Fun for the kids!

Children are naturals at showing love and affection. They enjoy sharing their hugs, kisses and excitement at seeing those they love.

Receiving a homemade gift from a child is such a special treat for the giver and the recipient. Most children love to create and the energy and joy that they put into what they are making is evident.

The crafts don’t have to be fancy or complicated. Put out coloured sheets of construction paper, markers, glue, glitter, and a paper doily and see how your wee ones delight in creating something beautiful.

A simple craft that still makes my heart flutter is a little circle of clay with my son’s handprint in it. He wrote his name with a skewer. When I see it now, I remember his tiny hand in mine and see his first attempts at printing his name and it brings back so many incredible memories. You can use clay that air dries and doesn’t require a kiln.

In many cultures, the making and sharing of food is a way of expressing love. Allowing your child to help you bake and decorate cookies is a wonderful way to create lasting memories and share the love to family members and friends with your tasty treats.

Speaking with your child about Valentine’s Day and it’s meaning will have a profound impact on them whatever way you decide to celebrate the holiday and spread the love!

This article was written by Suzanne Tuckett

Suzanne Tuckett is a writer, artist and mother of two grown sons. She was a stay at home mother for 18 years before restarting her career. Now she is looking forward to the day when she becomes a grandmother. Currently Suzanne is a promoter of good things at www.Loyal2U.ca 

When February rolls around I start to get excited!  What could be better than a special occasion dedicated to love?  What makes this second week in our shortest month my favorite has to be craft time with the kids.  Having two daughters, there is no shortage of pink paper and lace in our house, so it’s easy for us to whip up a beautiful and creative craft to display on our mantel, or present to a friend along with a big hug!

We always start by preparing our craft area with some packing paper or good old newspaper to catch the drips and drops that might not make it on to our final masterpiece!  Then we prepare our desired media – construction paper for card-making, glue, and don’t forget the glitter! (It’s the most important part!)  Along with some other designs, my girls always want to make the classic heart-shaped Valentine’s Day card, so a trick I’ve used to get that perfect outline is our V-day cookie cutters!  You can purchase large-sized cutters perfect for this job almost anywhere.  Just outline the cutter with a pencil and voila! You have the perfect heart outline for your card.

After penning a nice phrase or saying into the inside, my girls love to get crazy with the decorations!  It’s always a free-for-all with glitter and glue, not to mention the lace and ribbon!  By the end of the activity we have an assortment of dazzling heart-shaped cards made special for our friends with tiny hands – and don’t forget the love!

By Hillary Doucette

As the mom to two small daughters, Hillary is constantly on the go! She loves to work and keep busy, with her girls providing continuous fuel for her new writing projects.   With a background in copywriting, she is very passionate about getting information across. Hillary is a vegetarian with a love for animals, art, reading, music and just snuggling with her daughters watching a good chick-flick after a long day.

It takes a community to raise a child, and social media can help...

A while back I was sitting in a restaurant working on my computer as I often do in between appointments when I overheard a senior couple talking about Facebook. A friend of theirs had told them that they needed to be on the social media channel and they were trying to make sense of the idea. A young person was trying to instruct them but they were getting more and more confused. After a few minutes I couldn’t take it anymore and I leaned over and gave them a couple of simple tips putting it in language that the techno illiterate could understand. The gentleman smiled and thanked me and then he asked me what I do for a living. I told him that I am in social media marketing and then we had a real good conversation about why they should be using FB.

The number one growth area for Facebook right now is senior women from 55+ and up. Why?

Three reasons – 1. They are the only ones left not on there.  2. All their childhood friends are on the channel and they are connecting with people they have not seen in 30 years and having a riot as they do so. 3. This is where their grandkids are.

As parents this is great news! It takes a community to raise a child and once again the community can have access into the lives of our kids. Our teenagers my try to hide their lives from us as parents, but grandparents are somehow less threatening on FB and they stay linked to them. Aunts and uncles and cousins are viewing their pages and their photos and just like 20 years ago when a child did something wrong downtown, the phone will ring when our kids are up to no good online!

While they may not open up with Grandpa on a monthly visit, on Facebook they private chat with Grandpa just like he is one of the kids at school.  They will play Farmville together, share music, video clips and photos and more. The next thing you know the kids will be trying something new that Grandpa told them about and Grandpa will be watching a television show he had never heard of. So forward this article to the grandparents and encourage them to connect online to build relationships.

By the way, I am not saying that young children should be online unsupervised. Give your kids healthy boundaries that are age appropriate. Maybe that is an article for another day…

Kerry George

Always Loyal2U

Sometimes it is fun...

Before my oldest was born 17 years ago I read my first book about parenting. It was called “Raising Kids That Turn Out Right.” It was a good book. I read a few more over the years. I liked Dr. James Dobson too, and when child number three came along I picked up his book “The Strong Willed Child.” Yep. Number 3 was a bit more of a challenge. The first two were boys, and although they did give me a run for my money some days, they were pretty calm and easy to deal with compared to number three.

