Teaching Our Kids, The Importance of Charitable Giving
Food Drive
Find a local charity that speaks to you and your child. Get your child involved with picking out food to donate while grocery shopping and bring them along when dropping it off to the charity. Make it a big deal, tell your friends and family, get your child to talk to about the benefits of giving and their emotions around how they feel giving back. We are proud to say our Early Learners Montessori Schools are currently running a food drive at both of our campuses, see if these charities speak to you and Donate!
It is important for us to introduce the concept of giving to our kids at a young age. Giving to charity is important as it makes us feel good and others feel good. Giving teaches us empathy - which is innate, but is best when nurtured. The world would be a much better place if more people felt true empathy for those less fortunate than themselves and acted accordingly. Having children donate from a young age teaches them that they can make a big difference in the lives of others.
Donating to charity has so many benefits – along with nurturing their empathy, they will also learn integrity and social responsibility. Helping others and contributing to something outside of themselves will help them blossom into honorable and respectable adults, while giving them a bigger sense of purpose. Learning from a young age to have concern for others will instill compassion, for people, for animals and for the world they live in. With Thanksgiving and the Holiday season upon us, we have listed few charities that the whole family can participate in giving:
Busy Books
call a local hospital and see if they are accepting these donations(they usually are!). Print off colouring pages and activities, decorate the cover page with a personal message, and bound them with Yarn. These books will help cure boredom for little patients in waiting rooms before treatment or after. This enforces gratitude for health!
Toy Drive
Take your kids shopping and have them pick out a gift for a child, perhaps one of their favorite toys. Help them wrap it up and deliver it to a toy drive, there are many during the holiday season. We have listed few below. Early Learners Montessori School will also be holding our Annual Toy Drive in December.
Back To School Ready
Create a family calendar
Nothing calms school year chaos like a family calendar. Tracking school activities, programs, extracurricular activities, school meetings, work meetings and appointments can be overwhelming not to mention messy – which is how these appointments get forgotten most of the time. Try getting a white board calendar and set it up in a common room area where everyone can see it, sometimes even a fridge calendar can do the trick. This will help everyone stay on track and keep family responsibilities organized.. Remember to get the kids involved – this will not only inculcate responsibility but will also help them develop categorizing and sorting functions by separating school activities from their extracurriculars. Don’t forget to use fun colours to represent different events and/or family members!
As summer is coming to an end many of us are thinking about how to prepare for the new school year. The back to school sales are a reminder that school is just a few short weeks away! The first couple of days are filled with excitement and a little bit of chaos… or a lot of chaos! To help avoid any unnecessary stress, here are some tips and tricks to make the first week run as smoothly as possible.
Ease the family back into your school schedule
First off, it’s important to switch back to your school schedule before the first week. Try to make bed time a little earlier and wake up time a little earlier so the routine is set before school begins. This is especially relevant for kids starting or resuming daycare or preschool or even for the little ones enrolled in before and after school care as they have an earlier start and longer days. Unplugging before bed, limit TV, video games, and other electronics before bed this way they are not too stimulated to fall asleep. Can’t say it enough – consistency is key! Give your child a chance to calm down and unwind before bedtime. Draw a bath, pick out pyjamas and read a story. This will make waking up easier, allow the morning to be more productive and put everyone in their best mood for the day.
Drop-off/Goodbye Routine
Establishing a goodbye routine will not only help your child feel more comfortable at drop off time, but it will ease your mind and emotions as well. Saying goodbye to your little ones can be emotional especially if you’ve spent most of your summer together or even if it is their first day at a daycare, preschool or Montessori. Try to repeat the same goodbye routine each morning, parking in a similar spot or walking the same route, two hugs and kisses and your own “see ya later my little alligator”. Even if your child gets upset, stay calm and try not to go back. Your confident attitude will reassure them that everything is okay. If they cry, not to worry, they will learn to bond with their teachers and feel comforted at school.
Our caring staff at Early Learners’ Montessori School are trained and experienced in soothing and reassuring all our new friends during their first weeks at the school while they comfortably transition into their classrooms!
3 Activities to promote Emotional Development
The balancing act
Being able to manage emotions is as crucial as understanding them. How children handle difficult emotions has a great impact on their life. This is where coping skills come into the picture. Make flashcards for simple practices that help the mind calm down. These can be :
Stand up and stretch
Count numbers
Listen to music
A quick walk / jog
Deep breaths
Introduce these activities as a daily practice in the morning routine or before bedtime, this way children understand how it works. These coping mechanisms have to be explicitly taught to the children.
When your child is upset, ask simple questions ‘How are you feeling right now?’, ‘Why do you think you feel this way?’, to create self-awareness. Then remind them of the daily practices - ‘What will make you feel better?’. Over time, children start using these on their own.
