Best Christmas Stocking Fillers for Kids

nmjI start looking for stocking stuffers for Christmas early in the year. In fact, I spend quite a lot of time choosing which presents to give to my kids and my nephews. That’s because I really like the happy look on their faces when they open something they really love.

If you’re like me and you’re also looking for great stocking fillers, here are some great ideas.

To start with, learning-friendly stocking stuffers are often great gifts. The child will not only be learning something but the parents will be just as happy as well. Small traveling flashcards are always great I think. So are age-appropriate books that teach the child whatever it is he/she is currently learning in school.

Of these educational toys, science-related toys are really nice. There are the popular volcano building sets, the make your own crystal at home toys, or even robot building toys. These are all fun for kids and it doesn’t hurt that they’re learning something in the process too.

Another thing to give is something funny. A toy figure

Are You Choosing the Right Kids Games

yjjtukThis is the internet generation where the reason most kids go online is to play games. It is up to the parents to supervise and/or guide their children as far as playing these games online are concerned. Keep in mind that their internet habits such as this has a lot to say about their cognitive and overall development. Are you helping your children choose the right kids games to play?

Here are some tips to guide you, as a parent, in choosing the right internet games for your kids:

The first thing you need to do is to make sure that you regulate the internet habits of your kid. If they have a free pass, they can access whatever kind of games they can find online. You see, while some games come with a price tag and would need your intervention for the purchase, such as using your credit card, others are free of cost.

Set up restrictions to prevent your child from downloading or accessing just about any games on the web. You can limit your child’s exposure to the internet, such as how much

Key Things To Look For In Kids Water Shoes

hkmghkHaving good footwear is important for everyone. In today’s market, shoes are made specifically for almost any activity that you can think of. This is great for consumers because they can get exactly what they need for any occasion. Keeping feet comfortable is important for any type of shoe. When looking for kids water shoes or kids rain boots, there are a few key things to consider before your purchase. This article will outline the factors that are most important when looking for new shoes for your child.

Kids are very active and need a shoe that can handle all of their activities. Water sports are a fun favorite of many kids. Having a pair of water shoes for kids is a great way to help keep them safe and comfortable. This type of shoe should be made with materials that are slip resistant when wet. After swimming or boating, kids will often be walking on slippery surfaces like rocks or tile. It is key to preventing falls to have something that still has good traction when wet. Also, when looking for kids water shoes, most companies sell

5 Rewarding Benefits of Arts and Crafts for Kids

Arts and crafts is a great activity for children. It purposely allows them to embrace their inner creativity and have fun without being perched in front of computers and television sets for hours at a time. Let’s take a closer look at some of the benefits that children can gain from regular participation in arts and crafts.

  1. Bonding Time

Sitting down with your children and creating something together is a great way for you and your little ones to bond over an activity. Our children love to spend time with us and participating in arts and crafts is a helpful way to take advantage of this fact while we still can. Taking the time to create something from start to finish is one of the most rewarding experiences that we can have with our offspring.

  1. Self-Esteem Booster

Arts and crafts offer the opportunity to make the most out of a situation and provide children with the chance to boost their self-esteem by overcoming challenges and problems that pop up along the way. Giving our children challenges to work on serves as a wonderful self-esteem builder, as there is no substitute for

Fighting Poverty and Injustice Around the World

Poverty is one of the most pervasive global problems today. Poverty affects over a third of the world’s population, and in many countries it is compounded by rampant injustice. However, there are organisations committed to helping. Some aid organisations have been working for decades to fight poverty and injustice, and have made a large impact in several areas of the world. Most aid organisations rely on help from everyday people. If you want to help fight global poverty, consider donating your time or money to a reliable aid organisation.

Why the Need Is so Great

One person in three lives in poverty due to a wide variety of causes. Natural disasters, political strife, lack of infrastructure, and civil war are just a few of the reasons behind global poverty.  While the circumstances may vary, the result remains the same: millions of people struggling to survive each day. The problem is daunting, but there are ways to help. Aid organisations such as Oxfam Australia help mobilise people and resources on an international level to combat poverty.

Poverty is a difficult problem, because in most cases there is more than one cause. Circumstances are compounded to

Pool Safety – How to Limit Horseplay at Your Next Kids’ Pool Party

As any exhausted parent will tell you, kids have a lot of energy. They love to run, jump, climb, wrestle, and tumble around, fueled by a seemingly limitless supply of energy. What drives the inexhaustible engines of our beloved little curtain climbers? As it turns out, kids’ urge to horseplay and roughhouse isn’t accidental-in fact, it may be a biologically necessary part of healthy child development.

