Edible play dough

I think of the many hats that Mum's across the world wear, the most important one is that of MAD SCIENTIST.

Anyone who has ever dealt with a toddler would know that it takes all your creativity and innovation skills to invent something new to keep them busy and thus out of trouble.

My son for instance loves to play with sand and mud. I am all for kids getting their hands dirty and playing around but what I am not ok with is- my son eating mud & sand. Hence I started looking around for ideas that would help me create some sort of edible play dough.  

This morning I stumbled upon this post on Facebook & decided to try it out.

The idea was an instant HIT with my 17 month old son. Right from mixing the ingredients to preparing the dough  & then creating shapes and of course eating some of it in the process, he loved every minute of it. 

I was obviously happy to see him getting his hands dirty this time, knowing that what he is eating is absolutely safe and to add to that YUMMY.

So the recipe is quite simple and it requires only three ingredients

- 1 cup Milk Powder 

- 1 cup Peanut Butter

- 1 tablespoon honey
(you may choose to prepare a smaller batch by taking a smaller quantity of each of the ingredients, just maintain the proportions) 

Mix all the ingredients together in a Big bowl. I recommend involve your kids from the first step itself, allowing them to mix the ingredients and create their own dough. I the dough seems a little dry, add some more honey to it (helps bind it together).

And then let the kids creative juices take over. Hand them a rolling pin and some stencils & let them have fun. To add some texture, you could also use some sprinkles or chocolate chips to the dough. 

Simple and easy way to keep your little one occupied and happy.

Footprints Childcare: Making Parenting Easier

Unfortunately,gone are the days when children would grow up under the supervision of grandparents and extended families. With joint families giving way to the nuclear family set up & with more women  pursuing active careers, the dependence on professional care givers has only increased in the recent times.

Being a working mother I can completely understand how tough a choice it is for mothers to leave their little ones behind in the care of domestic help while they are away at work. If one does not have the support of family to help raise kids, one has to fall back on domestic help which may not be the most reliable option in today’s day and age. 

The question then in one's mind is what are my other options? 

I would highly recommend considering the option of a professional day care.

One such option for parents in Delhi & NCR is Footprints Childcare, an international standard education based Full Day Child Care and Preschool Chain initiated by IIT-IIM alumni in the year 2012 that provides world class care and nurturing environment to kids for physical, mental, emotional and social growth & development. 

Footprints is one of the leading day care centre in Gurgaon, Noida and offers an integrated Day Care and Pre-school model that runs from 9AM until 6.30 PM for children from 3 months to 4 years of age all across its 7 centers. Today more than 550 happy children are a part of Footprints. Footprints Childcare Pvt. Ltd, which runs full day childcare and preschool chain, has raised Rs 4.25 crore ($671,800) led by Vinay Kumar Bansal, director at Step Ahead Ventures and Kshitij Jain, the founder of mobile enterprise application firm Mobolt. The unique version that has the best of amenities like an all women staff, hospital tie-ups, CCTV and real time mobile updates also has certified trainers from the US and revolves around making play school and day care available to all at a cost that will not burn a hole in the pocket. With learning programs that are designed to encourage and stimulate children, Footprints impart programs that are flexible to develop interest which are based on curriculum that has been researched well over 50 years and are followed in more than 20 countries and over 50,000 schools.

Some of the things that parents constantly worry about when at work- Did my child eat well? Did he/she take a nap? Hope my child does not spend his/her day watching TV with the maid? Well all these and more get taken care of at Footprints Childcare. At Footprints Childcare, you get access to live CCTV Feed and Child's updates on your mobile through our in-house Parent Connect App. So you can keep an eye on your little one’s activities even when you are away at work giving you complete peace of mind.

The early years are most essential in the development of your child. Children learn from their everyday activities as Footprints’ childcare activities are based on world's best High Scope Infants and Toddlers Curriculum.  Some examples of the activities are-

 Choice Time – During this time teacher will set three activity corners in the class and asks children in which activity he/ she wants to participate. Children will learn to take decisions, initiative out of their participation in Choice Time.

 Small Group Activity – Children will develop various skills out of their participation in Small Group Activities like- When children work with only a few other children at a time, they learn important lessons about cooperation, sharing, and the give and take of conversation. Also, when working in small groups with an adult, children are able to receive more focused attention they need for completing complex tasks and activities. The benefits of small group activities for teachers are plenty. When children work in small groups, this will free up teachers to focus on a few children at a time. Teachers may be able to observe children more closely. Also, teachers have the choice to place children in groups based on ability or interests. This will make observation and jotting down anecdotal notes very easy for the teacher.

 Large Group Activity – Children will develop social skills- sharing, caring, empathy and get rid of stranger anxiety while participating in Large Group activity. They will learn to lead which helps them in their daily life also.

 Meal Time -Eating together strengthens the relationship by allowing for more opportunities to talk and build relationships. This is the celebration time. Children will learn to eat variety of food with peer group. This is an opportunity to share information about benefits from vegetables, fruits, and cereals to inculcate good eating habits amongst our children.

 Outdoor Play -Following are the physical and mental health benefits of getting kids outside as it improves vision, promotes social skills, increases attention span, reduces stress and improves immune system. 

