Parenting is Child's Play : Independence

Allowing your child to independent.

That sounds obvious, and maybe even easy.
But it is something I believe every parent may struggle with at some point in those early independent, yet dependent, years.

How to keep some control of the chaos, yet allow your child to have a say, takes some balance. Jillian, author of the inspiring learning blog A Mom with a Lesson Plan, helps us achieve that balance. Or, at least, lets us know how she's learned to balance it out.

I have always believed that kids should have a space that allows them to practice independence.

Three tips to remember that Jill shared with me are:

1. Change the Rules. 
2. The tools must be available.
3. Everything has a place.

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Parenting is Child's Play : Responsibility

Henry is a big help around the house.

He really is.

When he's in the mood.

I'd like to implement a chore system in our house, but before doing so, I asked Sarah, founder of füdoo Boards, how to do it. As well as inquiring about why its important for kids to have some responsibilities.

How can I raise a responsible child?

It looks like I'm right on track with starting this with Henry at this age. Sarah says, "It is time to begin talking about helping the family unit when your child is about three years old. Your child can perform simple jobs and feel great satisfaction for helping the family."

Sarah named off just a few benefits of allowing children to take on chores and responsibilities :

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Raising Kids is Tough : Eating Battles

For the Raising Kids is Tough series, August has been all about your Eating Battles. This is the final edition of Eating Battles.

This week are all the questions that came in throughout the month and I've posted on Facebook to have fans, as well as the experts, give you their answers!

The Hands On Experts:

• Mom Expert: Jill of A Mom with a Lesson Plan
• Parenting Expert: Erin of The Intentional Parent
• Teaching Expert: Deborah of Teach Preschool
• Lifestyle Expert: Sarah of Füdoo Boards

These hands on experts have given their professional and personal answers to help lessen your eating battles that you submitted.

Your Eating Battles:

• Dinner Table Battles
• Going Out to Eat
• Picky Eaters
• Healthy Snacks 
• More Eating Battles [The Experts' advice below] : 
• Eating Independence
• Slow Eating
• Constant Hunger
• Eating Manners

[Do you have a question that wasn't listed? Submit your Raising Kids is Tough questions!]

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Raising Kids is Tough : At the Dinner Table

I announced the Raising Kids is Tough [RKIT] series on the blog and asked for your toughest questions. 

Each Monday for the month of August, I'm going to focus on the battles of eating that every household has at one time or another. Very generously, the hands on experts have given their professional and personal answers to help lessen those battles.

The Hands On Experts:

• Mom Expert: Jill of A Mom with a Lesson Plan
• Parenting Expert: Erin of The Intentional Parent
• Teaching Expert: Deborah of Teach Preschool

And, we have a special guest expert, and a wonderful sponsor, Sarah of Fudoo Boards is here for this eating series to give her food expert input on your eating battles.

Your Eating Battles:

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Art : Frozen Painting

Beating the Heat has been fun last week. 

Even though it was miserably hot, we used lots of ice to keep us cool.

So far, George has played with ice cubes [a simple sensory activity for babies] and Henry discovered a healthy snack of fruit in a frozen ice excavation.

We even managed to keep cool while creating art!

I've seen a lot of ice cube paintings out there, 

where you color some ice cubes with some food coloring.

It often gives a watercolor effect, often very pastel.

For this paint project, I was looking for a something a little more... vibrant!

So we got artsy with some frozen paint.

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Sensory Play : Frozen Excavation

In order to Beat The Heat last week, we froze some berries and excavated them out!

Using tools to find hidden treasures is thrilling for a preschooler! 

Henry was so excited to dig out his buried treasure.

We got started by making the buried treasures together.

We had some leftover fruit in the fridge: blueberries, black raspberries and grapes.

Add them to an ice cube tray partially filled with water and freeze them again.

[We also made a larger buried treasure in a Pyrex dish.]

I think Henry snacked on as much of the fruit as he did burying them.

[This might be a sneaky way to get in a healthy snack!]

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Baby Play : Ice Sensory

I'm claiming this week as Beat The Heat Week here on hands on : as we grow. This past week has been miserably hot and humid here, 100+ degrees and add on 95% humidity. Miserable. This week doesn't look like its going to be much better either.

Along with breaking out the pool to cool off every day, we found some other activities to do outside and make the heat more tolerable. We beat the heat.

Something easy for George to do [that Henry enjoyed as well] that kept him cool was simply a bowl of ice cubes. Though they didn't stay frozen long, we added to them to keep the activity going.

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Raising Kids is Tough : Ask the Experts

 

Raising a Kid is Tough.

Teaching your children to become responsible adults is a lot of pressure for teachers and parents. To lend a helping hand, experts are here to lend you an ear along with their advice.

The Raising Kids is Tough Series is a series of posts dedicated to help take the tough out of raising kids. Each month your questions on a specific topic will be answered by the Hands on Experts!

Who are the Hands on Experts?

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It's Playtime! : Paper Play

Last week on It's Playtime, I featured all about colors.
This week, its all about paper.

