#creativelearningactivities

Children start to learn early, beginning as early aswhen they are still in their mother’s womb. Having said that, let’s see what really are the essential skills that are expected in pre-schoolers. Especially at a time when life is full of wonder and moments that will be cherished by both you and your baby. Even the word ‘awesome’ will be understating this experience.

Beginning creative learning activities with speech and language will be simple and easy. In fact you would have already discovered doing this as most mothers often do. Whispering and talking to your baby…  about how she is feeling, what she is thinking and what she would be doing once you begin to spend time together. Needless to say, these would be about the most deeply cherished moments which a mother would not want to share with anyone else.

Never too early to start preschool activities

Being practical in life pays rich dividends later on as the baby begins its growth journey. You could focus on developing the skills to speak clearly, understand others and to express ideas and interact. The sooner you starton creative learning activities, the better it will be for your child when she is ready for school.

Children are always keen on fun activities, likelistening to stories, singing, listening to music. Very soon, you will begin to notice that even babies less than an year old can anticipate and respond to what they hear. Even acting out the characters in stories or start dancing to music they like.

They begin to answer the “how” and “why” questions in response to stories or events they experience. As a matter of fact, this is how babies learn to tune in to what others say and respond accordingly. They are able to do this even if they are engaged in another activity.

Babies always look for support

By offeringyour child speaking and listening opportunities through everyday conversation and practical fun activities, you will be encouraging language development. In fact you will begin to notice that your little girl is forming her own narratives and explanations by connecting ideas or events.

Your child learns best by observing and imitating adult behaviours, hence it will of great help if parents and siblings model good speech and language skills. Such good practices include:

Getting your child’s attention and making eye contact, even getting down to her level whenever necessary)

Speak clearly and calmly

Use words and articulate in a simple language

Repeat what the child has said

Always remember to describe and comment on what is happening

Listen carefully when your child speaks, and be patient. Give her plenty of time to respond and find her own words to express

Use all the senses. Gesture and coordinate your tone of voice with matching facial expressions

Question, but be careful not to badger. This can make your child uncomfortable.

Setting the pacefor preschool activities

Recognizing all the different letters of the alphabet is a fundamental building block and will come in handy when it comes to learning how to read.While doing this little exercise at home, make sure your child has something physical to hold onto or play with while doing this. Like letter stamps or letter cutouts or anything the child can easily connect the sound she hears with what she is seeing. Make it fun.Some ways to support this activity:

Play find the letter games with the children.Like a letter hunt, letter match, letter sort, or even a letter of the day.

Make letters with your child. Use dough, paint the letters and stick magnets on the back.

Stories play a major role

Every home needs to have a good stock of story books. Simply reading to your child has plenty of value in itself. Or better still, you and your child can read the story together. The most effective confidence building activities for pre-schoolers is by making story time more interactive and helpingdevelop your child’s comprehension and communication skills. Like if the story you are reading together happens to be Cinderella, talk to your child:

Talk about the story while you’re reading it. Ask your child, “ what is going to happen next ?”, or “ will she overcome her feelings that are making her sad?” Or “ is there another way to look at her situation ?”

Acting out the story with your child will be even more exciting and fun. Encourage your child to participate. Engaging and interacting will enhance comprehension.

Photocopy pages from your story book. Mix them up and then ask your child to lay it out in order, telling you the story as she is doing it. Celebrate when she gets it right.

Rhyming and calling out the word at the end of the sentence will be something your child will get a hang of easily. In fact, she will be able to guess faster than you can. Try it out.

Ask your child’s help to put together a lucky dip story bag. Use pictures or drawings and stick them onto a card. Get her to dip into it and pull out a card, and make up a storyand tell it in her own words.

Children respond to sounds

Bring the sense of sound into preschool activities by exploring words, playing with rhymes and building your child’s vocabulary and assist her in becoming confident with her speech. Here are some ideas to help you get started:

Paraphrasing nursery rhymes together will be great fun. Make up rhymes, pick a funny line from a poem such as, “the cow jumped over the moon…” or something else you can come up with can trigger and set the mood.

You could write pairs of rhyming words on pieces of card, or use pictures cut out from magazines or just draw. Play a memory game (cards face down) or as a pairing game (cards face up). Make it a part of your fun activities both of you will indulge in.

By seeing pictures and describing a story, your child will pick up and learn new words. That’s why spelling the word and explaining what it means always helps. Asking your little one to say them out aloud, will make it easier to remember the words easily.

