Why should I send my child outdoors to play?

Whether you have a toddler, preschooler or older child, their energy stores are never ending. Just when you thought they had climbed and raced enough, they still had enough energy for another game of tag. Why is that GREAT NEWS? Why should we be encouraging more activity outdoors? Because it promotes health-related fitness and movement skills, with the added bonus of stimulating brain activity (see my article titled: Exercise + Child = Enhanced Brian Development. Daily physical activity can be sometimes very hard to 'fit into' the schedule of already busy lives. But fortunately kids naturally love getting outdoors and running around, they don't see it as exercise, but as fun. However us, the parents or caregivers, stifle a natural need to exert energy and exercise different muscle groups because we are time poor. The TV, computer, and interactive games - are good baby sitters, but are keeping our kids indoors. They are not getting their daily requirement of exercise - which to them is just great fun. So how much 'FUN EXERCISE' is enough? The National Association for Sport & Physical Education has some fantastic guidelines for different age groups, which I have tabled below:

Infants
Infants should interact with parents and/or caregivers in daily physical activities that are dedicated to promoting the exploration of their environment.

Infants should be placed in safe settings that facilitate physical activity and do not restrict movement for prolonged periods of time.

Infants' physical activity should promote the development of movement skills.

Infants should have an environment that meets or exceeds recommended safety standards for performing large muscle activities.

Individuals responsible for the well-being of infants should be aware of the importance of physical activity and facilitate the child's movement skills.


Toddlers
30 minutes daily, accumulated, structured physical activity.

60 minutes minimum and up to several hours per day of daily of unstructured physical activity.

Should not be sedentary for more than 60 minutes at a time except when sleeping.

Toddlers should develop movement skills that are building blocks for more complex movement tasks.


Preschoolers
60 minutes minimum, accumulated daily of structured physical activity.

60 minutes minimum and up to several hours of daily, unstructured physical activity
Should not be sedentary for more than 60 minutes at a time except when sleeping.

6-12 Year Olds
60 minutes minimum, accumulated, and up to several hours, of age appropriate physical activity on all, or most days of the week, and should include moderate and vigorous physical activity

Children should participate each day in a variety of age appropriate physical activity lasting 15 minutes or more each day

Extended periods - that is of 2 or more hours - of inactivity is discouraged for children, especially during the daytime hours.

This all looks a little daunting - and could look like more running around from one sports field or dance studio to another, and laying out copious amounts of money forever - but in essence you don't have to do that. Just creating obstacle courses outdoors in your own back yard or a park with say frisbee games, ball games, tactical games, climbing structures, hoops and trampolines - you have your own gym and exercise / FUN place to play for hours and hours.



About the Author
Viv is the Director of Just 1 Degree Marketing Strategies, and practices both traditional and online marketing techniques. She is passionate about health and fitness and the negative impact of TV, indoor interactive games and the computer on generations to come. http://www.laughandplayoutdoors.com.au http://laughandplayoutdoors.wordpress.com

Active Communication

Active Communication

Signs when used in speech will make communication active, lively and engages the listener to a more interesting and meaningful conversation. In simple terms, active communication involves not only signs as with hands but body language as a whole.

Active communicators always receive active listeners.

When teaching, or explaining, an active communicator gets real and vivid transmission to his recipient and by far the result is incredibly amazing than that of a more secluded and reserved communicator.

Stimulation

You need to stimulate the child into developing by introducing new ideas, activities and allowing enough time and space to fully exploit these and maximise the benefit. While a baby responds and gets excited to a playful voice, a toddler doesn't: a toddler is animated and is into action. This a good time to become really lively and get them actively involved in listening. This is the best way to awaken their alertness to the surrounding so as to enhance their listening skills.

By the age of 20months, your child should be able to follow an instruction in form of a sentence as in; 'George, can you please pick up that book and take it to your room, please?' and he should be able to so at once. This reflects not only a child who is well behaved but a child who understands: a child whose listening skills are developed and not delayed. Sometimes we have mistaken listening as behaviour with listening as a developing skill. However, both go hand in waste - if my child's skills are not developed, his behaviour responses will be at a low rate and the reverse is true.

