Greetings

Happy New Year! Hello everyone, welcome to our January newsletter! As always, we provide an overview of what is happening within our childcare community. This month, we will focus on how to cultivate listening as a valuable skill in young children.

Young children aren’t the best listeners but when they do, they commit what they hear and learn it and commit it to their hearts. Young children have such short attention spans that parents and caregivers can barely put a sentence together before their toddler is off to explore the next best thing that catches their attention. 

Exasperated and exhausted, parents and caregivers can only breathe a sigh of relief once the child finally learns how to sit still and listen, even if just for a few minutes. Understanding your message and them following it is 

Why Children Don’t Listen?

It’s no secret that children have short attention spans, what with a world full of distractions. Each moment offers a new more exciting and amusing discovery, pulling their focus in multiple directions. As a result, the challenge lies in capturing and maintaining their attention long enough to impart valuable everyday life lessons. 

Understanding the reasons behind their inattentiveness can give way to using more effective strategies to help them master the skill of listening.

What Parents Can Do

Reverse the roles–be the listener.

Young children are very communicative and demand attention throughout the day. While parents and caregivers might be busy, lending an attentive ear teaches a child how to listen with full undivided attention. Young children are communicative little fellows, seeking constant interaction and attention throughout the day. While parents and caregivers might be too focused in their chores, taking the time to lend an attentive ear shows the child what’s the right behaviour to listening.

Practise active listening.

Getting down to their eye level helps you become a more active listener and makes the child feel you are listening to them. It shows the child how engaged and receptive you are to what the child is sharing. Nodding and responding appropriately also helps the child know you are fully present and listening to them. 

Use humour to encourage them to listen. 

Children’s natural mode is play so use play and humour to get their attention back. For example, pretending to find their lost ears when the children aren’t listening to you might bring their attention back to you. 

Use clear and simple language. 

Sometimes children do try their best to listen but get lost in the complicated conversation. So try to use short sentences with simple words. This allows children to better understand and digest information and follow through.

Encourage questions and discussions.

Questions, no matter how silly or weird, can help your children become better listeners. When they ask a question, their curiosity demands them to listen to be satisfied and engage with whatever answer they’re getting. Active discussions also help children not only become a better listener, it also helps them become a better critical thinker.

The Takeaway

Helping children master the art of listening requires patience, consistency, and creative approaches. By actively engaging in their conversations, creating conducive environments, and employing intentional strategies, parents and caregivers can help children become better listeners. Being a good listener in a world that’s full of distractions helps a child become a better communicator and learner.

0-12 month development

How Long Should My Baby’s Nap Be?

Author: Casey Clark

Babies tend to nap multiple times a day instead of being alert and awake than older children. Now how long a nap should last varies depending on a baby’s age. Babies aged 0 - 3 months old may nap for as long as 4 to 7 hours a day. As they grow older, the naps can be less frequent but consolidated into longer naps. 

Find out more about how long your baby’s nap should be in this article.

1-2 year development

Toddlers learn to reason logically before they learn to speak, study finds

Author: Universitat Pompeu Fabra - Barcelona

Even before toddlers learn to babble or say words of everyday objects, they already know to reason logically. That’s what one study found after subjecting toddlers to a battery of tests to see if they’ll be able to guess objects based on logical reasoning. When faced with a new object they didn’t know the name of, they are able to correctly guess using logical deductive reasoning.

Find more about the experiments and how natural logic contributes to a toddler’s cognitive learning here.

2-3 year development

Doctor shares when you should stop giving your child a dummy

Author: Dominique Birouste

Dummies, pacifiers or binkies are a toddler’s main tool for self-soothing. However, using it too much as baby teeth begin to emerge may cause dental concerns in the future. A cosmetic dentist says that its long term effects on teeth structure hinges on 2 basic factors: frequency and duration. He also advises parents to start weaning their children off the dummy as early as 2 years old.

Find helpful information on how to limit dummy use for better teeth growth in this article.

3-4 year development

1 in 4 adults think smacking is necessary to ‘properly raise’ kids. But attitudes are changing

Author: Divna Haslam

While physical punishment or ‘reasonable force’ is still legal as a way for parents to discipline their children, studies show the view about smacking is slowly changing. Even when research has shown smacking only makes children behave worse, parents still resort to using it to discipline their children. However, generation of parents and parents-to-be are on their way to move away from smacking.

Find more about this study and other ways to discipline children other than smacking here.

4-5 year development

Gentle parenting can be not so gentle on parents, new research suggests

Author: Annie Pezalla

Gentle parenting has been the newest parenting style trend that parents of the current generation embrace. However, it is a parenting style that emerged not out of academic research but from social media. Now new research shows that in spite of the term “gentle” parenting, whilst it may render a gentler treatment of the child, this parenting style seems harder for parents to bear. 

Find out more about what the most recent study says about gentle parenting here.

Confetti Science for Kids New Year’s Eve Activity

Welcome the new year with a burst of confetti in this baking soda chemistry experiment. In this STEM activity, children exercise their fine motor skills as they measure, mix and feel the fizz from this baking soda and vinegar mixture sprinkled with confetti.

Find out how to make this sparkling concoction of confetti here.

Salt Dough Dinosaur Fossils

In this STEM activity children will be able to master their fine motor skills as they imprint their favourite dinosaur or toy to a salt dough. Kids will also have fun measuring, mixing, and kneading the salt dough.

Find instructions on how to prepare the salt dough and make dinosaur fossils out of it here.

Tape Fingerprints

A way to make children realise their individuality and great introduction to forensic science, or science of crime, get kids interested in their own fingerprints. So don on their investigative caps and do a whoddunit game using lifted tape fingerprints.  

See the procedure on how to create tape fingerprints here.

Celery Food Colouring Experiment

Let kids see how osmosis works in a colourful STEM experiment. Children can choose colours to use in their experiment. A change in colour on the leaves can take anywhere from 2 to 24 hours so you can make this STEM activity last the whole day or two. 

Get the steps and concepts taught in this coloured celery experiment here.