs that nurture preschoolers’ social skills through laughter and play.

* Take a problem-solving approach.

If a situation becomes stressful, encourage your child to talk about the issues they might have with saying “please,” and “thank you” or sharing their toys with their friends. By allowing children to talk, they often discover for themselves what’s causing the problem while also coming up with unique ways in which they will be able to handle themselves.

“It’s more than just manners… it’s sharing, it’s listening, and it’s engaging with others. The Noodleboro games offer an innovative way to use a classic board game to reward and challenge kids as they learn valuable social skills,” says DeBroff.

Source: 'ARAcontent'

More resource and articles:
* Download pdf report: 'Discipline- teaching school age children social skills'

* How to Teach Your Child Social Skills

* At 'Self Growth: "How to Teach Your Child Social Skills?"

FREE Online English Learning Course For KIds

There are millions of people around the world who learn English as a second language. Being a second language the first steps are always difficult when their children learn English at school or at home. I collected some interactive softwares for my son who was going to school, to make English learning easier and fun for him. I use the same technique for my students and use different software programs which are fun to watch and encourage them to listen, and speak the English langugage. I was really happy to find the site "Mingoville" which offers English learning course absolutely FREE.

Mingoville.com offers the world's most comprehansive English course online for kids of ages 5-12.

Features of the course:

- It is 100% web based and contains hundreds of game like activities to stimulate kids language learning abilities.

Mission (In their own words)
"Our Mission is to educate kids English language by providing high-quality, result-oriented English learning on the Internet. We believe in the power of knowledge and our valuable goal is to deliver the best practices of education, entertainment and information technologies.

Our Vision is to maintain the position of high-quality, result-oriented eLearning solutions and online content provider through continuous value creation."

It includes:

An interactive dictionary with words and images, 10 missions to solve, several different exercises in spelling, lestening and reading.

Regarding innovation in education, Mingoville’s creators understand that children learn English best when learning is fun. This "edutainment" (education + entertainment) model allows children to learn English by clicking, doing, exploring, and interacting – comprehensive virtual language immersion based on advanced technologies and the newest pedagogical knowledge. Through a variety of methods such as direct interaction with the exercises and games, visual learning, and recording and audio elements to perfect English pronunciation, kids are encouraged to explore and learn English in a fun way.
Parents of kids using Mingoville recognized a sharp learning curve after three to four months of commencement of the online courses in English for children.

- Sign up here

There are more Free courses which creator of 'Mingoville'company 'E-learning for kids' offers in subjects like Maths, language art, science, computer skill, health and life skill,

Link: E-learning for kids

"Teacher Magazine" - An online FREE publication for teachers

Online education blogs are a good way to get in touch with the fresh content relating to the education field. Online communities, forums or message board provide a platform where we can directly ask any question and get advice or tips from other members. Same way online magazines offer good stuff and "Teacher Magazine" is one of those online publications.

Teacher Magazine is from Editorial Projects in Education Inc. a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization based in Bethesda, Md.

Primary mission:
To help raise the level of awareness and understanding among professionals and the public of important issues in American education.

You can register FREE for complete access to TEACHER Magazine online.

Your FREE registration to TEACHER Magazine also gives you:

Full access to 'Teacher Magazine' online including feature stories, web watch, teacher blogs and more like,

- Community - blogs, chats and Web Watch to keep you connected to your profession.
- Insight - free e-newsletters, including "Teacher Update" and "Curriculum Matters" with the freshest approaches sent straight to your inbox.
- News - from Education Week online (limited to 2 articles per week)
- Research - Education Counts database with customizable reports right from your desktop.

Other publications from the EPE are:

- Education Week,

- Research center

- Digital Directions

After registering, you have access to even more edweek.org resources. In addition to what is listed above, you gain access to:

Daily editor-selected Education Week & Associated Press stories.
Up to nine free e-newsletters on relevant topics in K-12 education.
Ability to comment on articles and start discussion with peers.
All current and archived articles from Teacher.
Search for top school jobs and career resources at TopSchoolJobs.org.
Current Annual Reports - Quality Counts, Technology Counts, and Diplomas Count.
State data and tools from the Research Center.

See Free Content page for more detail.

"The Kid;s Garden"- Helping Kids Enjoy Creative Gardening

"The Kid's Garden" is an interesting site for parents and teachers who want to teach their kids "Gardening". The articles about gardening are written well but for small children it is better to read them the information or get idea how to talk or provide relevant information about the topic. Site provides interesting features and practical advice on this subject.

'The Kid's Garden' was formed to offer a unique reference point on creative gardening for children.

This site introduces your child to the wonders of nature through gardening. With a range of scents and colours, your kids can create a place of discovery.

Check the 'site map' page to go to the different sections of the site. Topics include, Around the Garden, Ask the expert, Garden activities, learning, safety, at school, planting. For every topic there are many useful articles.

'At school' page offers few interesting articles for the teachers. Article topics are:

- Garden Recycling, Get Your School Growing, How Does the Weather Effect the Garden?, Introducing Kids To Organic Gardening, Stimulating Kids Imagination Through Gardening, Strange and Funny Plants.

Related posts:

* Gardening for kids

* Benefits of Gardening

Tips to set limits for disciplined kids

There should be an effective strategy to apply discipline rules at home or school either you are a teacher or parent. Frustration, anger, and occasional acting-out are few behaviors, we can notice among every child. But do we set limits towards applying discipline regulations or rules for our kids?