Sometime to do with both paper and colors:

A Color Collage!
I'm over at Mama Pea Pod today sharing about this fun learning activity!

As for some play ideas with paper?
My play pals punch, fold, rip, glue and paint paper in all sorts of ways!
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It's Playtime! : Colors

Henry has learned his colors long ago.

He has also learned the different shades of green, blue, pink, purple and other colors.

We're just learning what happens when you mix two colors together.

[I do think he has what blue and yellow make together figured out though!]

There are lots of fun ways to implement learning about colors in your preschooler, 

These Playtime pals have given us great examples beyond just color recognition. 

There are an infinite amount of shades of colors, identify them in a color hunt. Sun Scholars uses paint swatches and sends the kids off to find the colors.

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It's Playtime! : Playing Favorites

The Best of It's Playtime!

The posts that you liked the best, by heading over to their blogs or liking them on the linky. 

These are your favorite play posts:

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It's Playtime! : Animals

Animals.

Cow. Learning animal names.

Moo. Learning animal sounds.

Its a big part of the beginning stages of talking for a toddler.

Flying. Learning animal movements.

Nests. Learning animal habitats.

For a preschooler, animals become part of their world.

This week, Kate at An Amazing Child is celebrating Eric Carle.

We checked out a few books by Carle that we didn't have, from the library.

 

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It's Playtime! : Gardening

My Mom, Henry and I planted our garden last week.

I'm curious how Henry will react when he sees the first seedlings of peas.

Or when the pumpkins are large enough to carve!

And when we can make cucumber salad with fresh, from the garden, cucumbers.

The experience of growing a garden to a preschooler has lots of possibilities.

Getting the kids involved with gardening gets them involved in their eating, too! 

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It's Playtime! : Big Art Edition

Creating Art while sitting just doesn't do it in this house. 

To get Henry the most involved [and happy while doing it],
I come up with ways to make art that gets him moving as well.

The best way to do this?

Make the art big!

The It's Playtime posts that catch my eye the most are the ones with Big Art! 

More specifically, Big Art that uses body movement.

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It's Playtime! : Play Recipes

Recipes for play!
Making your own recipes is not only cheaper, but usually its better than the store-bought kind.
Plus, making the goodies with your preschooler is an activity itself!

We may have our tried and trued recipes that we use over and over.
[Henry and I have only attempted one playdough recipe so far! Eeek!]

But there are many versions of every recipe!
[The Imagination Tree is loaded with lots of playdough recipes to try out.]

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It's Playtime! : Upcycle before Recycle

Recycling versus Upcycling? I'm still unsure of the differences, so I had to look it up and found this article from Intercon. How I understand it is to upcycle means you give new life to or reuse items without degrading it. Recycling degrades the item and turns it into something new again.

So my advice: Do both! Upcycle the item as many times as possible. Then recycle. And start over again!

With that in mind, last week's It's Playtime was full of ways to upcycle products!

I've been in awe of this upcycle post from Bellelli Educacion since it was first linked up to It's Playtime. Look at this city that was built by children from all recyclables! 

Talk about creativity!

Its hard to even recycle anything, knowing something like this can be created!
How can I store all these recyclables so that I can use them to upcycle?

There's so much inspiration to upcycle your recyclables before you actually recycle them! Give them new life!

Here's only a few more upcycle inspirations that were posted to last week's It's Playtime:

Upcycle a Bottle for Pottery Art [kinderpendent]	Upcycle Wipe Boxes to Flip Flops [Having Fun at Home]	Upcycle Paper Tubes for Printing [Play Create Explore]	Marble Run from Upcycled Paper Tubes [Tinkerlab]

High Five to these play friends!

[Go leave them a playful comment!]

[Grab featured badge on the right, if you were featured]

Have you been playing this week?

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It's Playtime is a community for play loving bloggers to share ways to play, hosted by: 

• Let the Children Play
• Messy Kids
• The Imagination Tree
• Quirky Momma
• hands on : as we grow

<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.handsonaswegrow.com/search/label/It%27s%20Playtime" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="It's Playtime at hands on : as we grow"><img alt="It's Playtime at hands on : as we grow" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5KqJnu7hGflqac1Y_Y26MiH9nvt940BywBIFiHtRTWYLqr212qj25UOK-0-_yBxdMhKHq6EW369znAE4VDyrh-posSQJvT2rLCBa2NGmj7a6vzOW9POOarg-BmdY33KXQMFqSngOd60I/" style="cursor: move;" width="125/" /></a></div>

How to Play : Share a post about a playful activity. Grab the It's Playtime button and pop it into your post/blog. Invite your readers to the weekly playdate! Stop by every Thursday and add your link about play. Your link will show up on each of the blogs in the It's Playtime community. Each week the playtime hosts will choose favorite posts to feature. (By linking you are giving us permission to use an image and link back to you, if featured.) Visit other posts that catch your eye. Commenting on posts that you find interesting or inspiring is a wonderful way to develop your own playful community.

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-- Henry is 3 years old --

-- George is 7 months old --

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