My girl is a beautiful and delightful child when she is in a good mood, but then there are the moods! The hormonal unbalances are nothing compared to all of the acronyms. ADHD, ODD and a few more I can’t even spell the initials. Even though I had been a Pastor for 12 years and a family advocate with dozens of cases nothing had prepared me for the “fun” that was headed my way!  I had to learn to laugh in the trying times, and operate in love in the middle of chaos and there was a whole lot of chaos. This gal puts the DRAMA into Drama Queen. I needed a whole new education just to cope. I had to learn all about ADHD and how I was literally dealing with the brilliance and creativity of a scientist one moment and then the cross over to evil genius the next.

The ADHD child is a riddle. Boys are different than girls too. Often they are more easily spotted because they jiggle about and have obvious trouble focussing, but with a girl it may not be so obvious. The distraction may be more in her mind. She is daydreaming in school and has trouble completing her assignments. As parents we think, “It can’t be ADHD, because my child is sooooo smart.” We don’t understand that a child with ADHD may be very intelligent. They may be Mensa material in fact. The ADHD child will be completely not interested and unable to focus in one area, but so ultra focused with a spirit of perfection in another area.

My daughter is very creative. Since she was 8 she could prepare a whole newsletter that looked like I did it and I am now a marketing professional by trade. However, math for her is a totally different animal. We can’t even get her to put an answer on the page to tell where she might land for a grade value. She is an amazing artist, loves to sing, and has “the moves.” But she is a terror to get out of bed in the morning and the Oppositional Defiance Disorder has some other perks that I won’t even get into here.

Structure is helpful to the ADHD child. What happens though when  Mom has ADHD too? Yep. That’s me. And worse, I am single. Single mom, making a living and supporting three kids while operating with ADHD. (That should be an advertisement in the personals – lol). No problem until the kids need the meals to be at the same time every night and clothes to be ready for school the next day. I know, I  know… Moms who do not have ADHD are shaking their heads in judgement right now thinking I should just get it together but ADHD doesn’t work that way. The button for structure is missing. So there is no point in getting upset with us. It is just not there. It wasn’t there for my mom and it isn’t there for me either.

The good news for parents today is that there is help. There are books to read, counsellors to be had, and an abundance of good materials to equip us. We can’t just change because of our ADHD, but we can learn a few more tools and then we manage a bit better.

Recently I ran into this one and it has me rather excited to give it a try. It is an online program that is about to launch it’s pilot project here in Calgary. It is designed to be fun and interactive for the whole family and it reinforces all kinds of good values and self-confidence.  But the best part for us is that it helps build a little more structure into our lives and that is really important for me and my ADHD daughter.

Me In A Tree is good for anyone with kids, but for those of us who have a child with ADHD I believe it is going to be a tool we will soon not want to be without. Check it out yourself, and let your friends know too. They are only taking a limited number into their free pilot project.

Click here to learn more!

This article was written by Kerry George who is a single mom of three children and a serial entrepreneur. She is the CEO of Loyal2U Email Marketing and Social Media as well as the owner and CEO of the Calgary and Cochrane Business Network. Kerry has written articles and blogs for a variety of online and print publications including Today’s Business Woman Magazine and the book “Juicy Fruit Christianity” still available on amazon.com.

These are some upcoming events with Kitty Raymond

January 24 Helping Your Child Learn to Play Independently
January 31 Toilet Learning the Easy Way
February 2 Sleep from the Start (prenatal class)
February 7 Sleep from Now On
February 14 Setting Healthy Limits (Discipline)

www.raymondparenting.com

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Parenting Tips & Miscellaneous

We revisited a couple of our favourite posts for junior news hounds & crafty kids.  We tried out some new recipes with the kids from Pinterest.  We tidied up the backyard with bubbles and water.  We shared some fun Father’s Day homemade gifts here and here.  We shared some fun popsicle recipes.  We found a fun iPhone app for the kids (and adults!).

Image via Wikipedia

I downloaded this app a long time ago and had forgotten about it until I got a notice of an update.  I thought I should revisit it again and have found that it is a super great app to keep the kids entertained!

The NFB app has to be one of the coolest apps ever!  My kids have recently discovered the “Cat came back song” and it instantly made me think to search for the NFB movie.  Yep it’s there and free and what’s even better is that it has a built in option to send it to your AppleTV which means I can watch the movies on my TV at home.  How cool is that??If you grew up in Canada you likely remember many of these great films like the The Cat Came Back, The Big Snit, The Sweater or The Log Driver’s Waltz. I was so excited to find all these for the kids to see (and especially for me to see again!).  There are so many others listed here as well.

So when you want to entertain the kids you can either pull this out at home or on the go (it’s best used with a wi-fi connection rather than 3G though) and re-live some of your childhood as well!

You can find the NFB app here or in iTunes.  And the best part?  It’s absolutely FREE!