Model responsible behaviour, be a good listener, kind towards every family member. Let your kids know you have strong emotions too. Show how you cope with them. It can be as simple as ‘I need a break!’ and having a coffee by your window. Children learn many things from the world around them just by observation. As your child’s first role model, set a positive tone.
At Early Learners’ Montessori, children are engaged in a variety of hands-on activities to boost their social, physical, and emotional abilities.
One of the most important roles of being a parent is to partake in the child’s emotional development. Being the first and foremost caregivers, parents are role models for children. Family bonding, home environment, interpersonal relationship of parents play a crucial role in the early years of emotional development.
Emotional development is quite complex and contributes to all other areas of development. A tiny toddler experiences a tantrum in a mall, there is a sudden mood shift when you give in and allow some more screen time. Children go through constantly changing emotions as they interact with adults and friends and need help with managing them. Learning about emotions, expressing them in a healthy way, taking control of emotions are skills that help with :
Building self-awareness
Developing positive relationships
Decision making
Resolving conflict
Emotional skills are life skills. These are simple activities that will help children learn and manage their emotions in a fun and interesting way!
Pretend Play
Children love to role-play. Using old toys, or favourite toys, familiarise your little ones with emotions and show them how to manage/cope with them. It can be as simple as “Winnie the bear is happy”, “Dino is feeling sad”. You can also create make-believe situations like, “Dino took Doll’s toys away” and explore ‘how do they feel in this situation?’ ‘How can they solve it?’.
Children are quick to learn through play!
Flashcards
Make flashcards with faces for emotions. Happy, Sad, Confused, Scared, Brave, Angry and so on. Draw a card to choose an emotion. Children can copy the face on the card and use a mirror to observe how they look. Show them how the eyes, eyebrows, lips, forehead make facial expressions. To make it interesting, narrate a small story about the emotion or create an impromptu scenario and enact it! Use these flashcards when these emotions actually happen. If your child is upset about something, explain the emotion he/she is feeling is ‘Anger’. This activity helps recognize different emotions. Engage in a discussion about each emotion and why we feel that way.
How to improve fine motor skills: 5 fun activities
Simple movements ranging from holding your finger, grasping a toy, using a zipper to writing, painting, playing the piano involve the use of fine motor skills. These activities engage smaller muscles of the hands and wrists, along with good hand and eye coordination.
2. Fun with Pattern(s)!
This one is a colourful, engaging, yet simple activity. All you need is colour paper, markers and dot stickers. Create cute patterns like swirls, zig-zag lines, outline of a leaf, flower, even your child’s name! Ask him/her to cover the pattern using the colourful dot stickers. Peeling and placing the stickers is so much fun!
Although simple, this activity increases grip and pinch strength and is great for hand-eye coordination and concentration as well.
1. Coloured Ice cubes
Little ones love to work with water! All you need is an Ice tray, water droppers, a couple of jars with coloured water (use food colouring as a safety measure). Show them how to pinch and dip the dropper in the jar, hold and release to collect water, shift over to the ice tray, squeeze and transfer the water. They figure it out quickly and enjoy it thoroughly!
You can also do it with paper towels instead of ice trays and create beautiful patterns!
Tip: Keep sponges handy to wipe up the spills.
3. Tweezer skills
Pasta is almost always one of the kids’ favourites. Mix 3 different types of uncooked pasta in a large container, for your child to sort using a pair of tweezers. Another approach is using colourful beads and having the little ones sort them into smaller bowls. Assorted buttons, Pom poms are a great option too!
Through these activities, children ace the squeeze release action, and will comfortably progress towards the next milestone of using scissors and pencils.
Note: Ensure you supervise the children during these activities.
4. Good old play dough
A simple toy with numerous benefits, a childhood favourite of kids! Playdough activities bring out children’s creativity and help improve their focus. Keep googly eyes, foam alphabets or small pebbles handy. Make balls using colourful playdough and roll them into circles, place googly eyes to make faces! Using foam alphabets to make badges too! Roll the dough to make a snake or watermelon slices, flowers, cookies, ladybugs, the options are unlimited.
By rolling, moulding and patting the dough, children strengthen their hands and wrists. Pinching, squeezing helps tone the smaller muscles and works the fingertips.
5. Lego
Lego bricks are always the first choice among children and parents! Children often have innovative ideas and are happily engrossed for hours, stacking the bricks, pushing them together and pulling them apart, over and over, until they are satisfied with their creation. This is one of the most engaging activities; best suitable for developing fine motor skills as well as patience, perseverance and concentration.
At Early Learners’ Montessori, we implement many such fun creative activities. Book a tour to visit us and know more!
Places to explore with kids this summer!
There's something about summertime that's special - a sort of magic associated with warmer weather that you simply cannot deny. During summer, the possibilities seem endless & the potential - infinite. Those sun-filled, warm-breezy days are here with us again and it's a great time to be outdoors. We are sharing our fun summer bucket list of must visit places with you so you can enjoy some summer fun with the family in and around Bolton and Whitby!