In their book, The Art of Roughhousing: Good Old-Fashioned Horseplay and Why Every Kid Needs It, authors Anthony T. DeBenedet, MD and Lawrence J. Cohen make the case that horseplay makes kids smarter by releasing a chemical that stimulates neuron growth in certain regions of the brain. Horseplay is also important for social development and emotional intelligence, and can strengthen ethical and moral behavior, say the authors.

As a society, we’ve progressively moved away from allowing time for horseplay and physical activity, even limiting or removing physical education programs in some schools, altogether. Understandably, we don’t want our kids to get hurt, which is inevitable to some extent when it comes to horseplay. But allowing kids to get physical is important, and it’s a fact: horseplay is just plain fun.

But … Horseplay and Roughhousing Have Their

Grow kids’ brains through sport

Organized extracurricular sport activities for children help them develop and improve cognitive skills, such as greater concentration capacity, that can in term greatly help them in the classroom, says Université de Montréal professor Linda Pagani. Pagani is presenting her research in Chicago at “The Fundamental Importance of Free Movement and Organized Extracurricular Sport Activity for the Cognitive Development of the Child: The View From the Field,” a scientific symposium organized by Coni-Italian National Olympic Committee USA and the Italian Cultural Institute in Chicago.

In addition to being a professor at the university’s School of Psychoeducation, Pagani is also a researcher at Montreal’s CHU Sainte-Justine Children’s hospital. Her work focuses on childhood development and the identification of factors that impact on kids as they grow up, with a view to helping parents, teachers and organizations to prioritize positive activities and behaviours. Some of her most recent research looks specifically at the impact of team sports. “We worked with information provided by parents and teachers to compare kindergarteners’ activities with their classroom engagement as they grew up,” Pagani said. “By time they reached the fourth grade, kids who played structured sports were identifiably better at following instructions and remaining focused

Why do chronically lonely teens stay lonely?

For chronically lonely adolescents, even the rare invitation to a social event is likely to be met with suspicion: “It’s not that I’m worthy, I just got lucky,” they’ll tell themselves.

And when not included in a gathering of peers, the chronically lonely teen will attribute it to some personal flaw.

A collaborative study by researchers from Duke University, the University of Leuven (Belgium), and Ghent University (Belgium) investigated whether the interpretations and emotions triggered when adolescents are included and excluded by peers differed between chronically lonely adolescents and adolescents with a more positive social history. The study, published in the November issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, involved 730 adolescents in Belgium.

The researchers charted individual trajectories of loneliness based on four annual questionnaires. They found that most adolescents did not experience high levels of loneliness or if they did it was not long-lasting, but they also found a small subgroup of adolescents felt lonely year after year. These chronically lonely individuals may respond to social situations in ways that perpetuate rather than reduce their loneliness, the researchers said.

For instance, chronically lonely adolescents had a stronger tendency to attribute social inclusion to circumstantial factors instead of

Healthy After school Snacks

We’ve all read the news: Diets that are high in refined sugars and calories — from candy, soft drinks, fast foods and vending machine snacks — have been shown to contribute to obesity in kids, and adults for that matter. It can be so easy for them to grab a bag of chips to snack on in the afternoon but, as research continues to show, simple carbohydrates aren’t necessarily your kids’ friends.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, 80 percent of 10- to 15-year-olds who are overweight become obese adults by the age of 25. One way to be sure your kids are on a healthy track? Pay attention to how they snack.

Yogurt is an easy, grab-and-go, nutritious snack that most kids find yummy. It’s also a great source of calcium and vitamin D, and studies show eating it can boost a body’s ability to build strong bones. While it’s naturally packed with goodness, pay attention to the yogurt you buy — avoid ingredients that you can’t pronounce, artificial coloring and high-fructose corn syrup. Bring home organic, low-fat or non-fat varieties to keep this snack healthy.

Add honey for sweetness, and have fresh fruit and granola on hand for kids to

Pool Safety How to Limit Horseplay at Your Next Kids Pool Party

As any exhausted parent will tell you, kids have a lot of energy. They love to run, jump, climb, wrestle, and tumble around, fueled by a seemingly limitless supply of energy. What drives the inexhaustible engines of our beloved little curtain climbers? As it turns out, kids’ urge to horseplay and roughhouse isn’t accidental-in fact, it may be a biologically necessary part of healthy child development.

In their book, The Art of Roughhousing: Good Old-Fashioned Horseplay and Why Every Kid Needs It, authors Anthony T. DeBenedet, MD and Lawrence J. Cohen make the case that horseplay makes kids smarter by releasing a chemical that stimulates neuron growth in certain regions of the brain. Horseplay is also important for social development and emotional intelligence, and can strengthen ethical and moral behavior, say the authors.

