Kids are smart
I’ve said it before, ‘The ‘Kids’ that I talk of are really just little people without the life experience or the skills’ to adult. Yet their surprising good at working it out anyway. Wither it be parents fighting, moving house or just plain old observation, they will catch you out. Here’s some of the ones that I like.
We have a lot of wildlife who live near to or on centre property, and sometimes we have some unfortunate losses. We like to use the phrase ‘poor little critter that’s no longer with us’ when talking to colleagues and parents in the presents of a child in these situations so that we don’t offend anyone by being blunt. You’ll be surprised how often children pick up on this. Some of the older children will say ‘goodbye’ to whatever has died before it’s thrown in the bin. Life is 100% fatal, lets not make death a harsh topic so early on when our ‘animal friends’ come to the end.
The centre I work at regularly has to change it’s access codes. Normally the concern isn’t the parents of children who no-longer attend or ex-staff members, but the children that currently attend. Yes they will find out the access code and yes, they can break themselves out of the centre if your access code knowing child really wanted too. If your typing in a 4 number pin most days within their line of sight they will eventually work it out. Shockingly children have eyes and know how to use them. Some parents, older siblings or peers even teach other children the code, the child will enter it into the keypad to unlock the door. Same pin hacking genius goes for iPads and centre mobiles if your centre has one. If all the pins are the same, which they usefully are, they can bust their way into all the technology too. Their secret weapon, their eyes and the ability to observe what the adults around them are doing. The number of times that an educator had left the iPad out and a child had gotten into it is amazing. Again kids are smart.
Toy storage areas, as you may know if a child can reach it and want it, they can access it. They can and will open the latch on the shed, pull a chair over to reach the door to the cupboard, and pull boxes of toys or iPads down from the tops of shelves. If they want it they will put there brain to the task and find a solution to the problem at hand. I don’t believe in giving children everything they want 100% of the time, I do believe in building social skills and coming to a compromise. I do encourage asking for help before putting yourself or others in a dangerous situation, or better yet asking me for the toy they want. Most of the time, I’ll ask for a child to do a task, say pack up the toy that they where playing with, before agreeing to get another toy down for them.
Changes at home matter to, parents separating, siblings getting sick or a new member of the household moving in can make changes to a child’s behaviour and temperament. I’ve seen a well behaved child take his emotions out on us and regress in his social development due to his brothers cancer diagnosis. Another sibling set had similar behavioural changes when their parents separated and the youngest one again when the parents reunified two years later. It’s not the child’s fault that their home life is changing, but stability is important for the development of young children and they will carry stress when that stability is broken.
Kids are building a brain whilst downloading the software to use it. Just because they are smaller, and physically less capable doesn’t mean we can write them off. Kids are smart, don’t give them less credit than they deserve.
Activity of the week
Sand art. Explore the textures of sand and flex there creative muscles with shapes and colures.
You will need,
Sand
PVA glue
Food dye (optional)
Tray (optional)
If using the food colure to dye your sand, add your sand and food dye to a ziplock bag mixing it around until the desired colure is achieved. It will not achieve a bright colure, rather a muted finished product. Using a paint brush, spread some PVA glue onto paper and sprinkle, your sand over the top of the paper. Finnish by tapping the excess sand off the paper. I recommend placing a tray under the artwork so that the sand doesn’t get everywhere.