Entertaining with words

Great conversational skills will make you and the lack of them will break you. You may not be the homeliest guy on the planet, but if you're good with words you can still have some serious game with your clever pro-thinking monster baby.

It's not hard to be good with words - just pay attention to what you say and how you say it. Speak audibly - don't mumble or stutter, and put life into your hello's and goodbyes :-) However, you don't need to say much to become a great conversationalist. You just need to have a motive to drive you. With one thing in mind; giants are not born, they are made. Get ready to help yourself become the best communicator that has ever been.


It is not hard. It is a matter of setting some goals and making up your mind to achieve them.




About the Author
Carole Ssamula is a Parenting enthusiast and author. She spends her time nurturing children and arming parents and childcarers with top notch tips, tools and skills. Her latest book The Definitive Guide to Enhance Your Communication Skills Really First, is available on her website: http://www.natureaswellasnurture.com/activecommunication.aspx

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Educational Online Game Benefits for Children

Benefits of Online Games for Children
by April Mayes

Hopefully you have taken the time lately to do some brief investigation on the large variety of children's educational online games? Some parents believe the majority of the games online for young children are a variety types of arcade and adventure challenges, but there are literally of free online age appropriated games such as:geography, puzzles, seasons and more, as well. Online educational games are easy to play as they make it easy for young children to be educated and learn skills at the same time. Play a couple by yourself or with young children and you will see for yourself and understand just what young children can do online that helps them to learn more.

Just for Toddlers: Free online educational are a fun way for parents of young children to instill an interest in the learning process since computers fascinate most of our children. Most computer games are designed to be very entertaining as well as educational, so young children are excited about getting to play on the computer and they don't even feel like they are doing something that they are learning from. Toddlers are not all created equal and some toddlers show interest in math and letters, while others may be captivated with ABC's and vocabulary and some only want to play online games with action. You can quickly find games that will fit your child's current interests. There are fun games anywhere from pets to swimming and far beyond all that are created to entertain and educate all children. Most of them are subtle learning experiences that will lead your toddler or young child on to an fun adventure of learning.

As you watch them play these games, you will be astonished at how fast they begin to develop many different learning skills. Fun learning experiences can last for hours as more games for toddlers are becoming available on your own personal computer with internet access. Be sure the websitesyou select offers various of games that your toddler will want to revisit over and over again. Spending quality and quantity time with your toddler, playing educational games online the benefit will be for the two of you.

Pre-schoolers and Kindergarten: As your child begins, Educational can help them grasp concepts that they may be having a problem with in school in a easy and worry free way. A good tip is to find educational games that feature a favorite cartoon TV character, this will keep their attention longer. There are games they can play by themselves or if you have more than one child you can set it up for them to play together making all the more fun. This will allow you to teach them how to properly play with others when they win or lose. There are free online computer games that introduce phonics, math skills, reading, puzzles and more. Parents need to find a game that will keep your child's attention while focusing on the particular areas they need help with. A good tip might be a game with easy and motivating word puzzles.

A Free online educational game that is interesting for all children can be all the more satisfying if you play with them and teach them as you go. Games that focus on matching the letters to make more challenging words will help to increase your child's vocabulary and spelling techniques, and reaching a higher score with each level helps all children to be motivated for more. There are games for all elementary children that will help to improve hand and eye coordination, math skills, language comprehension, word recognition and reading.

Although educational computer games are good for toddlers and/or preschool aged children they should still be used in moderation. Computers are not to be used as a baby sitter for your child. Sitting in front of a computer playing the same game hour after hour will not be helpful your child. particularly significant for them to participate in physical activity and non-electronic educational physical activities as well.

Online educational games can help your child get motivated for learning and school. Balancing your life as a parent can be easier with age appropriate online games that help teach and provide family bonding.


About the Author
Amanda enjoys creating articles on various topics and believes that readers will be entertained by her unique perspective.



For more posts on online games, you may want to see the online games blog.

Toddler Crafts, Fun Toddlers Activity

Many women enjoy the hobbies of arts and crafts. When there are children running around the house, it can make it difficult to continue the enjoyment of arts and crafts.

There is only one solution for this problem, and that is to get your toddlers involved with you on some simple arts and crafts tasks.

