Bubble Blow Painting

Bubble Blow Painting

Here is an easy simple full-of-fun art activity. You can do it in a big or small group of children.

Material :

• soap liquid

• water

• child safe paint

• straw

• blank paper

• plastic cups for the mixture container
  

Instruction :

• Mix soap liquid, water and paint. Stir. Do it with different variety of colour.

• Dip straw into the mixture and blow it slowly to create some bubbles.

• Blow the bubbles onto a piece of blank paper.

• Use different colour to create a colourful art piece.

Note : You should make sure that your child know how to blow the liquid properly instead of sucking it.

Children Adjustment Period

How to Deal with Children Adjustment Period Positively

As we all know one of the important milestones of any young child's life is attendance in a group care setting. However, this step has always been a hard period for either the child or the parents. The beginning of school year has always been a period of time full with anxiety, fear, tears and tantrums for everyone. Families, as well as teachers in early childhood institution have come to recognize this period as a period of adjustment. Both of parents and teachers will have to deal with crying and frightened students in the first few weeks of their adjustment time. The crying behaviour could sometimes even last longer than merely few days. This anxiety and fear are very common feelings, not necessarily to very young learners; sometimes the bigger ones experience this also. It even happens to us adult. Let us take our first experience taking on airplane flight as an example. We probably had feelings of fear and anxiety as well. The same feeling happens to your child when they first learn that they are going to go to school. However for us adult, we are able to cope with our fear, because we have learned to anticipate and imagine what lay on the other side of that flight. A child's first venture from home is just as dramatic, but for him, the "other side of the flight" is a blank page. It is the parents' responsibility as their first circle educators to fill in the pictures to help them adjust with their first "flight" experience.
You can help your child filling the pictures in their blank sheet with talking about his new school. Discuss about their new friends, classrooms, teachers, playgrounds and give them the sense of excitement of their school. Be sensitive! Accept his fears with empathy and understanding, rather than dismissing or making light of them. Remember it's a HUGE thing for your child. Lines like " I know it feels scary when we go to a new place for the first time, it happens to me as well," will surely sooth and give him reassurance that it is okay to have fear.
The use of dramatic play, storybooks and simple games could also help in assisting children to work through their anxieties as they pretend to take a bus or find their cubby at the new school and help them understand that it is alright to feel sad and afraid, but also that things generally work out just fine as they listen to other characters in books who are also starting a new school.
Involving the whole family in child's first day of school might contribute a big help for him to adjust. It makes going to school becoming more real when all the important people in his life share in this new experience. Let him also take his favourite toy or comfort object to school. It is not for us to decide, but let the child decide when he does not need it anymore. Those toys or objects are their link to home to help them feel more secure.
Be prepared for child who seems to be okay and to have made a good adjustment suddenly announces that he is not going to school. This delayed reaction is really a normal, predictable reaction on the part of the child. It comes from his realization that going to school every day is not a temporary arrangement. If you understand why your child is suddenly balking, then you definitely can deal with it.
Hope everybody could have a less stress adjusting time!

Exposure to Drawing

Exposure to Drawing

When I first joined the school I work at now, they were already in the middle of the first term. In the end of the Term 1, I started to notice how minimum the students' interest in drawing was. Drawing is one of the most activities that children can do. It helps to develop a wide range of child's developmental skills, starting from his fine motor skills, imagination and art skills by letting him expressing himself creatively, also his thinking and language skills as we are requiring them to label and discuss about his drawings. Although for in early age, a child's drawing might not be more than just some shapeless scribbles, but we still can encourage them to speak about his choices of colours or the shape he creates. So try to change the "What is this?" question with "What colour do u use?" for a very young child, because he might not have any clue of what he is drawing.
So, in the beginning of Term 2, I started to find times to give my students opportunity to draw. The perfect slot was after their snack time. They usually had around 10-15 minutes times left before the next session began. I gave them options between reading books or drawing.This is also a good way to prevent them from running around the class after eating. At the top of our toys-shelf, there's a stack of blank white A5 papers, that they could get if they wanted to draw. Also, I made them their own personalized drawing box to store their drawing pieces. By doing this, it will give them the sense of belonging and responsibility of their own properties. Once in a while I caught some of them tidying up their papers, folding them into half and storing them nicely in the box. You might want to try this at home.
After several months being exposed to drawing, the students started to show progress in their way of drawing and the results. Just like any other concepts or skills that a child is learning, there are also stages in drawing. Child's ability to reach the milestone in drawing stages varies depending on their ages, exposure to drawing and also how often he draws. Provide child with lots of time for free drawing and let him draw what he wants. Encouragement and praises will also be needed to help your child boost their interest and confident in drawing.
The last thing and yet is important, try not to forget that it is the process of drawing that is important, not the end result. Your child might show you his drawing that you might not be able to recognise, but it's his work. Praise it.