Category: Parenting

Project Brainstrom: Let us help you! This month’s topic is Teen Pregnancy

We are going to pose a topic and ask you to “help us help you” by just sharing one thing you did whether it be an activity, a video clip, infographic, reading, etc. when teaching that topic. We believe everyone will win in the end as you’ll have a new lesson or at least a lot of new ideas and resources to pull from. Check back often as this page will be updated as resources come in.

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Promoting Science Activities with Young Children

Recently I had a student who was hired to babysit young elementary aged children ask me for suggestions of activities she could do with children. She wanted something that was fun, engaging, and would pique their curiosity. We talked about a lot of options that included arts, crafts, cooking and games. Finally after further discussion and investigation, I suggested science related activities that revolved around crafts.

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Childhood Obesity…The Rest of the Story Activity

Critical thinking and problem solving skills are definitely needed for today’s teens to prepare for the real world and life The rest of the storyon their own or with their future families. What better way to prepare them than to provide them with a real life scenario that needs to be solved. In this activity students are introduced to a problem and must work together as a group to figure out and creatively write and present the “rest of the story”,as the late Paul Harvey would say on his radio broadcasts. The beauty of this activity is that you can create a scenario that needs solved using any crisis type topic. I used childhood obesity, but you can use other important topics such as bullying, eating disorders, teen pregnancy, financial debt, finding quality day care, divorce, dating violence, aging and more. So let the scenarios begin!

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Infant Development: Reflexes

Reflex actions are part of Jean Piaget’s Sensorimotor period. Babies are born with these instinctive, automatic Infant.Reflexesresponses; some permanent and some temporary. Reflexes are a way that infants learn about and react to the world. This is a lesson that has students learning more about infant reflexes, their stimuli and response using a jigsaw style presentation approach. Sometimes circumstances prevent you from doing an assignment a certain way so I’ve also included an alternate web activity version to gather the information just in case you need a sub-plan or a way for students to make up work. Choose the option that works for you!

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Importance of Family TIME

Fact is life is super BUSY for most families!! A lot of families are trying to juggle their time between family and careerdreamstimefree_259444.family.time obligations, household responsibilities and personal needs. Sometimes, as parents, we find it challenging to find balance in this process in order to have precious quality time left over to spend with the important people in our lives. This lesson helps students understand the importance of quality time with little ones by using a variety of illustrations and activities.

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Trust & Bonding Lesson

Being there for babies and the importance of trust is what this lesson is all about. Bonding is a term that describes a parent’s tie to an infant and typically occurs early in the child’s life. Strong bonds of attachment helps develop…

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Literal Interpretations from a Child’s Mind

One day when my children were young and couldn’t sit still I commented on how they were acting like they had “ants in their pants”. I didn’t think literal.int.picmuch about the phrase until my then preschool aged daughter literally checked her pants for ants! This is when I realized that children don’t always interpret the true meaning behind some of the common phrases that have been around forever; they actually interpret them literally. This lesson has students illustrating common phrases based on how a preschooler might interpret or visualize the phrase literally.

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Literacy & Reading to Children Lessons

I read to my children ALL the time when they were young, and if nothing else, I wanted them to be readers! And, fortunately, they are! There Read.to.Childrenare so many benefits associated with reading to children at an early age from bonding to improved vocabulary (which helps now that the SATs are right around the corner). This lesson explores the amount of time students spend reading to other screen and electronic device activity and encourages them to research and explore why reading to children is so beneficial to their growth and development. I’ve also included a fun component for students to learn the do’s and don’ts of reading to children while encouraging them to enhance their own oral presentation skills by reading aloud a children’s book.

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The Power of Purple: Shaken Baby Syndrome & The Period of Purple Crying

While Shaken Baby Syndrome might be a familiar term associated with child abuse, the Period of Purple Crying may not be. The two terms are closely related as the constant crying associated with purple crying may lead one to violently shake their child. This lesson educates students about both to hopefully decrease the risks of both occurring in the future. This lesson also includes a fairly quick and easy community service project for students of all ages and abilities to complete to help spread information about the important cause.

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Ideas for Teaching Safety in Child Development

Child proofing is essential to a house or day care center when little ones are involved. It’s amazing what little ones can get into once they become keeping kids safemobile. You’ll want to make sure you’re taking every precaution to keep your little one’s environment safe. Trying to decide what to teach about the safety of children can be difficult as all of the topics are important.

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