Our approach towards facing these kind of bahaviors is normally unhealthy, so better to keep these tips in mind while teaching discipline to our kids.

Tips

1) Always consider your child's developmental level when setting limits. It is unfair to expect more than a child can do. For example, a 2 or 3 year old cannot control the impulse to touch things. Instead of instructing them not to touch, remove fragile objects from reach.

2) Set the punishment to your child's developmental level. If you send your toddler to the bedroom for more than 5 minutes, the child may totally forget the reason, due to a short attention span. See time out.

3) Be consistent. Do not change rules or punishments at random. Punishments will obviously change as the child gets older, so make sure you explain why the rules change.

4) Make sure all caregivers are consistent with the discipline strategy. If one caregiver accepts certain behaviors while another will punish for the same behavior, the child is likely to become confused. Eventually, the toddler may learn to play one adult against the other.

5) Remember that you are a key role model for your child. The more even-handed and controlled your behavior is, the more likely your children will pattern their

Tips suggested by: Health at New York Times

Useful studies:

* Training Young Brains to Behave

Why we fail to teach our children discipline?

As a parent or teacher we are eager to find the best ways to descipline our children but many of us fail. A recent study found that 1 in 3 say the method they use doesn't work. Let's read some research based studies which may help us learn the effective ways to teach our kids descipline.

Childhood health experts say many parents think discipline means meting out punishment. But often the punishments parents use end up reinforcing the bad behavior instead of correcting it. Surprisingly, the most effective discipline typically doesn’t involve any punishment at all, but instead focuses on positive reinforcement when children are being good.

Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg, adolescent medicine specialist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said that when parents come to him complaining of discipline problems, he often explains the etymology of the word. The Latin root is “discipulus,” which means student or pupil.

“Defining discipline is really important,” said Dr. Ginsburg, author of “A Parent’s Guide to Building Resilience in Children and Teens,” published by the American Academy of Pediatrics. “When I tell parents this, you see their faces and they say: ‘It’s not about punishment? It’s about teaching?’ That changes things.”

But effective discipline is more difficult for busy parents because strategies that involve teaching and positive feedback take a lot more time than simple punishment, noted Dr. Shari Barkin, chief of the division of general pediatrics at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University.

It was Dr. Barkin’s study of more than 2,100 parents that reported that 1 in 3 said they could not effectively discipline their kids. The findings, published last year in the journal Clinical Pediatrics, showed that parents often used the same punishments that their own parents had used on them. Forty-five percent reported using time-outs, 41.5 percent said they removed privileges, 13 percent reported yelling at their children and 8.5 percent said they used spanking “often or always.”

Parents who resorted to yelling or spanking were far more likely to say their disciplinary approach was ineffective. Given that parents often don’t admit to yelling and spanking, the study probably underestimates how widespread the problem of ineffective discipline really is, Dr. Barkin said.

Many parents’ discipline methods don’t work because children quickly learn that it’s much easier to capture a parent’s attention with bad behavior than with good. Parents unwittingly reinforce this by getting on the phone, sending e-mail messages or reading the paper as soon as a child starts playing quietly, and by stopping the activity and scolding a child when he starts to misbehave.

“How many times have you heard someone say, ‘I need to get off the phone because my child is acting up’?” asked Dr. Nathan J. Blum, a developmental-behavioral pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “You’re doing exactly what the child wants.”

Trying to reason with a child who is misbehaving doesn’t work. “Talking and lecturing and even yelling is essentially giving kids your attention,” Dr. Blum said.

While time-outs can be highly effective for helping young children calm down and regain control of their emotions, many parents misuse the technique, doctors say. Parents often lecture or scold children during time-outs or battle with kids to return to a time-out chair. But giving a child any attention during a time-out will render the technique ineffective.

Another problem is that parents miscalculate how long a time-out should last. A child in an extended time-out will become bored and start to misbehave again to win attention. Doctors advise no more than a minute of time-out for each year of a child’s life.

A better disciplinary method for younger children doesn’t focus on bad behavior but on good behavior, Dr. Blum said. If children are behaving well, get off the phone or stop what you are doing and make a point to tell them that you wanted to spend time with them because they are so well behaved.

DISCIPLINE is more difficult in the teenage years as children struggle to gain independence. Studies show that punishments like grounding have little effect on teenagers’ behavior. In several studies of youth drinking, drug use and early sex, the best predictor for good behavior wasn’t punishment, but parental monitoring and involvement. The best methods of keeping teenagers out of trouble are knowing where they are, knowing who is with them, and spending time with them regularly.

That doesn’t mean teenagers shouldn’t be punished. But parents should set clear rules that allow children to earn or lose privileges, which gives them a sense that they control their destiny.

“You don’t want kids to feel victimized or punished,” said Dr. Ginsburg of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “You want them to understand that the freedoms they get are directly related to how they demonstrate responsibility.”

Dr. Barkin said she believed the problem of ineffective discipline was getting worse, in part because reinforcing good behavior is far more time-consuming than punishment. Dr. Barkin noted that busy parents juggling work and family demands often are distracted by cellphones, e-mail and other media.

“We have these new forms of technology which urge us to be working all the time,” Dr. Barkin said. “We are a distracted society. It’s harder to turn off the media and turn on that personal engagement.”

Source: New York Times