Gina Ogden

How to Keep Little Ones Busy When You Have to Work

By / 4 minutes of reading

School is looming ahead for most of us, and for many of us it doesn’t look the same as it ever has.  The balance of working from home, leading virtual schooling or a new home school, and tending to younger children is a problem many of us have not faced on such a long-term basis before. How do we work from home, help our school aged kids with their virtual schooling, and tend to little ones who want our attention or want to be part of what’s going on?  This has typically been an issue for traditional home-schoolers, but with …

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We Love Music!

By / 3 minutes of reading

Music is an important part of My Signing Time. In fact, when we started in 2002, Signing Time and Baby Signing Time were created using music. Our videos use original songs written by our founder and co-creator, Rachel de Azevedo Coleman and composed by her father and president of Two Little Hands, Lex de Azevedo. Rachel and her sisters (sister Emilie de Azevedo is co-creator of Signing Time) and brothers sing many of the songs in Signing Time. Some of the Rachel & the TreeSchoolers are written and performed by Rachel’s brother, Aaron. So, yes, we really do love music! …

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Weekly Routines for Summer

Weekly Routines for Summer Fun

By / 5 minutes of reading

We’re on a routine run for this summer!  With the current pandemic restrictions, closures, and cancellations, we all need ideas for making the summer fun for our families.  My own family has settled into lazing around each day, so I’m inspired to implement more structure to our days. One way to do this is to assign an activity to each day of the week.  Some can be fun and some can be practical.  Either way, having a clear “Taco Tuesday” kind of label helps everyone to know what is happening that day.  It gives your kids something to look forward …

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Music and Routines

By / 4 minutes of reading

We’ve seen movies with scenes where someone is cleaning while dancing away to some energetic song, and then we feel inspired to be so carefree and fun while cleaning. Granted, movies show only the dancing, with the cleaning supplies sitting there as props, right?  But could we be inspired and motivated to action with music?   The Science Studies show that music can cause our brains to release dopamine.  While we tend to associate dopamine with pleasure, its actual function is to regulate motivation and goal oriented behavior. Basically, something that brings pleasure or fun (music) causes dopamine release.  Then …

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Morning Routines in the Summer

By / 4 minutes of reading

  During the school year, we tend to keep it all together.  Mornings can be crazy, but we usually have it down to a science, and everyone knows what’s expected. Then summer arrives – later nights, lazy mornings, less pressure.  Before we realize it, it’s lunchtime, and the kids are still in their pajamas.  Or we face the opposite, with kids who are so excited that there is no school that they will be jumping on our beds and poking us in the face at 5 am. We need routines in the summer just as much as we need them …

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