A great, safe way to get your kids involved with your crafts projects it to make things with popsicle sticks. You can have your kids decorate the popsicle sticks with markers to their liking. Make sure you purchase washable markers.


Also, go for quantity, not quality, because more often than not your toddlers will forget to put the lids back on the markers. After they finish putting color on the sticks, find some pictures. You can use photographs, pictures out of magazines, or use a picture of them.

Use the popsicle sticks as a frame for the picture. After this, tie a string to each side of the picture, so you can hang it anywhere.

I am sure you have heard of macaroni necklaces. Every toddler should get the thrill of making their first macaroni necklace. Just put some macaroni in a jar, add some food coloring, and shake them around until you get the color you are looking for. Repeated this process until you get a satisfactory amount of color. Let the macaroni dry on paper towels.

After you get all of the macaroni colored and dry, provide your toddler with a piece of shoestring or yarn. Make sure to tape one end, so the macaroni does not fall off. Once you show them how to put the macaroni on the string, it will be easy for them. Let them pick the colors and design.

Then there is the always famous sock puppet. If you haven't heard of the sock puppet, this one is simple. All you need to do is decorate a sock with a mouth, eyes, and nose. A sock puppet can provide hours of entertainment for toddlers and can be made within minutes.

Another entertaining (and slightly messy) crafts idea is making art out of fruitloops. First, open the box of fruitloops and sort them by color. After you get all of the colors sorted, put them in a zip-lock baggy.

Crush them in the baggy until they get a sand-like appearance. After you have all of the colors crushed in baggies, you can put them in layers in a baby food jar. All of the fun of sand, without the risk of worrying about your toddler eating it.

Your toddler will certainly enjoy making binoculars. All you need is two paper towel rolls, a hole punch, glue, and yarn. First, glue the two paper towel rolls together so they look like binoculars. Next, punch a whole in each side and tied the yarn to each side. Do this so they can wear the binoculars around their neck like a necklace.

Let them look through the binoculars and describe what they see. It is always fun to give them the impression that they are able to see things that you can't. Like they have special powers with their binoculars.



About the Author
Article contributed by Theresea Hughes, creator of
http://free-toddlers-activity-and-discipline-guide.com a site dedicated to providing parenting resource articles for toddlers activity & child discipline with positive parenting tips and much more.

How Educational Children's Toys Can Help With Development

Keeping young children entertained is often a priority as a parent - an entertained child is a happy child and having fun children's toys around is a good way to achieve this. However, many parents don't think of the educational value toys can have; much of the time when a child is playing, he or she is paying close attention to what they are doing and this is an excellent time to bring in some didactic activity, ensuring the child develops their intellect as well as staying entertained.

Many studies dating back as far as the 1940s have stated that a child's IQ can be greatly increased during their first six years and using educational children's toys such as shape-sorters and flash-cards can be very helpful in this process, increasing language skills, memory and hand-eye co-ordination. Choosing toys which will help develop these skills in an entertaining manner can be a very helpful base for a child's education before they first begin school and this can hopefully be built upon in the years to come.

Choosing children's toys that are appropriate for the age of the child is also a very important aspect in helping with a child's development - picking something for a baby which is designed for use by a toddler for example, will most likely find the toy not being used to its full potential and could well be a wasted purchase. If the toy is intended for a toddler, choosing something which develops motor skills such as stacking or pulling, or helps with language development such as flash cards can be an excellent choice, whereas for a baby, something bright and colourful which develops hand-eye co-ordination will be more suitable.

Educational children's toys provide an excellent base upon which to aid in a child's development; they're certainly better than sitting in front of most television shows or video games, but they are still only half the battle. A parent being actively involved in the child's play, particularly with learning activities, is a very important aspect of aiding their development - they can encourage the child, help if they get stuck and praise them when they succeed, hopefully making their play both intellectually and emotionally stimulating.

Keeping a child entertained by sitting them in front of the television is an easy way to keep them out of mischief, but providing them with educational toys and spending the time to help with them can be an excellent way to both entertain and educate children at the same time, hopefully leading to a happy, healthy and well adjusted child before and during their school years.



About the Author
Thomas Pretty is a child development expert with many years of experience in advising learning centres. Find out more about children's toys at http://www.toysandlearning.co.uk/