Today Tile Triggered Content

Inspiring your child to try drawing can be done in so many ways, but one we don't often think about is through reading! These three sweet books about line and shape will inspire lots of imagination next time you draw together.  

Have you found yourself feeling anxious about the things your child might say in public? Perhaps you have experience of them blurting out their thoughts about other people’s appearance at the worst possible moment... This is almost inevitable but there are ways to feel confident in the way you respond.  

Children are inquisitive by nature, and learn through exploring, discussing and experiencing their world. They are also good at learning about what is familiar to them, and noticing differences, from a very young age – earlier than many people realise children are aware of physical differences between people.  

Mindfulness approaches help us to focus on the moment and can help us to feel calmer, be more self-aware and choose how to respond to our thoughts and feelings.^[1] These techniques might be helpful for you, especially when life is busy, but have you ever thought of teaching your toddler some mindfulness techniques?  

Researchers are becoming increasingly interested in finding out more about how learning mindfulness techniques together can support both parents and children.  

When your toddler was a baby you might have tried some simple massage, maybe you even went to a baby massage group to hone your skills. You might not think about touch in quite the same way now, but it can be an important part of supporting emotional well-being, building your relationship and even helping your toddler pay attention.  

While there isn’t a lot of research about the relationship between touch and learning, the psychologist Lone Svinth identified studies that found an association between massage and visual attention. Researchers found that a short massage just before a task that involved focusing on a particular image was linked with greater attentiveness and quicker learning.[1]  

Our sense of smell is fascinating – it links to emotions, memories and preferences. Your toddler is beginning to show you the connections they are making.  

Our sense of smell is more specific than our other senses, and this could explain why we link smells with particular people, places or events.^[1]  

Have you noticed your child is talking so much, and not necessarily sticking to one trail of thought? It's very typical for this to happen in their development as they are constantly processing new information and making connections between ideas. 

Your child may often move quickly between topics when they are talking because their minds are still developing. 

It may not seem like that long ago when your child was taking their first steps, and seeing their face light up with an enormous sense of achievement made your heart melt. Now they are moving in all kinds of ways and finding pleasure in experimenting and challenging themselves wherever they seem to go! And when they come across a slope or hill, well, their movement options really open up! 

Many children find the possibility of slopes exciting! They can be challenging, but also a fun and rewarding activity, here’s why... 

Could using Alexa make your child rude? An opinion piece in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood suggested that it could, as social conventions such as saying, ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, aren’t always followed when talking to a digital assistant.^[1] As we often find when we start to look a bit deeper, the role of digital assistants in children’s development is still very much up for debate.  

The concerns about how talking to Alexa, Siri or Google Home might impact on your toddler’s understanding of social conventions, like saying please and thank you, are linked to how they view these devices.  

Who doesn’t love a good story? Escapism is beneficial to both children and adults, and a good book can grab our attention over and over again. Books support your toddler’s development in plenty of ways; you’ve probably read a thing or two about them in some of the earlier skills, but we can’t overstate the joy of books – the learning they provide is incredible. Now that your toddler is starting to use the words ‘the’ and ‘a’, reading books can truly embed how to use these words in speech. 

Most books have a theme, a setting, a plot, and a character or more.  

We know that having a toddler can sometimes leave you wondering, “What has just happened?!” They do the funniest things, which at the time might not be funny, but sometimes it's good to make use of the surprising things they do to support their skills in language.  

Before we go into this, if we quickly recap on verbs and how your toddler might be using them, it helps to see the value of encouraging auxiliary verbs in their language.