Learning to grip firmly

Depending on how old your child is, you can plan activities to develop fine motor skills– these are movements made by using small muscles in her hand and forearm. This is crucial whenyou want to help your child how to write.If your child is too young, she first needs to learn how to hold and control a pencil or thread a beador tie her shoe lace using her tiny fingers.

To be able to do all these on her own, she needs to practice. Here are a few ways to help her get started and gain full control over her hand and fingers:

Among the many activities to develop fine motor skills in pre-schoolers, threading beads onto a string is among the most practical. Talking to your child calmly and in a singsong wayyou can encourage her to play. She will be even more happy initially, when you join her in the activity.

Start with those big ready-made wooden beads with holes drilled into them, you can find these in any toy shop. Once your child learns to thread these, you can shift to smaller glass beads in different colours. Make this into sensory activities that will stimulate her sense of colour.

Ask her to sort the beads by colour. Showing how she can pick each bead using a tweezer and dropping it in a plastic cup. This will strengthen her little fingers and learn to grip better. Once she gets the hang of it, leave her to try threading these beads on her own.

Another of the fun activitiesyou can plan is getting her to play pattern creating using dried beans. But first, involve your child in colouring these beans. A simple way to do this is to grab a handful of beans and drop them into a bowl of coloured water. Once the dye seeps into the beans, spread them out and blow dry them using a hair dryer.

Then both of you can get down to sticking different coloured beans onto a white card. Doing this randomly will soon create a pattern which neither of you could have imagined. This element of surprise at the end will encourage your child to experiment on her own. Have fun.

Preschool activitiesis never boring stuff. However, the initiative needs to come from you. Don’t worry, as the involvement and fun levels increase, it will automatically stimulate your child to indulge in the play. Before you realize it, she will be wanting to do all the stuff by herself!

Just remember,always ensure that your child has access to plenty of resources and opportunities to play, sing, draw, scribble and paint whenever she feels like it. Have fun playing and learning in a way she enjoys the most.

About My Gym

Toddlers are playing all the time, automatically working on their muscles and strengthening bones. Play is a primary activity for children through which they learn, develop and grow. Eventually, helping them to maintain balance, gain better control over their bodies and their movement.

But learning to balance doesn’t happen naturally, it is a learned skill and needs physical and mental effort on part of the child. Once the sense of balance becomes second nature, children shift their attention to other things. And when your toddler gets lots of physical activity into her day through play, it will be good for her overall health and wellbeing.

Fun balance exercises nurture all areas of your toddler’s development, including her hands, feet and eye movement coordination. Toddlers also realize that balancing activities gives them the ability to become aware of how the body moves, reacts and how they can control it.

Physical activities increase their power to concentrate in children and help develop critical thinking skills as well. Play in essence is good for your toddler’s confidence, as she begins to test and push her abilities and discover that she can climb higher, run faster and jump farther.

Sense of balance leads to other skills

All moms of toddlers go through their daily workouts — bathing, dressing up, feeding and running after them, bending and lifting them up, stretching their back muscles to support them. These are both physically tiring and mentally draining.

The same factors impact toddlers as well. Balancing skills are not easy for them to acquire, they need to work on them tirelessly. For instance, toddlers need to have balance to gain control over the movement of their head, walk in a straight line and be able to quickly change direction and speed, and move against gravity.

When balancing skills are inadequate, children are at risk of developing low self-esteem, feel socially uncomfortable when with children their age, whether at home or in a regulated situation such as a classroom environment.

The skill to balance comes in handy when toddlers need to maintain their body positions while sitting straight, standing still or while moving about. They rely on balancing as it helps toddlers to participate in physical activities like sports and games.

Taking part in child development activities help to strengthen balance and offers positive outcomes for children of all ages. Especially for those who have difficulty reaching physical milestones, tire quickly, or go out of the way to avoid physical activity.

Gross skills develop before fine ones do

Gross motor skills are critical for developing and acquiring fine motor skillsets. This is why it is important for parents to focus on the development of their child’s large-muscle sets and movements. By involving toddlers in cognitive, social and emotional development activities parents can help their toddlers develop awareness, and gain confidence. Preparing the ground for developing smaller, more fine-tuned movements.

This process leads to gaining full control of the hands and finger movements for gripping pencils and crayons and finally helps children begin to write. So focus on aiming to achieve well-developed and coordinated gross motor movements before you get down to harnessing the finer ones.

