FACT FILE - Importance of Précis Writing in Children

Fact file is an interesting activity for children. It helps to learn the facts about the things chosen. My son had to prepare fact file about any one of extinct animals in Ice Age. 
I personally consider this activity as one of the child's cognitive development activity. They get opportunity to read more resources, collect the information and then precise facts from the gathered information. 

A precis is a summary. Precis writing is an exercise in compression. Explaining the whole information in as few words as possible giving all essential facts. 

By this practice of writing, children learn quickly and able to speak or write only the important piece of information to be shared rather than an elaborated statements.

We can practise our children with précis writing method while learning and it's an easy way to quickly revise the concepts or understand in a better way.

Happy Parenting !!

HOW TO OBSERVE STRESS IN CHILDREN AND WAYS TO HELP THEM OUT -- DIY - TOY ROBOT

No school, complete lockdown for two months, no outdoor games, no cycling, bored of watching cartoons and movies, children will undergo a lots of stress than elders. We have to appreciate their understandings of the present situation and staying back in homes helping us. 

A simple child psychology is that they may not be able to burst out or express their stress, but yes there will be a moment we as parents can observe. 

Some emotions during their stress :

• Sudden outburst of tears with no reasons
• mood swings
• restlessness 
• distracting from their homework
• less appetite
• loneliness ; since they miss their friends in school, they try to talk with their dolls considering them to be their buddies . 

These may be observed that can reveal their stress. 

As parents, we can handle it , if we can follow these : 

• Let's not build their stress by questioning them, " What happened ?" in a firm voice. Instead, hug them tightly, comfort them and tell them, 'Let's play together'.
• Slowly, cheer them up and engage them up by reading stories, play with them or craft with them. They need diversions to get them involved. 

Crafting or any artwork can bring diversions in them. It is one of the best way to get children involved. Let them create art on their own. Creative play activties will be one of the way to overcome a stress. Involving them in an activity of their choice, they easily forget their stress.

Today, I am sharing an interesting DIY - TOY ROBOT created by our son for a play activity.

MATERIALS REQUIRED :

Empty cans/bottles ( We used empty salt and actimel bottles)

Pimpom balls

Glue

Colours

STEPS TO BE FOLLOWED :

1. Collect the empty bottles and clean them well. Remove their label wrappers 

2) Glue the bottles with the glue to form a robot. Small bottles for legs and hands. Salt bottle to form the body. (Please note : He used fast settling super glue. If guided by parents, you can use them or use kids friendly glue)

3 ) Robot is set. Allow it to try completely. We allowed to dry for a day.

5) The next day, paint and decorate the robot using colours, pompon balls and pipe cleaners for antennae.

Allow it to dry. Toy Robot is ready to play with. 

Happy Crafting !! Happy Parenting !!

SIMPLE POP UP CARD

Today, I am sharing a surprise card made by our lil one. Happy and feeling really great to see his creation on his own surprising us. At times, such memorable gifts from our children has to be treasured. 

It gives a feel of pride and honour as parents. Adding this to our parenting moments. 

Always appreciate and motivate children for any simple activity created on their own. It gives them more happiness and will develop their confidence to try many creations on their own. By this way, we are developing their creative thinking skills, boasting their confidence, training them to be independent to work their projects on their own. It's one of their milestone in their developmental skills, forming a part of their learning activity. 

Happy Parenting !!!

ADJECTIVES PROJECT - ENGLISH PROJECT FOR PRIMARY YEARS

Art integrated Activities or Projects with children are always fun. Today, I am sharing an interesting activity for learning adjectives. This is an activity designed by me for my daughter in Class 2 for her English Project . Fixing the correct adjectives for the parts of an Elephant ....a really fun activity for kids as Long Trunk , Soft Eyes , Fat body , Small tail , Heavy legs , Sharp and big tusks , Big ears .

Materials Required: 

Thermocol board - 1
Tooth picks
A4 white sheet

Steps to be followed:

1) Draw an outline of an Elephant and mark their features.
2) Glue the adjectives to the tooth picks.
3) Paste the drawing to the thermocol board.
4) Start to play the activity, by asking the children to fix the correct adjective and fill the blanks in the drawing.

