Matrnandana

09/04/2017

"...a new study from the University of Otago in New Zealand suggests that these mood-boosting effects can be gained from even the most straightforward crafts. As the Independent reports, knitting, baking, crocheting, and jam-making were all found to produce an “upward spiral” effect that carried over to the following day."

Research shows that the "flourishing" effect extends to the next day.

02/04/2017

It's not a processing error, but it's a different operating system!
2nd April - World Autism Awareness Day.

01/04/2017

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
For knowledge is limited, while imagination embraces the entire world and all there ever will be to know and understand.
- Albert Enstein

Radio Flyer is hosting the first ever kids travel agency to celebrate 100 years of inspiring imaginative play and unforgettable adventures, At Radio Flyer Ad...

01/04/2017

Start making memories!

30/03/2017

29/03/2017

You can’t program a child to become creative. Try to engineer a certain kind of success, and the best you’ll get is an ambitious robot. If you want your children to bring original ideas into the world, you need to let them pursue their passions, not yours.

Child prodigies rarely become adult geniuses who change the world. Originality is difficult to encourage but easy to thwart.

27/03/2017

"In research for her book, Steiner-Adair interviewed 1,000 children between the ages of 4 and 18, asking them about their parents' use of mobile devices. The language that came up over and over and over again, she says, was "sad, mad, angry and lonely." One 4-year-old called his dad's smartphone a "stupid phone." Others recalled joyfully throwing their parent's phone into the toilet, putting it in the oven or hiding it. There was one girl who said, "I feel like I'm just boring. I'm boring my dad because he will take any text, any call, anytime — even on the ski lift!"

Steiner-Adair says we don't know exactly how much these mini moments of disconnect between a parent and child affect the child in the long term. But based on the stories she hears, she suggests that parents think twice before picking up a mobile device when they're with their kids."

When adults are absorbed in their mobile devices, the consequences for children are not good. Research shows kids act out more if they are competing with a mobile device for their parent's attention.

26/03/2017

It is normal for children to make mistakes as they learn to say new words. An articulation disorder, also known as a speech sound disorder, occurs when the mistakes occur after a certain age. Every sound has a different range of ages in which the child should start producing that sound correctly. Children will make many age appropriate errors. These are also referred to as developmental errors. These types of errors are normal and do not require speech therapy.
How can I tell if my child is developing speech sounds appropriately?
First, compare the sounds your child uses to a speech sound acquisition chart to see if he/she is using most or all of the sounds deemed appropriate for his/her age. Another good idea is to see how much of his/her speech is intelligible (how much speech you understand). The criteria for intelligibility is generally;

2 years old = 50% intelligible
3 years old = 75% intelligible
4 years old = 100% intelligible

If your child has many errors, that are not age appropriate and cannot be understood, especially after age 3, you may want to consider having your child seen by a speech language pathologist.

25/03/2017

"There’s a reason that the most tech-cautious parents are tech designers and engineers. Steve Jobs was a notoriously low-tech parent. Silicon Valley tech executives and engineers enroll their kids in no-tech Waldorf Schools. Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page went to no-tech Montessori Schools, as did Amazon creator Jeff Bezos and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales."

Here's what recent brain imaging research shows...

Susan* bought her 6-year-old son John an iPad when he was in first grade. “I thought, ‘Why not let him get a jump on things?’ ” she told me during a therapy session. John’s school had begun using t…

23/03/2017

Play is child's natural medium for self expression.
- Virginia Axline

Kids can’t always put their feelings into words