Gina Ogden

kids love to learn about the rainforest

Kids Love to Learn About the Rainforest!

By / 3 minutes of reading

Did you know that June 22 is World Rainforest Day? Rainforests can be so fun to learn about with your kids! With such a variety of animals and their beautiful and unique plants, there is so much to engage and inspire our children. Kids love to learn about the rainforest, and it’s a great way to fill these summer days! The Animals Mountain gorillas, the sloth, jaguars, parrots, poisonous frogs, howler monkeys, and the enormous anaconda are some of the animals you can learn about here at The Rainforest Alliance.   At Rainforest Animals, you can find simple one-page descriptions of …

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balance responsibility and fun

How to Balance Responsibility and Family Fun

By / 5 minutes of reading

Summer can be both a fun and a crazy time for parents. Our kids are free from school or pre-school, and they have fewer pressures in their schedules. However, we parents can feel the pressure of more on our shoulders. We face our normal jobs, our regular daily work, plus the extra responsibilities of keeping our kids occupied. Many of us would like our kids to learn some responsibility during these summer months as well. So how do we balance all of this? What if we found a way to balance responsibility and family fun?  Decide between the necessary and …

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have fun with fruits and vegetables

It’s a Good Time to Have Fun with Fruits and Vegetables

By / 4 minutes of reading

The spring and summer seasons give us so many wonderful fresh foods to enjoy. With such a variety of colors and flavors, it’s a great time to help your littles learn about fruits and vegetables. It’s a good time to try some new ones too! You can have lots of fun with fruits and vegetables! Start with your favorites You can begin your learning fun with your kids’ favorite fruits and veggies. In the Signing Time Dictionary, we have several signs for fruits and vegetables, like apple, banana, carrot, grapes, lettuce, orange, peach, pear, and peas. Have your kids learn …

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Helping your preschooler get ready to read

Helping Your Preschooler Get Ready to Read

By / 3 minutes of reading

It can be daunting to think about helping your preschooler get ready to read. I think that teaching my kids to read was a task I dreaded as much as I dreaded potty training. The success when it was accomplished was equally celebrated as I sighed a relieved, “Whew, another one down!” And, just like when I finished potty training for good, when I finished teaching my youngest to read, my happy thought was, “I never have to do that again!” It’s a job worth doing, but we’re happy to be finished with it. While helping our preschoolers get ready …

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Ways to Fight Your Kids' Summer Boredom

Let’s Get our Children Playing Outside

By / 5 minutes of reading

Does anyone else struggle to get your kids to play outside? The stereotype holds true at my house. My kids have to be convinced, prodded, and forced to get outside. And then, after the struggle to get them outside, what happens? Most of the time, they end up loving it, and then they don’t want to stop playing outside. This struggle is totally worth it, because there are so many benefits to children playing outside! The Benefits Preschoolers need to stay active throughout the day. Of course, anyone who has spent time with a preschooler is very aware of this …

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teach kids to be honest

It’s Important to Teach Our Kids to Be Honest

By / 5 minutes of reading

I think it’s safe to say that we all want honest kids. Honesty is such an important part of life, affecting our relationships, our careers, and most of our general interactions. Understanding how to communicate our feelings and then listening to the feelings of those around us helps children understand the importance of honesty. None of us enjoy dealing with a dishonest person, and as parents, we really don’t enjoy dealing with dishonest children. So how do we teach our kids to be honest people? Everybody does it First, we have to be willing to face the fact that kids …

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enjoy spring cleaning with your kids

Enjoy Spring Cleaning with Your Kids

By / 5 minutes of reading

Spring can be such an inspiring, happy time for us. We love to see new life emerging. The warmer weather is welcome after the chill of winter. We feel inspiration to open the windows and air out our homes. And after several months of being at home, especially in this time of pandemic, we are ready to give our homes a good cleaning. But when you have kids at home, it can be hard to get them involved, and it can be hard to enjoy spring cleaning with your kids. Cleaning with kids around can certainly be a challenge. You have …

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live out Earth Day every day

Let’s Live Out Earth Day Every Day

By / 5 minutes of reading

Special days on our calendars help us to teach our kids about the bigger world around them. April is full of these special calendar days, and since Earth Day is celebrated on April 22, April is considered to be “Earth Month”. This is the perfect time of year to watch Extraordinary Earth on My Signing Time. In this episode our treeschoolers explore what makes the earth so special and how we can be stewards of our planet. It’s great to celebrate Earth Day and Earth Month. But beyond these celebrations, we can help our kids know how to take care …

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Take your kids to work day

Take Your Kids to Work Day is a Great Way to Learn Together

By / 3 minutes of reading

We all have dreams and goals for the future, and our kids are no exception. Many children choose an occupation when they are very young. Our little ones even play at different occupations and dress up in different roles. Our Signing Time episode, My Neighborhood, available on your My Signing Time app, explores many different work environments. It will also give you a chance to practice fun ASL vocabulary like office and work. While imaginative play is important for our children’s mental development, real world exposure can help them too. Real world experiences can fuel our children’s imaginations, and it …

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celebrate national siblings day

Celebrate National Siblings Day with Your Kids!

By / 5 minutes of reading

Did you know there was a National Siblings Day? It is meant to be a day of honor, like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, but focused on appreciating our siblings. National Siblings Day is coming up on Saturday, April 10, 2021. This is a great time to look at ways we can teach our kids to appreciate their siblings. Let’s help our kids celebrate National Siblings Day! How did this begin? Claudia Evart, a resident of New York, lost both her brother, Alan, and her sister, Lisette, early in life. She  came up with the idea of a sibling day …

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