Helping Preschoolers to Celebrate Siblings’ Birthdays

It can be hard for toddler’s/preschoolers to celebrate their siblings birthday. They watch their brother or sister receive all the attention, opening present after present. Here is a great article on how to deal with this issue and how to keep everyone happy during a fun birthday celebration. Click here to read the article



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Interaction is Important for Your Baby’s Development

The first three years of life are extremely important in the long-term development of young children. You can help jump start your babies emotional and intellectual development by providing the right kind of stimulation.

At a basic level, facial expressions, like playing peek-a-boo or smiling can begin to stimulate your baby’s brain from a very early age.


Reading aloud to a baby can provide stimulation and the basic building blocks of speech and language development.


The stimulation your baby receives by touching various types of fabrics, shape blocks and even playing with water during bath time can help develop a baby’s motor skills as well as stimulate their brains.


Hugs, kisses and other positive interactions can help stimulate your baby’s brain and provide emotional development and support to make your baby feel secure.


There is a fine line between providing enough stimulation to your baby and too much. Soothing music and baby massages are a great way to stimulate your baby’s brain why at the same time calming them.

The best way to make sure your baby is getting enough stimulation is to fill their environment with books, colorful objects and pay toys of all different sizes and shapes.


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6 Keys to Help a Child To Become a Good Reader

Since we celebrated Read Across America, I wanted to share 6 Keys to Help a Child To Become a Good Reader from the National Education Association website. This article gives you tips on helping your child to become a good reader. Click here to read the article.

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Teaching Healthy Eating

If getting your child to eat vegetables and fruits has become a battle, get them involved in choosing healthy food by creating a collage of fruits and veggies. This will help them learn about new foods while embracing their inner artist.

What you'll need

* Cooking and food magazines
* Cardboard or poster board
* Scissors
* Glue or a glue stick


How it works
Ask your child what healthy foods they like to eat, and look through the magazines together to find pictures of those vegetables, fruit, or grains. Ask them to pick out items that they like the least and explain why those are good to include in their diet.

Help your child to cut out the pictures and glue them on the poster board arranging items by color. Then hang their masterpiece on the fridge as an easy reminder of what foods are good to eat, or head out to your local farmers market and have your child pick out foods they want to try that are on their poster.

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Fostering Developmental Milestones in Your Child

Do you ever wonder about your child’s development or what you should see at certain ages? This article talks about Fostering Developmental Milestones and how you can help to make the developmental stages positive for your child? Click here to read the full article.


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Getting Toddlers to Help Around the House

One of the most common complaints from parents with toddlers is that their toddlers don’t clean up. With their curious minds and nonstop energy, toddlers are into everything. By the end of the day your house looks like 50 kids had a play date instead of just one. However, there is some good news, toddlers can learn at an early age to pick up after themselves and even have a little fun while doing it. The earlier they start cleaning up and helping around the house, good cleaning habits will grow as your little one gets older.

One of the most important habits is to have a routine for cleaning up.

Try giving them a 5-minute warning that clean up time is coming. Have a verbal cue to let your child know that it is clean up time. A favorite one used by teachers is the clean up song, you can make up one on your own or use the old time favorite. Singing will help pass the time while your child is picking everything up and putting it away.

To make things even easier for your child, get your child’s things organized. It makes it much more fun when your little one knows where everything goes. One of the best ways to do this is to purchase some inexpensive bins and label them.Try taking a picture of the toys that belongs in the bin and place it on the outside so all your child has to do is to match the toy to the picture. If you have older children, place a card with the name of the toy written on it. This will help with their reading skills.

Remember to keep a positive attitude. Your little one may not get all the toys back where they should go, but they did clean up, so offer them positive encouragement for even the littlest effort. Your toddler will be so pleased with their accomplishment.



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Importance of establishing a schedule with children

Schedules play an important role in ensuring that children feel safe and their lives are predictable. Young children do not understand the concept of time so they measure their lives by the passing of events. Click here to find out how to establish a schedule with your kids.


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