This is really a superb fun activity for the children. Feel free to share your comments.

Happy Parenting !

OZONE DEPLETION PROJECT FOR KIDS

Hi all ,

I am sharing an interesting and simple Science project for primary school Children, explaining Ozone depletion on the occasion of Earth day awareness week

As a part of parenting, scheduling our time with our children is the most important responsibility of us. Creating projects on their own will help children to gain knowledge about the theme taken, they would explore more and it's a practical way of learning. When children are involved in doing their school projects, they remember things in a better way or learn the concepts easily. Generally, projects are hands on experience activities for children.

Here, we designed a simple DIY model explaining the reasons or causes of Ozone depletion.

Learning process :

1) Explain the concept taken for the project. 

Our project is about Ozone depletion. Explain the children about it, by reading out the concept from textbooks or any articles. You can show them some videos as well. Make it like an interactive session.

2) Help them to write or make quick notes on what they have learnt.

3) Ask them, how they want to present their projects. Make their collective ideas.

4) Tell them that they should do on their own with the support from us.

5) Help them to get the required resources or materials for the project.

6) We ended up in doing a simple display self explanatory model. I involved children  to collect the pictures of various sources causing depletion like Refrigerator  (emitting Chlorofluro carbon), Factory(emission of CO2), Pesticides, Fire extinguishers, CO2 from vehicles, Forest fires and Deforestation.

7) We did a paper collage of earth surface. We used 4 kebab sticks, tooth picks and a thick base board.

8) We drew Sun and cut out the template.

9) Glue the pictures of Refrigerator, Aerosols, Air Conditioner, Deforestation to the tooth picks and pin it to the base board.

10) Design the model of the factory using play blocks, use a toy car, we used corn fibres for forest fire remains, small tins as Pesticides can. Glue it to the base board.

11) Glue 4 kebab sticks to the corners of Earth College with Sun paper cut in the centre piercing a ray of UV through Ozone layer because of depletion.



This model conveys and help the kids understands what are the toxic emissions that causes hole in ozone leading path for the direct UV rays from the sun.

3D PUZZLE ACTIVITY - 8 YEAR OLD'S CREATION

Puzzle activities is one of the fine choice of game for the children from 3+ years. Starting with jigsaw puzzle till 3D puzzles, many interesting themes are created for the children to learn about. If your children are having more screen time, get them more such activity to focus on. 

Puzzle solving focuses on child's shape/pattern recognition, hand & eye co-ordination, concentration, fine motor skill development, visual perceptual skill, memory, sense of judgement, creative and problem solving skills, reasoning and sense of pride, boast up the confidence and cognitive skills.

The End product of their creation will give them happiness, satisfaction and whole lot of achievement. 

Solving puzzles will always be an interesting learning programme for children. 

Recently, we got these 3D puzzles for my 8 year old to boast up his confidence level and to observe his problem solving and reasoning skills. 

We are happy to see the outcome of the puzzle activity by him solving it all alone without any support from us, following only the instructions booklet. 

Each creation has nearly 150-200 pieces. He completed all the three creations in a week's time. We truly adore his efforts, his timely act when something goes wrong or any mistakes done. He has proven his skills once again and makes us feel proud parents in teaching and giving them activities which focuses on his development.

Happy Parenting to all the lovely parents ! 

ORGAMI'S ROLE IN CHILD'S DEVELOPMENT

Hi ,

Today, I am sharing the role of Origami in child's development. Children would from the age of 5 years and above would love to tear paper mostly try to make boats,  aeroplane, four cups or paper popper. This is one stage of activity, children would do as a phase of their growth. At times, we get irritated on the seeing the crumbled crushed bits and bits of paper around. But, pushing the mess aside, look the other side of the activity done by children. 

Paper cutting or folding or Origami is a wonderful activity that develops the child's eye and hand coordination development. It's one of the best activity for fine motor skills development, Math Reasoning, arranging in sequence and the foremost is observation, concentration and focus on attention.  