Remember, while there is plenty of talk about hand-eye coordination, no one seems to focus much on foot-eye coordination, which is equally important. In fact,  foot-eye coordination is the beginning of gaining control over hand-eye coordination for developing finer motor skills (small muscle movements) which are critical for writing.

Workout plans for your toddler

Toddlers love physical activities – walking, running, climbing, or jumping and keep moving and pushing their muscles, bones and brains to develop.

Parents are advised to involve toddlers and to keep them active for at least 2 hours on a daily basis. This needn’t happen in one go but can be spread over the waking hours of the child. Any kind of activity counts, and the idea is to keep your child on the move every day.

Practice makes perfect and fun balance exercises play an important part in growing up, so it’s good to try to make sure your baby is free to have a toddle when they get the urge. There are lots of ways you can get your child moving while at home.

Here are a few fun balance exercises that can help improve your toddler’s balance, encourage overall physical development and have loads of fun doing it!

Standing on one foot: While it will be easy for you to stand on one foot, it will be a big challenge for your toddler. When for the first time you ask your child to stand on one foot, she could find it difficult to balance. Stand her next to a wall and then ask her to lift one leg up, and try to hold the position for a couple of seconds.

Once she is steady enough, tell her to let go of the wall for support. Get your child to move a little farther away from the wall after each time you play this game. She can mark where is standing by sticking a tape on the floor. After a couple of days, she can see for herself the progress she has been able to make. Whosoever can stand the longest on one foot wins a treat!

Try crossing the London bridge: Get hold of a sturdy, stable home ladder, layout soft cushions and pillows at each end as support so that the ladder lies flat a few inches above the floor. Tell your child to walk from one side to the other, maintaining her balance as she starts to move over the ladder. Assist by holding her arm while she walks on the ladder for the first time.

As she learns to balance better and steadier, let her do it on her own. But stay within easy and quick reach. Keep raising the height of the ladder, making it a little more challenging.

Yoga play:  Talking to your toddler while playing will reassure the child that you are always there with her. It will also help add new words to her vocabulary and improve her cognitive skills. Like if you are starting yoga, you could talk about postures and how long you need to hold each position.

Yoga will improve your child’s sense of balance, practice it together. Start with simple asanas first. Practice standing like a tree, or spread out your arms like an aeroplane, or bend forward or to the sides, rotate your torso. Work out big and small movements.

Surf boarding: Choose a flat, sturdy wooden board, wide enough to stand on with her arms raised sideways. Place a longish cylinder beneath the board and tell your child to stand on the board, instructing her to stand with feet a little wider than hip-width. Steady her balance, rolling back and forth, the idea is to keep the board still on the cylinder.

Music makes exercising more fun. Challenge her to dance while she is still on the surfboard. This will help increase her sense of balance and improve agility by moving her feet closer together or spreading them further apart.

Hopscotch on the floor: Toddlers will love this game as it is simple and easy to master. Use scotch tape to mark out the nine hopscotch squares on the floor. Get hold of a flat stone or a large coin. Show your toddler how to start the game.

Ask her to toss the coin into the first square, and hop into the square on one foot. Pick up the stone, throw it again, repeat until she reaches the top box. The coin should not touch the lines or bounce outside of the box. If it does, go back to start all over again. The game ends when she completes the ninth square.

Start n’ freeze: Every time you play this game, make it seem like it is a dance party for two. Play the music, then suddenly stop it randomly and tell your child to freeze when the music stops! Then, start and stop the music again.

This will seem challenging enough to hold her attention and keep her involved with the game. And as she begins to respond according to when the music starts and stops, her movements become smoother and she will become adept at keeping her balance.

Walking on a tightrope: Lay a rope on the floor to create a straight line.  Your toddler has to walk on the rope without missing a step. Walk slowly, stay steady, no need to hurry. Place objects on the rope to form obstacles, then challenge her to walk the rope backwards without moving away from the line. Reward your child with a star.

My Gym

My Gym involves children in dynamic physical activity and movement that help in building neural networks in the brain. Making it easier for children to acquire intellectual skills, navigate complex social situations, and nurture emotional development.

To find out more about how My Gym plays a key role in supporting “whole-child development,” please visit any of our centres. Choose a day when you will be relatively free and come over with your child in tow. Your child could be an infant (as young as 6 months), a toddler or a preschooler, age is not a bar for enrolling.

From newborn to when they are five, children observe and take in everything they see, hear or touch. They also love when you chat, play and read to them, even though they may not understand a thing. Besides, your child’s brain grows the fastest during the first 5 years of her life. This is when participating in creative learning activities for preschoolers will give you big payoffs.