As a society, we’ve progressively moved away from allowing time for horseplay and physical activity, even limiting or removing physical education programs in some schools, altogether. Understandably, we don’t want our kids to get hurt, which is inevitable to some extent when it comes to horseplay. But allowing kids to get physical is important, and it’s a fact: horseplay is just plain fun.

But … Horseplay and Roughhousing Have Their

Pool Safety How to Limit Horseplay at Your Next Kids Pool Party

As any exhausted parent will tell you, kids have a lot of energy. They love to run, jump, climb, wrestle, and tumble around, fueled by a seemingly limitless supply of energy. What drives the inexhaustible engines of our beloved little curtain climbers? As it turns out, kids’ urge to horseplay and roughhouse isn’t accidental-in fact, it may be a biologically necessary part of healthy child development.

In their book, The Art of Roughhousing: Good Old-Fashioned Horseplay and Why Every Kid Needs It, authors Anthony T. DeBenedet, MD and Lawrence J. Cohen make the case that horseplay makes kids smarter by releasing a chemical that stimulates neuron growth in certain regions of the brain. Horseplay is also important for social development and emotional intelligence, and can strengthen ethical and moral behavior, say the authors.

As a society, we’ve progressively moved away from allowing time for horseplay and physical activity, even limiting or removing physical education programs in some schools, altogether. Understandably, we don’t want our kids to get hurt, which is inevitable to some extent when it comes to horseplay. But allowing kids to get physical is important, and it’s a fact: horseplay is just plain fun.

Different Types of Fancy Dress Costumes For Kids

Nowadays every school organizes some competitions for the kids to portray their talents in various fields. These competitions help the children to identify their skills and develop competitive spirit in them. Basically for pre-school kids, they arrange for a fancy dress competition apart from singing, dancing or drawing competition. They want the children to participate for enjoying and not for winning and also for showing their skills and capacity. When we talk about fancy dress, we get confused about what type of costume we must choose for our kids. There are many kinds of outfits that can be taken into account for selection namely:

  • Animal costumes for kids: Parents can choose this outfit to make their kid participate as an animal in the fancy dress competition. These dresses are available easily and can also be made at home. This is best option when your child is not aware about any cartoon feature or superheroes. The popular instances of this dress are mice, dogs, lion, farm animals, cats and like. Animal costumes for kids are mostly preferred by all due to its easy accessibility.
  • Cartoon character outfit: If your kid wants to represent a cartoon character, then you might

Three Wheel Scooters For Kids

Scooters are also gaining popularity among adults, as they are quite lightweight and easy to navigate. There are several benefits of riding a three wheel scooter for kids. As they are available in bright and colorful designs, kids love to ride on them and show them to their friends as a priced possession. There are several benefits of riding scooters for kids. Few of them are as listed below-

Helps improve hand-eye co-ordination-

As the kid tries to ride the three wheeled scooter, it helps improve his hand-eye co-ordination. S/he is able to move his hands as per the direction his eye provides.

Improves sense of direction and navigation-

It is important to hone the navigation skills so that the kid becomes active and can respond to any physical action well. Riding a three wheel scooter can help improve his/her sense of direction and improves his ability to navigate a vehicle. It also helps sharpening his mind and making him both physically and mentally active.

Develops quick thinking ability-

Not only does riding three wheel scooters help improve various skills in kids, it also helps in the development of quick thinking ability.

Camping Most Enchanting Activity For Kids

As the academic year is all set to get over and within few days of time summer break fever will grip in the kids. Whether it’s a summer holiday or a break it gives parents a sense of tension that would activities will the kids be doing and how are they going to spend the between time till the school reopens. These days parents really have to put in extra efforts to cater to the kids needs in term of the activities they would like to get engage in.

There are ample of activities for kids that can be pursued in their free time. The kids can be made to remain active by allowing them to take up the hobbies that they are interested in whether an outdoor one or an indoor one. The most striking activities during the summer break are swimming, camping, learning craft, joining dance classes, innovative science camps, candle making and learning to make desserts and so on. Swimming, because it helps kids to remain active and even they don’t realise how much exercise they are doing amidst the fun and excitement. Also it provides them with a refreshing coolness in contrast to

Exciting And Creative Things to do With The Kids

As soon as the holiday session steps up and schools are off, most of the mums are often left with one big question, “How can I keep my child occupied during holidays?” Well, vacations are a dreaded or an alarming season for many moms and dads, but it can be as normal only if they know how to keep their toddlers creatively involved or happily occupied in holiday activities. With the holidays, generally stretching up to a month or more, most of the parents are under great pressure and enroll their kids in all kinds of camps and hobby classes like swimming, art and crafting, skating, singing, dancing and many more. And it results only, tired and bored kids.