These creations of Sword and Ninja blades as named are made by my 8 year old. I tried to re-collect the moments, how did he developed his interests in this activity. Then we gathered some insights from him to know better. Here it comes from the interest started.

We re-created our childhood play, when it rains heavily, we play with paper boats using newspapers. But, back now , when my children wish to play in rain, we allow them to wear their raincoats, make some paperboats and play in the puddle. 

We designed our own costume for their fancy dress competitions involving them too in cutting templates, design armour, cow, sword, plough etc. We never go for any readily available school projects for their exhibition either science or any subject activity. I have shared few projects in my page as well. ENGLISH ADJECTIVE PROJECT, SCIENCE OZONE PROJECT 

These interesting activities involving children will help them to gain interests to create their own. These Swords with their holder and Ninja blades are created by my younger one. As they are studying about ancient history of different rulers and their kingdom, iron age, created these on his own. 

How these activity comes with Parenting is a big question? . Definitely YES, parenting plays a major role. Kindly allow children to do their projects or activities on their own. As a parent, guide them and help them to get their required accessories or resources. Just allow them to do on their own, make them an independent learner. The Output of their own project or activity will be always special and a unique one gaining them more insights of the concept shared. 

Let them play with paper, don't stop them, just guide them to play safely. Happy Parenting !!!

MODEL OF A BULLET TRAIN FROM A 8 YEAR OLD'S PERCEPTION

Hi ,

Today I am sharing an interesting creation of our 8 year old son. This is his perception of his bullet train.  

Visual perceptual skill is one of the milestone in every child's growth. It is the ability to organize and interpret the information that is seen and give it meaning. Our eyes visualise the object and share the images with our brains to process helping us to have our own thoughts and creations. This skill development has to be encouraged by parents. It does wonders in child's cognitive development.

As child's first teacher, we should know or take time to observe child's skills or area of interest. We were really surprised and felt happy as parents to see a wonderful cute creation from our child. 

My 8 year old is very much fond of watching trains and would prefer to travel more by trains. Railway station was hardly a 5 minute walk from our community. Staying in 11th floor, we would be able to have a railway view from our balcony. I used to feed him in the balcony watching trains.

When he was a 2 year old toddler, I used to take him to a nearby railway station to watch trains in the evening hours. We will be there for at least half an hour, we will see minimum three crossings, a passenger express, MMTS and Freight trains. We had this schedule everyday till the age of 5. He would mostly prefer to get only train toys. Later, he was involved in Basket ball and Cricket coaching. But, still he loves watching trains and speak more about different trains and explains their speed too.

He started watching more train videos in Youtube and discuss about it with us. Recently, we re-located to a new place. Fortunately, my brother's house and our house are very near to the railway station. We have a railway view nearby. Everyday, we spend 10 minutes in the morning and evening to watch trains. He is fond of tube trains. His favourite passtime in my brother's house is sitting on the lounge window and watch all the trains crossings. His interests and passion on trains made him to design this model train.

He used a packing cardboard box. Cut out different shapes and glue all the shapes together. 

Hope to see you all again with another imagination. 

MY DAUGHTER'S NATURE CRAFT

Today, am sharing a simple preprimary Nature project for my daughter's school activity. Involve Children in their school homework activity right from simple colouring to crafting. It's an important learning activity for the children. My daughter enjoys colouring and craft work . Last week , she was taught about nature . So , we planned to do this craft.

Sending this to Shruti's Artsy - Craftsy Challenge - Tissue Paper



We drew a tree , mountain , waterfall , river, hut , sun , birds and a rainbow . She painted the mountain with watercolour . River and Waterfall with crepe paper .

Rainbow with crepepapers .

Tree collage with crepe paper . We glued white crepe paper for Trunk and then watercoloured it .

Sun with waste tin cap and crepe paper .


Hut with crepe paper and stripped tissue paper roof ,water coloured brown .


She enjoyed doing this . Hope your kids also enjoy doing this . Have a great week end .

Happy Parenting !!