RAISE UP YOUR KIDS and enjoy THE RIDE_PART 2_written for Tough Enough Magazine
Unlike what legends say, innovation can not be formulated in one bright moment! It needs deep knowledge, enriched with science, art, and practical life. We have tips here on how to raise an innovative child balancing three aspects: science, art and practicalities.
Despite the fact that mothers’ most challenging and unmeasurable mission in life is raising up a tiny new person to become a complete human being with a unique character , this can be the most enjoyable and adventurous experience with all uncertainties in the air… She only needs to release some of her stresses by sizing up her role in each maternity stage and act calmly. If she succeeded to reach this attitude, that will provide a better environment for her kids to grow unconfused and develop their skills while exploring life peacefully.
Mother’s role varies from caring, teaching, explaining, giving advice and accompanying in exploring life. It is not limited to organising, cleaning, feeding, driving and providing a safe and cosy place to live in. Do you think it can happen as calm as it really should be?
Last time we talked about "EARLY CHILDHOOD ADVENTURES". This time we are talking about the second maternity stage that starts as soon as your kid is able to hold a pen and draw on papers.
PRE-SCHOOLING / HOME-SCHOOLING
Be innovative with your kids to make a good use of their time filled with visual, spiritual and physical exercises. At this stage they will be always satisfied and happy if you help them to develop their skills and explore as much materials and systems as they can. This need is exactly equivalent to the need of getting good nutrition.
Stay away from electronic games as they don’t develop much skills. They are still useful to be used in a very limited time only to cope up with the new world. Do your best to limit the time spent in them in relevant to other games. Instead, take your kids to the nature and let them interact with trees and stones, sand and shells to feel the texture and structure of each. Let them explore natural materials and structures by living among them with all their hearts.
Painting is a great experience to express what they have learned from nature that stimulates kid’s imagination and fulfils their exploring and interacting need to a great extent. Use soft colours like poster colours and oil pastel ones. Using hard pencils does not help. The main reason mothers don’t prefer to provide poster colours to kids is the hassles that might happen to the room if they drop some colours over the floor or if the water falls apart!
Provide a safe environment to work peacefully using plastic sheets on the floor and comfy aprons. Use a water bottle that is not easy to fall down. One that is wider from downwards and stable. Make a working corner for your kids in which they can do such activities freely and provide other materials classified and organised and make them available and handy.
Exclude unsafe materials like sharp sticks. Colourful play dough, ice-cream wooden sticks, cotton, natural sponges, balloons, cotton threads, paper plates, beads… etc are different materials they can work with on papers or on cardboards… Enjoy designing your kids working corner and be innovative while setting it up to be as practical and suitable as possible.
Blocks are very important to start exploring structures and compositions. It develops the three skills in parallel: Aesthetics, scientific and practical knowledge. All wonderful minds told us how building with blocks together with their parents made them develop allot of skills… Use all kinds of blocks available to build simple and complicated structures with your kids… If in outside place and you found some sugar blocks don’t hesitate to build a pyramid :)
Sometimes mothers are not prepared with a toy to keep their kids busy when visiting a relative or in a restaurant with friends. Use any piece of paper to draw a simple drawing on it and cut the paper into 9 to 15 pieces as to create a puzzle… This doesn’t only help you spending a peaceful time, but also develop the innovative culture among your family.
Use the materials available at home to teach numbers and mathematics. Ask your kid to bring you a number of holders for instance… Ask them to move some dates from this plate to another… Ask them to count how many portions do we still have in our cake… and how to let six persons eat three bananas with equal portions…
When teaching the names of colours, make sure that volumes and shapes are similar. When teaching volumes, make sure that colours and shapes are similar, and so on with the shapes. Be sensitive with the input you give to your kids not to confuse them…
You can teach them how to use a scissor safely then let them cut the paper without interfering. If you think they are not able to use it safely keep it away from them. This applies to all sharp tools like cutters and knifes…etc
Let them help in cleaning a table and in measuring 2 cups of rice to develop their physical and practical skills…
A mother in this stage is the main entertaining instrument who knows how to develop her kids' skills. They need all your attention and your wide understanding and patience in order to raise up unique… Baby sitters can hardly have the energy needed for such a mission. Mothers should be proudly focusing with their kids in this stage.
In the next articles we will talk about other stages
SCHOOL AND SKILLS DEVELOPMENT
CHOOSING THE FIELD OF INTEREST
We would like to receive comments on the different characters that you have raised and how flexible you interacted in each case. Good success stories will be highlighted in our future issues, so share them with us by sending an email to:
info.architect.junior@gmail.com
