Parenting Articles

easy summer meal ideas

Easy Summer Meal Ideas for Your Little Ones

We’re heading into August already, and the summer has been both long and short somehow. Pool days and splash pads, outings and play dates, vacations and other travel times…we’ve all been busy with summer fun. But many of us are getting weary at this point. Outings are getting tiring, we’re broke from buying sunblock, and decent meals are a thing of the past – like way back in June. So, here at the end of the summer, let’s find some easy summer meal ideas for your little ones. This just might get us through the next few weeks of feeding …

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today is monkey around day

Today is Monkey Around Day!

Today is Monkey Around Day! What on earth could that mean? Well, it’s a day to let go of stress and pressure, choosing instead to do whatever you feel like doing. Think of it as a goof-off day! And you can take this as far as you want to or keep it low key. How much would our kids love to have a Monkey Around Day?  Are there crazy ideas that you have set aside because they aren’t practical? Do your kids have silly or over-the-top ideas? Since today is Monkey Around Day, it’s exactly the right time to consider …

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Keeping Little Ones Entertained While Traveling

Keeping Little Ones Entertained While Traveling

We all long for stress-free travel with our little ones. While we can’t promise a completely stress-free travel experience, we do have a few tips for keeping your kids busy and having fun together. You have probably already chosen a family-friendly destination. And you have to think through which little kid gear you have to take with you, and which pieces you can do without. Even then, the gear list is a lot. All we can do is try not to say bad words while we try to get our vehicle trunks to close. But, the travel time – that …

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Strengthening Our Family Relationships

Strengthening Our Family Relationships

Each year, the time between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day is designated as National Family Month. These special times in our calendars help us to notice a specific part of our lives, and they help us to do something about what we find. National Family Month is meant to help families by celebrating their strengths and by supporting them in their challenges. So in the time we have before Father’s Day, let’s think about how we can celebrate the strength of our own families. And let’s look at ways that we can work on strengthening our family relationships so that …

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learn through playing

Can our Kids Learn Through Playing?

Play-based learning is gaining popularity as an important part of early childhood education. And there are good reasons for this. Play-based learning is exactly what it sounds like: learning through play rather than through lectures or drilling. Play and fun are the languages of our children. When we teach in a fun way, our kids retain information better. What better way to learn than through playing? Play-based learning is considered to be a very effective way to help preschoolers develop as a whole. Think about first-hand experiences, hands-on projects and experiments, lots of exploration and discovery, and both real-life and …

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ways to teach our kids about diversity

3 Ways to Teach Our Kids About Diversity

Here we are at the end of April already! April has a lot of special celebrations, and one of those is that it is Celebrate Diversity Month. Diversity is a hot topic in our society, but at its heart is the belief that we each carry value, and that this value should be celebrated and cherished. This is a worthy thought for each of us to hold on to. And it’s a belief that is important to teach to our children. So let’s look at 3 ways to teach our kids about diversity. Diversity is defined as the range of …

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Keeping Little Ones Entertained While Traveling

View the World Through a Lens of Humor

Can you believe that April starts in a few days? While we’re all familiar with April Fool’s Day, did you know that the entire month has a national dedication to humor? How fitting that the first day of the month is all about humor too! We know our kids love to laugh, and hopefully we share that love of laughter. Thankfully, having a sense of humor is really good for all of us. So it’s totally worth it to view the world through a lens of humor. As we start, let’s look at the sign for laugh. Hopefully we will …

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celebrating our kids' ideas

Celebrating Our Kids’ Ideas in March

So it turns out that the month of March is International Ideas Month. What a great topic to explore with our kids! Children tend to be full of ideas, but they aren’t always given the chance to take off with those ideas. So let’s challenge ourselves to be noticing and to be celebrating our kids’ ideas. Here are some areas where we can welcome our children’s ideas and help them to implement them. Projects Our kids are full of ideas for projects. They love to build and design and create everything. So let’s think about ways that we can support …

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practice mindful parenting in March

Practice Mindful Parenting in March Madness

The slower pace of winter is coming to an end. As we head into the month of March, we can feel life get busier with the coming of spring. From longer daylight hours to the discomfort of our “spring ahead” weekend (coming very soon), March brings an increase in parenting chaos. And so, this is a good time to think about the practice of mindful parenting in March. When our lives get busier and schedules change, we parents definitely feel the pressure. So as we move forward into springtime and its increased activity or changes, here are three ways to …

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ways to teach our kids about diversity

Let’s Teach Our Kids to Stand Up to Bullying

We don’t like to think about bullying, and we certainly don’t want to think of our little ones as being capable of bullying. Yet, rather than decreasing over the years, bullying has increased in our society, and so has its drastic effects. Since International Stand Up to Bullies Day is coming up, we figured it’s worth looking at how to teach our kids to stand up to bullying and how to avoid being bullies themselves.    Why focus on this effort? It does seem that bullying tends to decrease as kids get older. But in the United States, one out of …

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