So make the time you spend with your child fun time by turning everything into a game that involves preschool enrichment programs.  And as children learn through play, every little thing you do with them can help them get ready for the big day – the day they go to a kindergarten for the first time!

Design your own preschool program

During the early years of a child, every day is a big opportunity to learn through play and grow a little. To make your little one thrive later, work out your own set of play-based learning activities for children that embrace the principles of developmentally-centered programs.

Here are a few age-wise tips to help you start on devising your own preschool enrichment programs and playtime ideas. Your child will find it safe to explore, and since you are always around to support, your child is sure to find the encouragement she needs from time to time.

0 to 6 months

Make every day a fun day When it is bath time, allow your baby to play with water. The more she plays, the more enjoyable a bath becomes. While she is playing, talk a little about water. The sound it makes, the waves it creates. Always use the same words, and use the same actions again and again. Pat the water with your hand to make a splash, and say “splash…splash…”

Or when you are changing the nappy, guess what your baby might be thinking and feeling. Turn it into words For instance, you can verbalise by saying, “you look happy” or “are you comfortable?”

Use sound, touch and feel Whenever you get an opportunity, make faces and see if your baby responds by copying you. Make funny noises with your mouth or better still, touch the baby’s stomach with your lips and blow air to make a noise.

Facing your baby, sing any song, it could be the one your mother taught you when you were small. Make up a little song like “head…shoulder…knee…and toe,” rhyme it with the words and touch the body parts the words represent.

There is a lot more fun to have like when playing “tickles” with your baby. This is sure to make your baby giggle with delight. Gently tickle and smile and laugh with her. Use simple words like ‘tickle time…tickle toe…tickle me’.

Copying the noises your baby makes will be loads of fun as well. When she does, react to what she is doing – try saying, ‘You’re talking to me,’ or, ‘You really make funny noises.’ Sing lullabies that are simple, soothing, and will sound like real music to your baby’s ears and even to you.

6 to 12 months

Make every day a fun day Use actions to match what you’re saying – like when you are going out, wave to your child and say ‘Bye.’ Do this every time you leave your child and when visitors leave too.

When you are looking at a picture book with your child, notice what she is looking at and describe it.  For example, ‘Oh, that’s a train,’ or ‘Look, a ball. Just like the one you have!’

Use sound, touch and feel Peek-a-boo will be a big hit with your baby. Use your scarf to start the game. Put it over your baby’s face or hide your own face with it. Slide it off slowly saying, ‘Where are you? Oh, there you are!’

You could even act out the actions in a song. For instance, put your baby on your lap, hold both her hands, gently move back and forth, imitating a rowing action and sing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat…”

Get hold of a rattle or some other noise-making object like a spoon to bang on a saucepan. Pay attention to what your baby does then copy it, always describing what you are doing using action words like ‘rattle…rattle’ or ‘clang…clang’. Once your baby gets a hang of it, the decibel levels can get quite high!

As a relief from the noise, try out a much quieter activity, like hiding a ball, a tiny box, a baby sock in a bag. Ask your baby to find what is inside the bag. Every time your baby pulls out an item, talk about what it is. “Ah, it’s the ball …it’s a box …It’s a sock for your little foot!”

12 to 24 months

Make every day a fun day Mealtimes are where you can give your child more choices but also get her to hear and understand more new words. For example, you could start with, “Would you like some grapes or want a banana?” Always showing the fruit and naming them at the same time. Pause, give her time to answer. There is no need to rush.

Say out aloud, the names of the foods your child is eating and talk about what they’re like. Use simple words like ‘sweet’, ‘round’, ‘smooth’, ‘cold’, ‘warm’. Add a dash of fun, pretend to be a rabbit as you nibble on a carrot, or on some cheese. Make sure that both you and your child have the same food to try!

Before bedtime, snuggle up together and look at a picture book. Wait for your child to point out some things for you. Talk about what she is seeing, use words for actions as well as for things – for example, ‘Ah, the baby is sleeping.’

Get ready to be creative When it is time to be creative, there is nothing to hold you back. Start drawing simple images and prompt your child to add to what you are drawing and even colour the picture. Speak softly and talk about the picture and colours. For instance, draw a house and point to the door and windows, the roof and the fence around the house. And trees in the backyard.

Spread some flour on a table and encourage your child to draw anything using her finger. No matter what she draws, praise her effort. The objective is to engage and involve and not point out mistakes!