All this while they take exceptional care to provide a clean and sanitised environment for the children. They have a highly trained housekeeping team that schedules weekly herbal child safe Pest Control along with weekly cleaning of all toys, floors, cots, bed sheets, walls etc. They also schedule daily cleaning of classes and all toys once the children have left.

At Footprints Childcare your child gets only the best in nutrition, no junk foods only fresh and seasonal fruits, vegetables, nuts (winters) pulses and grains as variety of food. They try to inculcate good eating habits encouraging kids to eat on their own rather than force feeding them. 

I highly recommend you visit their website www.footprintseducation.in to see some firsthand reviews from parents. With seven outlets across Delhi & NCR, Footprints Childcare is definitely making parenting easier. 

Footprints Childcare offering a free three day trial to a few lucky readers of the blog, so in case you are interested in the trial drop us an email at thoseninemonthsandmore@gmail.com and you shall hear from us soon.

(This is a promotional post & we recommend parents do their due diligence on the same)

How to develop the habit of reading among children from an early age?

Like any parent, I constantly worry about my child being over exposed to television or mobile phones. Whether we like it or not things like  mobile phones are an integral part of our lives and our children get access to technology way before we did when we were young. So we cannot eliminate technology from our lives but we can regulate how and when the child gets exposed to it.

The reason I began thinking about all this is because every time I would sit to read a book to my fourteen month old, he would be least interested. He wanted to do everything except read. Whereas if I ever switched on the television before him or played some rhymes on you tube he would be glued to it, giving it his undivided attention. This got me thinking and I began searching across the Internet on how I could get my little one into the habit of reading books.

I came across this workshop that was scheduled to be held in Mumbai, hosted by The Yearling house (you can follow them on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/TheYearlingHouse)

I found the session helpful hence decided to share some of my learning's here. The two ladies who are heading this initiative, Puja and Aparna began the session with a slide that talked about how the brain functions while watching television vis a vis  when one reads. The first two years of life are considered a critical for brain development. TV and other electronic media like watching videos on mobile phones can get in the way of exploring, playing, and interacting with parents which in turn encourages learning and healthy physical and social development.

So what is it that we can do to encourage toddlers to read

• Start young- you can start reading to your child from infancy. Don't wait for them to grow up to be old enough to hold a book
• Make the activity fun for the child- voice modulations, actions and involving the child in the activity by seeking help to may be turn the page are just some ways you can engage the child while reading. At the workshop, Aparna demonstrated this very effectively using voice modulation. Every time she would change the pitch and say things like “Oh” to show an element of surprise or “Growl” to show an animal making noise, the kids would leave what they were doing and listen to her instead
• Don’t focus on finishing the story or teaching them things like moral of the story, that’s not the objective at this stage. As toddlers the focus must be on engaging them and making the whole activity of book reading both fun and interactive for the child. 
• Choose the books that are age appropriate- a book that has too many words may seem very distracting for a toddler. Select books that have one picture on each page and may be one sentence for a toddler
• Don’t get disheartened if the child does not sit with you for the whole duration of 20 minutes that you had planned for book reading. As toddlers, children want to explore anything and everything so expecting them to stay still for 20 minutes is a tall order. Even if the child sits with you for 5-7 minutes a day, you are off to a good start
• Create a routine- book reading has to be a part of the child’s daily routine. For instance if you only have time in the evenings post work, you may set a bedtime routine for your child. Just before going to bed read to your child. Also choose the time wisely, if its time for the child to go down to play in the evening and you insist of reading a book at that point, you may be fighting a losing battle.
• Choose the books carefully- a book that has lots of pictures or too many words may seem very distracting for your child. Select books that have one picture on each page and may be one sentence. What are the kind of books one should look at? Some suggestions that I received at the session were as follows 
• Biscuit dog- there is a whole series available about Biscuit the dog and the activities that he goes about. http://www.amazon.in/Biscuit-My-First-Can-Read-ebook/dp/B0078XFX8Q/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1452061719&sr=1-1&keywords=biscuit+dog
• Gajapati Kulapati- a story about an elephant with simple illustrations and fun words that make it engaging for the child  http://www.amazon.in/Gajapati-Kulapati-Kalabaloosh-Ashok-Rajagopalan/dp/9350465116/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1452062297&sr=1-2&keywords=gajapati+kulapati
• Blue hat green hat http://www.amazon.in/Green-Boynton-Board-Books-Schuster/dp/0671493205/ref=tmm_other_meta_binding_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1452062925&sr=1-1
• They have a host of other recommendations on good reads, check out the link here https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/34325395-the-yearling-house?shelf=read
  

• Don’t restrict reading to only English books. Read to them in your mother tongue as well. For example if you talk to your child in Hindi at home, read Hindi books as well because it is easier for your child to relate to a language that he is being spoken in.
• You can use the same book in many ways. You don't always have to read only what is written in the book, you can use the illustrations provided in the book to help the child relate to something that he/she may have seen earlier during the day. So if the book shows a market, you can use that as an opportunity to talk to the child about what he/ she may have seen during there visit to the market

Most of all children learn by observing their parents/ caregiver. So if a child sees that daddy and mommy  plonk themselves in front of the television every evening, they would learn the same habits. So as parents we need to make some hard choices, ditch the television and spend some time reading to your child. 

Happy reading :)