Category: Parenting

Fun Indoor Games to Play with Toddlers

Posted on by admin

Indoor Games

Keeping a toddler entertained when it’s too wet or cold to go out can be a challenge. It’s not easy to keep a toddler in for long periods, especially when they have a lot of excess energy to burn off! Here, we take a look at five great indoor games and activities to do with toddlers, sure to keep them amused for hours.

1.  Board Games

There are a range of great, easy to play board games for preschoolers which are perfect for those rainy days when you can’t get out and about. Toddlers will love to sit down with mom or dad and enjoy a few matches of their favorite game. Something like simple picture dominoes or a lotto matching style game is perfect for a child aged 2 or 3 years old.

Building jigsaw puzzles is another great activity for parents and toddlers to enjoy together indoors. Games and puzzles are great for promoting cognitive development, as well as being a lot of fun! You can read more about great board games for different ages at whooopsadaisy.com.

2. Make a Sensory Box

This is a great activity to keep your toddler happy when they have to stay indoors. Get a large cardboard or plastic box and fill it with polystyrene pellets, shredded paper or other similar materials. Then, choose a range of small objects or toys with different shapes and textures. Toddlers can have fun rummaging through the bin and trying to guess what’s inside before they pull it out. Alternatively, have your child put on a blindfold and pick items out of a box and try and guess what they are. You could even make it a competition to see how many they can correctly guess!

3. Indoor Bowling

This is a great game for toddlers who love to be active even when they are stuck indoors. Save some old water or soda bottles and line them up. Then, your child can use a small, soft ball to roll (or throw!) at them to see how many they can knock over. To make it more challenging, put some water, sand or uncooked rice into the bottles to weigh them down a bit.

4. Homemade Play Dough

Making play dough is a fun activity for parents and children to enjoy together! Kids will love getting involved in making the dough – they can help mix ingredients and they can choose which color to make it. You can even make the dough scented or add glitter to make it even more fun to use! Dough will keep for a few weeks as long as it is tightly wrapped or kept in an air tight container.

5. Have a Dance Party

Toddlers love music and dancing, so a great way to help them stay active indoors is to pop on some of their favorite tunes and let them dance like crazy! It’s even more fun if mom and dad or older siblings join in too. Let your toddler decide what music they want to dance to, and you can show them some moves. You could even find a children’s music video such as the Wiggles, which toddlers can sing and dance along with!

How to Teach Your Child to Be Responsible The Easy Way

Posted on by admin

Teach Your Child to Be Responsible

As parents, it’s one of our biggest duties to raise our children to be responsible. We want our children to grow up to be responsible citizens when they’re adults. This means we must teach our children to understand the consequences of their choices and their actions so that they understand the impact that they may have on the world around them and be responsible for that.

We’ve put together our list of three of the easiest ways you can teach your kids responsibility, even from a very young age:

  1. Responsibility is a joy.

You must put it across to your child that being responsible isn’t a burden from life, it is a blessing. By nature, children model themselves on the adults around them, and they can see that these grownups are responsible. Children want to be like the adults that they see, but they have to see that responsibility is a gift to them, and something they must respect and take pleasure from.

You can teach your children to try and make a positive contribution to the world, that way they will be able to see from early on that being responsible is a gift that has been bestowed upon them, and they can use this to the best of their ability. They can take joy from the benefits that being responsible brings them.

In other words, all you need to do is show your kids that they have the power to contribute something positive to the world, and this will help them to be responsible for their actions.

  1. Irresponsibility is a non-starter.

Another way to easily teach your child about the value of being responsible is to reverse it and teach them the negative aspects of irresponsibility. You can teach them that responsibility is rewarded, whilst irresponsibility is frowned upon. This simple logic will help your child understand that being responsible has positive value, whilst not taking responsibility for themselves will have negative knock-on effects.

This is a valuable lesson for the wider world. You can also ask that other care providers follow these kinds of instructions so that your children are taught good values. At the day care centres in Melbourne, the staff always does its best to instil a sense of responsibility in children. The staff can guide the children away from irresponsibility by providing an example of how to clean up after themselves.

  1. Let children do it themselves.

We all know that things would get done much quicker if we – the adults – do them ourselves. As much as our young children want to take command, we know that they’re not very dexterous or otherwise skilled to complete the tasks. But your child saying that they want to do something by themselves is them desperately trying to tell us they want to learn how to be responsible.

Next time your toddler screams out that he or she wants to “do it myself”, try letting them, even if it takes longer. Give them a helping hand if need be, but try to let your child complete the task themselves. That way they can learn that being responsible isn’t straightforward or as easy as it looks, but it can be rewarding once they’ve mastered how to do it. Children will take pride in being responsible if only they’re allowed to do so.

We could think of several other ways to help your child to begin to learn responsibility, but these are three of our easiest recommendations. Try following these first to see if you can instill the value of responsibility within your children.