How about a little story time using a puppet as the storyteller? Involve your child in creating one using an old sock. Cut two circles out of paper, put a black dot right in the middle and the eyes for the puppet are ready! Make up a travel story and let the puppet tell it in a funny voice. After the story ends, take turns to feed different foods to the hungry puppet. Sometimes, the puppet likes the food, and at other times, says “yuck!”

Time to play pretend Every child has a favourite toy and never wants to let go of it. Include the toy during all her daily routines, you can also make it a part of developing your child’s pretend play skills. Have her favourite dolly sit next to her at mealtimes, allowing your child to pretend to feed some toy food. Or, put the dolly to bed at the same time your little one goes to bed.

You could even combine water-play with pretend-play by giving dolly a bath. You can teach your child about body parts by asking her to ‘Wash dolly’s legs, wash dolly’s tummy’. When she’s all clean, dry dolly off with a towel, get her dressed again, and comb dolly’s hair. All the time talking about your actions while doing them.

Pretend play is extendable to suit any situation. Like pretend you want to go to sleep. Before closing your eyes, instruct your child to wake you up after a while.  Lie down, then begin to snore loudly. When your child wants to ‘wake’ you up, don’t open your eyes for a while. The longer you take to wake up, the more your child will be excited.

2 to 3 year olds

Make every day a fun day If you are planning on including your child in helping you do your daily chores, this age is just about right to make a beginning. This will help your child understand what daily tasks are like. Involve her in making her own bed by saying, “the bed is a little messy, let’s change the sheets.” Start with simple tasks like arranging the pillows and yes, don’t forget to praise and thank her for helping out.

It will be a good idea to take pictures or videos while your child is engrossed in doing her chores. Remember to talk about these pictures. For instance, you could say “

this is you washing the plates,” or “here is another one wearing your frock back to front.”

These can become conversation starters as well as a record of your child’s activities to share when dad comes home from work. Or when waiting in a queue at the grocery store. Or when you want to create an album as a keepsake.

Use sound, touch and feel Singing songs improves bonding, overcomes shyness and encourages your child to use her imagination. The good old “Old MacDonald had a farm” song will be an enjoyable starter. Ask your child to change the animals in the song, describe how they look, the sounds they make, the way they move…everything is allowed. Try it!

When you are through with singing, put on some music and dance together. Try playing “musical statues!” Suddenly stop the music and freeze. See who stops first, describe the silly positions you are frozen in!

Get ready to be creative Put together an album of memorable events. They could be anything, a ride on the metro, a walk in the park or a celebration. Every time you open the family event book, it will stir up happy memories you can talk about. Re-create the fun moments both of you had.

Change the scene by going out for a walk in the park. Collect natural objects like fallen leaves or flowers, pick up small pebbles or rocks to take home. Talk about the things you found together, look at the colours, feel the texture, is it smooth or rough? Round or sharp around the edges. If you found a funny looking rock, ask your child to paint it in the colours she likes. Draw the eyes and nose on it. Even give it a name.

There is nothing like playdough to get the creative juices flowing. You can involve your child in the process of making your own playdough at home. Share how you are going to make it. Talk about it using words like, “knead…squish…roll…pat…” while you do the actions. Show your child how to play, she will surprise you with the shapes she can come up with.

Time to play pretend Use two chairs, set them apart back to back and drape a blanket over them. This becomes your tent or a den. Pretend you are out camping…get inside together and act out cooking some food, eating it, read a book, and go off to sleep.

Or you can build a pretend car out of a cardboard box with wheels stuck on it. Allow your child to take you for a drive to grandma’s house. As your child pretends to drive the car, talk about what she is doing and check if she is following traffic rules. Say things like ‘slow down, you’re going too fast.” Or “Can you stop at the flower shop, grandma loves roses.”

About My Gym

To learn more about preschool enrichment programs and ideas, visit My Gym. Choose a day when you will be relatively free and come over with your child in tow. Your child could be an infant (as young as 6 months), toddler or a preschooler, age is not a bar.

My Gym knows that each child is unique and has a set of needs and abilities. With this in mind, we help your child develop critical thinking, creativity and interpersonal skills. Discover how even the youngest member of the My Gym community embraces the specially designed preschool learning programs.

Children start to learn early, beginning as early aswhen they are still in their mother’s womb. Having said that, let’s see what really are the essential skills that are expected in pre-schoolers. Especially at a time when life is full of wonder and moments that will be cherished by both you and your baby. Even the word ‘awesome’ will be understating this experience.