Quiet Time Talks and Reassurance

What are some quiet easily managed activities you can set up especially during this difficult time?  You can talk together while doing some reading or art for starters. Sit together, do an activity, and model calmness. Listen to what they have to say. Use the 10 second rule before jumping in and help children focus on what they can control like wearing, masks, washing hands, and keeping a distance from others for a while. You can practice how to handle uncomfortable social situations, reassure, and practice routines.  

Reading

 Reading every day helps to quiet children and create normalcy.    Arrange to purchase or check out books and find library programs during this unprecedented time.

Painting with Water

  Use quiet activities to teach expectations and answer questions. Science walking can collect rocks of various colors, sizes, and shapes. At home, set young children up with a waterproof area and provide a small paintbrush and a bowl of water or Mod Podge.  Painting builds strong hand muscles to print letters.  Notice how the color shows up like magic.   A few can be kept in a pocket for holding the first day of school. 

 Pet Rocks  

   Help children use permanent markers to draw a face on the surface of favorite large rocks. Help them glue on a little yarn to make hair with small dots of glue to save glue. Teachers will love you. Can you think of a good name for each rock? Place the friends on your table, bookcase, garden or backpack.

Crayon Resist

  Use a crayon on paper to carefully print your young children’s names in big letters.   Use a capital for the first letter and lower case for the following letters.  Then use water with a little paint color to make a wash over the whole sheet.  The name will stand out and be a perfect door decoration or book cover for a whole series of pictures. You can see dots or dashes to outline names. Show children how to start at the top of each letter to correctly follow the dots to print their names. Praise what they can do. They’ll try their best.

 Favorite Pictures   

  Glue family photograph printouts to a paper decorated with favorite flowers, fruits, animals, vegetables, and toys.  Print a title on each, for example:” My Favorite People and Toys.” Talk with children about choices and use a marker to print the name of each item. This is a good activity to practice letters and beginning sounds of each word.  Staple the pages together to make a little comfort book. 

More Ideas and Activities....See the authors’ book “Learning Through the Seasons” at area bookstores and grandparentsteachtoo.org. Also check our audio Podcasts WNMU Radio 90; Youtube video activities; and join us on Pinterest

Photos: Fran Darling, fdarling fotos

Helping Children to Settle Down

Ways to Help Children Develop Emotional Health

“Emotional Health is a lifelong Superpower.”-Angela Pruess, child psychologist

   

How do we help our children develop emotional health? 
 Angela Pruess has some every good scientific and practical ways to help families. Her many helpful suggestions are at parentswith confidence.com and some are shared with her permission.

 Kinds of Breathing

• Bear breathing: Together Inhale through the nose, to a count of four, pause for a count of two; breathe out for a count of four, pause for count of two and repeat. This will help  ground kids and adults before naps, tests, or a difficult task.
• Hissing Breath: Breathe in through the nose with a long deep inhale and out the mouth with a hissing breath slow and long. This will slow everyone down mentally and physically.

  

  Many Breathing Techniques are Helpful

• Flower Breath: Imagine smelling a rose or daffodil.  Breath in through the nose and out through the mouth. People become conscious of breathing.
• Bunny Breathing: Take in 3 quick sniffs through the nose and one long exhale out the nose pretending to be bunnies sniffing for carrots to eat. This is good when children are so tense and upset that they can’t find their breath.  It will help them connect with their exhale so they breath instead of spin out.

More Settling

• Cuddle with a warm cloth or therapeutic wrap on the back of the neck, back, shoulders, legs wrist or the back of the feet. Therapeutic wraps are filled with natural grain and dried French lavender and may be warmed in the microwave or cooled in the refrigerator. You can also cuddle with a stuffed animal or a real one.
• Draw, paint, doodle, scribble, or do Zen tangle.
• Wrap up like a burrito together and talk, tell a story, or sing softly. 
• Do some animal- walks like a bear, crab, jumping frog. Hang upside down and while leaning against the back or cushions of a couch. Do a wall push up or hand stand.
• Try some kids’ yoga: warrior pose, tree pose, chair pose downward dog stretch, hero pose or plank. Watch a dog lie on its back with feet up for a gentle scratch and emulate it. 

• 

  Cuddle, Crawl, Stretch, Doodle, Challenge, Climb

  Make a fort and climb in together to read a book by flashlight, have a nutritious snack, turn off the lights, or take a nap.
• Do a 5-4-3-2-1 Challenge.  Name five things you can see, four things you can hear, three things you can touch, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.  This is a grounding effect. It helps pull us into our body’s senses and out of our overly active emotion center of the brain. 

For more see grandparentsteachtoo.blogspot.com;wnmufm.org/Learning Through the Senses live and podcasts; Pinterest, and Facebook. Check out parentswithconfidence.com.

Photos: Fran Darling, fdarling fotos  

Lacing Cards Fun and Helpful

Materials

Sometimes families need quiet time and easy activities to help provide that peacefulness.  Lacing string through holes of colorful cardboard pictures is a cheap quiet activity for many developmental stages.
Materials: 
  Cardboard or paper plates, hole puncher, yarn or string, scotch tape, colored picture or paper, markers, and glue.
What to do:
  Gather sturdy paper plates, or eight- inch square pieces of cardboard or cereal boxes.
  To prepare the lacing backgrounds, decorate one side. Children may cut out colorful magazine picture of one large object and glue the picture on one side of the cardboard. They may also color a large simple picture from a coloring book like a pumpkin, butterfly, train or person. Once colored and cut out, glue it on.

Color, cut glue...

Another possibility is to draw a circle, star, square or other geometric figure with a fat marker. In all cases, reinforce the back of the cardboard background with tape where the holes will be so the cardboard will not tear.
   Use a hole puncher to make holes one to three inches apart along the outline of the picture.  Young children will probably not be strong enough to do this part.
  If desired, frame the picture with holes around the edge and about two inches indented for older children. They can experiment making yarn or string designs as frames.

Prepare Lacing Backgrounds

One can also add a bit of math, pre-reading, and organization aid by numbering or placing the ABC’s next to the holes. This step will help children create a beautiful lined picture when complete.
  Gather one or two foot pieces of colorful strong yarn or string that will easily fit through the holes. Shorter is better than longer to avoid entanglement of string and children. It is easy to start a new short piece, but frustrating to untangle a long one. Encircle each end of the yarn with tape similar to shoelace ends.
 For storage, place each lacing card in a plastic bag and tie the required strings in a big loose knot to keep them from being a knotted mess.
Learn to Tie
  Show young children how to sew in and out to avoid wrapping the string around the card.  They may need help following the numbered and lettered holes Sometimes they may want to make their own path.
  Older children may like sewing on a large button between two punched holes. They may enjoy using a large blunt tipped plastic needle to sew from hole to hole.  
  Older children may enjoy using two longish pieces of yarn hanging from the squares to practice making knots or making bows for their shoes.  For tying shoes use the easier bunny ears method. 

Photos: Fran Darling, fdarling fotos

More Ideas and Activities....See the authors’ book “Learning Through the Seasons” at area bookstores and grandparentsteachtoo.org. For more help to prepare young children for success in school see the authors’ web site: www.grandparentsteachtoo.org. Also check our audio Podcasts WNMU Radio, 90; Youtube video activities; and join us on Pinterest