Downey’s Farm Market
Perfect place for family fun, with attractions, events and a play area for the little ones. Just in time for the Strawberry and Raspberry picking season! Kids have a marvellous time running around the farm picking berries and filing their bellies!
Forks of the Credit
Located just 20 minutes from Brampton, it is a beautiful park with so many trails! Stunning views, beautiful greenery and ponds along the trails makes it a fun experience. Get your hiking shoes, pack some snacks and go for a family friendly hike.
Cheltenham Badlands
Located in Caledon, The Cheltenham Badlands present an opportunity to witness a unique geological process. The red rocks and distinct topography of the exposed shale are iconic! This rolling landscape of rounded hills and gullies is one of Ontario’s geological treasures! Lots of trail fun and a totally INSTA worthy site.
Millcroft Spa
After all the hiking, it's a perfect weekend getaway! Start your day with yoga or rejoice in the outdoor spring pools. Enjoy a stay-cation with your family and feel refreshed amidst nature.
Bolton Farmers Market
Plan a fun outing for kids, add a learning element by introducing them to local produce, dairy farmers, seasonal vegetables and more! What a better way to #supportlocal and get fresh delicious fruit and vegetables, directly from our farmers. A great opportunity to explore ‘farm-to-table’.
While you are here, be sure to have a walk around the historical village of Bolton!
Reptilia Zoo
Reptilia Zoo is a collection of Canada’s largest reptile zoos and conservation centers. Experience the travel through jungles, deserts and the wilds of Canada all in a day! All day fun for the entire family featuring self-guided and private tours, live shows and feedings! The thrill of seeing an animal in real life that you’ve only ever seen on a screen is unmatchable!
Frenchman's Bay
Frenchman's Bay in Durham is a perfect place to relax and listen to live music. Gorgeous lake views, canoeing, kayaking or just walking along the waterfront trail makes for a great day of family fun!
Whitby Farmers Market (runs from May - October)
Farmer's Markets are a beautiful place for children to experience all their senses! It's an opportunity to acquaint them with gardening, farming and supporting the local community. Whitby Farmers Market is a fantastic place to mingle with the locals, buy farm fresh produce, sample new foods, and discover some unique souvenirs at the artisans' booths!
Thickson's Woods
Enjoy birdwatching? Then this hidden gem is a must visit! Enjoy walks, bike riding, and gorgeous views of the lake. Nice place with lots of wild flowers and bird sounds. Bring your binoculars and spot the migratory birds!
Pathways on Pleasure Valley
Experience the beauty and excitement of Pleasure Valley trails on a horseback ride! The breathtaking views along the trail and riding a horse is a thrilling experience for children!
Why Montessori / Benefits of Montessori education
The Montessori method of education provides an environment that caters to academic, social and emotional needs of a child. Known for individually paced learning and fostering independence, the Montessori Method also encourages empathy, a passion for social justice, and a joy in lifelong learning.
Montessori education inculcates an "I can do it" attitude, laying a strong foundation for lifelong learning. What sets the Montessori method apart is, ‘the learning approach’. The learning environment is designed to be child-oriented; it is a multi-sensory, visual, auditory, kinesthetic experience. Being primarily based on hands-on activities, children are free to move about the room, choosing their materials and work space. We generally have mixed age classrooms, allowing older students to work hand-in-hand with younger ones, mentoring their progress. Children learn through repetition, at their own pace and always with an internal sense of success!
The ‘Whole Child’ approach nurtures all areas of children's development and learning–from social-emotional, physical and cognitive skills to literacy, and is a powerful strategy as preschool children transition to kindergarten. Montessori teachers play a very unique role of observers, responsible for maintaining the classroom environment rather than controlling the children. Teachers are more like guides, mentors leading children to be independent and self-reliant.
Dr. Maria Montessori believed that freedom and discipline were two sides of the same coin. She strongly endorsed that it is only through freedom and practice, that the children are able to learn and develop self-discipline. Montessori trained teachers maintain a precise balance of freedom and responsibility in the classroom. The focus is on developing self-discipline, social graces and manners at school. This is attained by active participation and natural consequences. Children learn from their mistakes and develop the necessary skills to become confident, responsible members of society with a high sense of integrity.
The Montessori environment provides ‘hands-on learning’ where children learn to collaborate and develop their creativity, critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Children learn self-evaluation, improvement and develop their own ways of self-assessment to successfully achieve their goals. Early Learners’ Montessori Preschool Program is carefully curated and goes beyond reading, writing, math and science: we prepare children for life. They are highly self-motivated with a strong desire to learn.
The Montessori method, unlike any other format of education, gives children the freedom and support to question, to probe deeply, and to make connections, enabling them to think critically, work collaboratively, and act boldly—a skill set most suitable for the 21st century!
