Tips To Calm Kids Down

http://practicalkatie.com/2011/02/04/calm-it-down-tips-for-helping-your-kids-relax/

A perfectly awesome post by Katie - Practical Parenting

I'm going to be using the 'pretend' balloon blowing one and the story walk most often, if I can remember to when we need to bring in some 'calm'. Ms. E loves 'pretend' ideas so it should not be too difficult! The trick will be to begin the calming process before she goes completely berserk!

Thanks, Katie!

Positive Discipline Part 4

Where are we heading with Positive Discipline?

The ultimate goal is to have well-balanced kids, who know they're loved and have the self-confidence to face life.

Thanks to Katie Mommy Moment for this beautiful round-up of the Positive Discipline series.

http://www.mommymoment.ca/2011/10/positive-discipline-long-term-goals.html

Turn a 'No' into a 'Yes'

How often do we head into tantrums and fussy behaviour for no reason whatsoever! But is that true? Is there really no reason?

The reason lies in OUR behaviour -after reading this post below, I can see where and how we go wrong as parents in our dealings with our little ones. Yes, we're rushed for time; yes, we've got other things to do BUT making them rush is what makes them dig in their heels and get stubborn about what and how they want to do things. At their own pace.

So it seems to me - for anything we need them to do, we have to make provision for enough time - enough spare time for dawdling and wasting, for getting side-tracked, so that everyone wins and we have a happy toddler by our sides.

Read on!

http://www.regardingbaby.org/2011/10/04/the-secret-to-turning-a-toddlers-no-into-a-yes/

Thank you, Lisa, your blog Regarding Baby is wonderful.      

Positive Discipline Part 3

Here's the 3rd part in the series on Positive Discipline: an excellent post once again. This series is amazing.

http://www.mommymoment.ca/2011/09/positive-discipline-praise-encouragement-rewards.html

Now if only Eyana and I can follow it by the book :)

Handling Sibling Violence

Though we don't need it yet, at some point, we just might! :) We've often seen parents getting worked up, upset, infuriated with such situations and the result is that the older child is either scolded strongly or even beaten up sometimes. Complete deterioration of the situation results and no one benefits or learns anything from the process.


A lovely post from Dr. Laura Markham of Aha! Parenting showing some skills in handling such sibling rivalry/violence situations -

http://www.ahaparenting.com/_blog/Parenting_Blog/post/The_Best_Way_to_Stop_Sibling_Violence/

Positive Discipline Part 2

Katie from Mommy Moment has put up part 2 of the Positive Discipline series. And excellent, it is, as usual.

http://www.mommymoment.ca/2011/09/positive-discipline-structure-and-limits.html

Positive Discipline Part 1

One of the excellent parenting blogs has begun posting a series of articles on Positive Discipline.
http://www.mommymoment.ca/2011/09/positive-discipline-self-evaluations.html

Though I've read so many books, so many articles, yet - parenting doesn't come easy. It's so easy to degenerate into a battle of wills, using our age and size to forcefully make the little ones conform... I often end up using the wrong words, the wrong tactics.

Every little bit of information about POSITIVE Discipline and sharing of it, helps. So I'm putting this up here so that it gets a wee bit easier to know what to do, in the right way, for our kids.

Thank you, MommyMoment!! :)

To Blindly Obey or Understand?

Can't help but post this excellent post by Teacher Tom. Read on and ponder...

http://networkedblogs.com/mDN1N

Spoiled Brats??

I came across this excellent post about all our 'problems' in disciplining our children... it's worth a read, time and again!

It raises multiple questions - all of us who're trying to do our best for our kids in terms of disciplining, upbringing, values, etc., need to read this.

Do we really need to be 'tough'?
Do we need to be strict?
Do we need to show we're the boss?
Do we need to frighten them into docility?
Where do 'spoiled' behaviours really come from?
Should we just let them 'be'?
Should we create a world of commands or a world of facts?

http://teachertomsblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/spoiled-brats.html

Paper flowers for Show & Tell

I found this sweet little craft activity at http://www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/flowers/handprintflower/which we will use for show-and-tell tomorrow.

Pretty paper flowers/lilies

I got Ms. E to mark out her handprints on paper. She then coloured them in (both front and back), as best as she could, in yellow and red. I then cut the handprints out. We then took each paper 'finger' and curled it around a pencil. We got a straw and stuck about 2 inches of one end in the middle of the 'palm'. We then made a cone from the 'palm' section and wrapped it around the straw, sticking it with cello tape. So there we had our flower and stem, with the petals (fingers) curving outwards. We made two green leaves from the paper and stuck them on the straw too. Repeated the process for the other 'flower'.

There - we have two pretty paper flowers to take to school tomorrow. :)