The Joy Of Learning

Low cost family vacation

Most children do not care whether you bring them to the Europe or the Disney World one hundred times before they are ten, what they do remember is the quality family time and precious moments they have with their parents.

As parents’ work life get hectic, children get busy in their school and after school activities, getting together becomes a privilege, something that is very rare nowadays. Which make it all the more important to get together as a family and do something together during the weekend after a hectic week. Picnic is one of the easiest way to get together without much organization and planning.

You may go to a far away place, spending lots of money on traveling and travel insurance. Or simply going to a park or beach, spreading out sheets or blankets, lay the picnic basket and enjoy being together. A wonderful way to draw your children closer to the nature and to you!!

Planning a learning experience during vacation

Learning is not limited to what happen when your child sits down with a book. Vacation time is an excellent time to expose your child to a lot of hand on knowledge and exciting educational activities.

Many parents would think of visiting the museums, art galleries and zoos as educational activities that they can incorporate into their vacation, but it doesn’t have to be limited to this activities only.

Apart from all the fun and exciting rides, some theme parks have aquatic shows and underwater aquariums, which offer fun, excitement and thrills all at once!

You can also visit a state park, national park, reserved forest, animal sanctuaries, or a historical landmark. Most of this popular vacation choice will have guided tours, they can all be exciting learning experience for children. Summer is here soon, time to get out thatRimowa suitcase and pack for a family vacation!

Parents who work at home

If you are parents and you have to work to support your family, you would surely experience the constant tension of spending enough time with your children outside of your work hours!! Undeniably, parenting is more demanding than any full time job because it’s a 24-hour on call job that requires you to stay alert.

That’s why we see more and more parents try to balance work and time with family by choosing to work at home. Many parents work out of home, either running a home business or telecommuting, and take care of children at the same time. This gives more flexibility to plan time between work and family. The parents may fulfill their parental obligations while still making an income to support their family financially. This saves money that otherwise spent on expensive office attires and save all the time that spent on commuting!

The ideal situation is that the work at home parent is able to balance the business time with parenting responsibilities without a loss in income or career opportunity. In some situations, the business activities can be integrated as part of parenting i.e. taking children on business errands, scheduling work when the children are resting.

Many home-based businesses work on a shoe-string budget and really don’t have much allocation for marketing. One of the most inexpensive marketing tools to have is giving out little freebies like personalized pens with contact info of the business. Internet is a great resource where you can start looking into the kind of business or job you can work at home and details on how you can market or advertise your services to potential customers.

Selecting toys for children

Do your children sometime get more interested in the wrapping and the box that comes with gift? So many children just have way too many toys and some just get cast aside minutes after being unwrapped.

Many of the toys available in the market are often too complicated or require assistance to learn how to play them. Some are not developmentally appropriate!

The most important part of selecting the right toy is the age of the child and what are his interests at that particular developmental stage. For instance, if your child is under six months old, things that rattle attract this curious little creature who sees everything brand new. However, you may have to create a game out of them because he doesn’t yet have the motor skills to do much with such a toy!

The second question to ask when selecting a toy is: does it designed to help in developing a certain skill? For younger children, you have to ensure there are no small parts that could become choking hazard. You may notice your child becoming interested in certain activities such as pushing, pulling or sorting items. When you notice your child start focusing on a certain activity, you may want to pull out or purchase a toy that helps develop that skill.

Rotate your toy inventory every few weeks, store up toys that he no longer seems interested in. Store toys that your child no longer seems interested in. Every few weeks, rotate some older toys back into her toy box and you will see your child have a renewed interest in a toy the previously stopped playing with. Reuse the toys for different purposes as your child gets older is a great way to recycle old toys as well.

You not only want to enjoy playtime with your child, hopefully the toys you choose will be fun and encourage proper development in your child as well.

Protect your children from harmful UV rays

My dermatologist friend said whenever he sees children playing under the hot sun, he sees future customers! :-) It is critical for children to be protected from harmful UV rays because it’s estimated that people typically receive more than half of their lifetime sun exposure before the age of 18.

While you think your child looks cute in a pair of vintage sunglasses, there is a need for more awareness of the importance of sun protection! Most people will apply sun tan lotions for a child when he is out in the hot sun, but not many will bother to put him in the UV protective swim wear. Sun burn may cause the most damage, getting a tan after all is essentially cooking one’s skin. The harmless “healthy glows”, deep tans and sunburn can leave permanent mark on the skin and can be harmful indeed. Check out the www.sunsationalstyle.com for UV protective swimwear for your children.

Don’t parents want the best for their children?

Most parents want the best for their children and would do anything to provide for their children. Even the most carefree singles will start to consider buying a house once they are married and ready to start a family.

They would reconsider their apartment dwelling lifestyle and how it may not be conducive for children who need a lot of space to run about. Most may start out in an apartment, but will eventually do the grown up things - take up Mortgages to buy a single family home, so that their children can grow up in a family friendly environment with lots of space.

The ironic thing is, sometime because of all the financial commitments, parents have to work harder and that takes away a big chunk of time that parents could spend together with their children. Many people are over committed with mortgage on a big house, some may even end up in need of foreclosure help. Guess there has to be a balance somewhere, a big house in the absence of parents do not constitute an ideal home to raise a happy family!

Over scheduling children

It is good to arrange some after school activities for our children . However, many parents are outsourcing their parental responsibilities and over scheduling their children. Many people around me put their children into too many after school programs or courses, from reading classes, math classes, music classes, language classes, dance classes, … and so many more.

These children are occupied with this so called enrichment classes everyday of the week, sometimes including weekends. They are so busy being chauffered around for various classes, they hardly ever have time to just relax at home. And at night, they’ll be too tired to study for school or just to play with the family. Don’t you feel sad for them? I do, even though these children may think that’s the way life is.

In our current social economic realities, after school programs are a boon to many parents who work full time outside of home. However, many after school programs are just teaching-to-the-test kind of paper mills, some pressurizing kids to do too much too soon. Parents should however restrain themselves from outsourcing all their parental responsibilities to such programs. They are there to give additional support and are complimentary in nature. Therefore, their importance should also be limited.

When a child’s afternoon is filled with classes, tuitions, and other forms of enrichment activities, children do not really get the time to be just children or even being deprived of the cherished family time. Undoubtedly, there are children who felt burdened and stressed with such a demanding schedule loading so heavily on their frail little shoulders.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Don’t we all get asked that question when we are little and then when we were ready to graduate from high school? What was your answer when you were asked that question in elementary school ?

Most children tend to choose what is familiar though some may grow up venture into careers totally different from their experiences. So my point is do you explore the different possibilities of career choices with your children?

It’s not up to us parents or teachers to tell the children that they shouldn’t do this and that. What would you say if your children say they want to be hip hop artists or they want to go to beauty schools to be nails artists or work on Disney cruises? Are you going to frown or say why don’t you try ______ instead?

It’s our responsibility to help our children to figure out what is out there, so spend some good time doing some research and explore the opportunities out there together. We should be glad that they have an idea of what they want to do. Are you glad no one told Charles Shultz that he couldn’t draw dogs and spoiled brats for a living! Then what would we be without Snoopy??!