 

Most of the parents make their kids to join the summer camp, holiday activities and all. Well, before you walk in with your toddlers to the infinite camps and seminars, stop and answer to yourself this question first- “Do your children really like to swim or dance?” Always remember, it should not be the case that you are unnecessarily pushing your child into those activities that is

Luggage on Wheels For Kids

When travelling while using family, the less heavy bags and suitcases you will discover to carry the much easier and much more pleasant the journey becomes. As parents we usually do not aid our health by lugging around our cases together with the kids backpacks, which can be uncomfortable to carry and generally heavily loaded.

Rolling suitcases for adults have existed for many years now and became a preferred option for most travellers, so why not the exact same for kids? Kids from in regards to the age of 3 years need to be more grown up and carry their very own bags, except they’re so awkward and heavy that mum or dad will find yourself carry it as well as everything else!

Kids luggage on wheels could be the answer to numerous parent/toddler travel problems. Children’s luggage that may be sized for children and their needs. A comfortable, durable and rolling suitcase that comes that has a multi function shoulder strap for straightforward carrying and smooth rolling wheels to push and pull kids around on. Offered in the vary of animal designs full with horns in your child to hold on to, the “Trunki” suitcase

How To Choose Suitable Building Block For Kids

As is known to all, good seed is easy to germinate and finally the plants will be healthy and lush. Not only the plants, toys have the same principle, almost every parent want to buy the right and useful toys for their kids, yes, it is right because good toys can not only inspire your baby’s intelligence, but also inspire baby’s creativity. At the same time, good toys are certainly not the most expensive, but should be stood the test of time. Now please consider which toy bought for your kids is the good one, I am sure common building block should be the right ones because it is so simple, but can be changed into endless shapes. However, if parents want to make full use of building block’s function, it is important to choose the appropriate building block and play with the right ways.

Many parents want to know that how to choose the appropriate building block because nowadays they are too many types of building block in the toys market including two-dimensional building block and three-dimensional building block.

When babies are under one year old, it is better to choose the soft fabric building blocks. At the same time, building

Do You Know Such Three Characteristics Of Good Kids Toys

Generally, the family is not too large for kids to place lots of kids toys on floor everywhere, as a result, it is necessary and important to choose the best toys for kids to play, in other words, it is the parents’ responsibility. According to the newest research, in fact, children do not need too many toys because it is not really beneficial to their physical and mental development. As for the good toys, it should provide too many playing ways for kids to get playing pleasure, of course, from the playing process, their abilities and intelligence should be enhanced. According to the toys research and development center, good kids toys should have such characteristics being introduced below.

Safety playing should be guaranteed

No matter what kinds of toys for kids, they should be non-toxic and must not have sharp edges and corners. Their combined parts and accessories should be very solid so as not to be swallowed by kids incautiously. In addition, some harmful chemicals ingredients and flammable materials should not be contained in toys. When buying walker for baby or little kids, the string on toys should accord with the toys safety production standards. As for toys manufacturer, it is

Stationery With Toys Design And Function Is Good Or Bad For Kids

By accident, you find that there are too many kids toys such as car toy design writing case, shoes shape note book, drawer shape pen and penknife with music function, do you worry about such lots of toys would affect the learning in school?

Ms Tracy said that a few days ago, she brought her seven years old son to the market to buy stationery and her son was attracted by one ruler with maze game and one pen with cartoon pictures. Obviously, such stationeries can be used as the kids toys for play. As a result, Ms Tracy thought that there stationeries would have bad influence in kids learning and she refused to buy for him. However, her son cries for a long time and asked for such stationeries. She had to compromised. A few days ago, the teacher told her that her son recently always played with the stationeries bought for him and didn’t pay any attention on learning. Under such circumstance, she tried to keep these stationeries at home and didn’t allow him to bring to school. Because of little age and weak self-control, children are more likely to be fascinated by these stationeries, as parents, do you

Different Roles Between Specialized Kids Toys And Natural Items

Too many parents always buy various kinds of kids toys for their children to play, to get playing pleasure and develop their intelligence. However, they don’t know what can their children really learn from toys playing process. In fact, knowledge which is learned from toys playing is an accumulation of early experience, its effect is not the same as the learning words, doing math. For example, when playing with building blocks, kids learn the space concepts, which should be only learned up to learn geometry in secondary school. When children were born, parents put some toys on their bed, little babies would kick them with foot, touch them with hands and so on. From these activities, their sense organs are developed naturally, which is also the learning experience.

Generally, kids love the both specialized kids toys and natural items, however, do you know their different roles in children growing process?

In daily life, some items are not played as toys. For example, fire, glass and other fragile items are dangerous for kids to play. Under such circumstance, only the toys can fulfill their desires to play with their own ways. When playing toys, kids would feel they are the master of them