Month: September 2023

Picky eating is a common behaviour in early childhood, with  the peak prevalence occurring at about age 3 years.  Although there may be many reasons why a child may not want to eat a certain food or eat at all at certain times there are some common reasons for resisting food, and some strategies to help get through them. Let’s take a look at a few common reasons children avoid eating, and things you can do to help. To assert independence and be in control Starting around 18 months, toddlers begin to understand that they’re separate individuals from others and have their own thoughts and feelings. They’re eager to have control and be independent, which often results in defiance. Resisting or refusing certain foods and demanding other foods is one way they might do this. While you can’t give into a demand to eat “only sticky rice”  you can give your child some choices to allow them to feel a sense of control and independence. Engage your child in preparing the meal. Any involvement such as shopping for the food together, helping to wash the vegetables, or setting  the table will make your child feel like they are a part of the process and have some control over mealtimes. Make it a policy to serve one meal for everyone but give your child  the option to decide what and how much of each item they want  to have. May be sceptical of new things Children take comfort from the known and familiar so when new foods are introduced it can be intimidating. Even if your child says no  to new foods, you should keep offering them. It  might take many  attempts, often up to  10 – 15,  before they are  willing to give it a taste. Allow your child to start off by smelling or licking the food without pressure to eat it. When your child refuses to try a food, you can model eating it with delight… “oh what yummy broccoli that is!” Also try to serve new foods alongside familiar food, which may  make the plate look a little safer! Simply just not hungry at mealtime Be aware of how much snacking your child does and how much milk they are drinking between meals. If a child has filled up on snacks or milk, they will not be as interested in trying a new food, or eating at all,  simply because they just aren’t that  hungry. Set and stick with a predictable and consistent snack and mealtime routine, and limit your  child’s daily milk intake to the daily recommended amount according to their age. Picked up the pickiness from others Toddlers learn by observing the world around them, so if they see others are being picky at the table they will follow this. One of the best things you can do to encourage healthy eating is to model good eating behaviours at home.  Serving and eating a wide variety of wholesome foods and eating together as a family as often as possible will set the tone for the positive choices you want your child to make. To conclude, while you undoubtedly will  hear “I don’t want to eat that!” from time to time, there are strategies you can take to encourage your child to eat a variety of foods.  Now is the time to establish healthy eating habits that will last a lifetime!  Bon appetit!

For many kindergarten students, being able to read and write their own name is a BIG step towards independence. All of a sudden, they are no longer dependent on the teacher, who usually labels their picture, but can write their name by themselves. And thanks to labelling, they can find their own things without help! From my experience as a teacher, I can see that it definitely fills the students with pride when they can point out their names on the shoe rack, art drawer or cupboard. ‘I can find my own name.’ or ‘I can write my own name!’ Wow, that’s a great feeling of success, isn’t it? Only a few letters but their meaning is huge! Reading should be said with caution in this context. It is rather a pattern recognition, which assigns the written letters to the name. Or the stringing together of known letters. Reading here does not mean to decode a random word. But we will get there… Also writing in this context is mostly still rather a drawing of single letters and not what we as adults would understand by writing. For simplicity I use the terms here regardless because even drawing can be considered as an early expression of writing skills.  Reading comes before writing, but why? Not because it’s more important or you can’t start writing until you can read (It is often a parallel process anyway). However, as already indicated, reading names is only partly about being able to read. That means that also a child without letter knowledge can recognize its name. Quite simply by recognizing the sequence of the characters. Children learn that different patterns have different meanings long before they learn the first characters. And as long as the characters are not yet characters for them, they are just symbols and signs like any other stroke, arrow or circle. There are many different, exciting and fun ways to practice reading and writing your own name. In this article, I would like to share two examples that we did in K1. Does the title make you hungry? It is not a real soup and the ingredients are only letters but playing this game was a lot of fun! In this activity, us teachers prepared a large poster on which the names of all students were written several times in bright colours and wildly mixed. A soup full of names! Equipped with pens, the students had to find their own names and circle them. At the end, we counted together how many times each name appeared and was circled. It’s a good exercise where students can also help each other to find (and recognize) the names of their classmates! Ready for takeoff? To the moon! In order to get there, however, we first need to build a rocket. For this exercise in K1, the students received individual ‘rocket blocks’ (sticky notes) with letters. One sticker per letter. For instance, if the name consisted of five letters, the respective student received five stickers with the corresponding letters. But wait! The letters had to be put in the right order. And not only that: in order for the rocket to fly, the letters must also be stuck the right way round (legibly). Sounds complicated? K1 did a great job! With a little guidance from the teacher, all the students successfully completed their rocket and together we counted the letter blocks from each student. Everybody received a label saying ‘Blast off! My name is ___rocket blocks long’ so the teacher could write down the number of letters. Connecting the number of letters in a name with something imaginative and visual like a rocket block or train carriage supports the memorization of the name length. There are countless other fun ways for kids to practice their own name recognition and supports their independence especially in the classroom.

By Teacher Shannon Learning to read can feel like such a daunting task for so many children as well as their parents. While I think we can all agree that reading is important in order to be a part of the world, the love of books can be encouraged long before a child reads their first word. In the Early Years of a child’s development there are many ways for a child to benefit from looking at books. This does not mean that the adult consistently needs to be there in order to read the words to their child. When children look at the pictures in books independently, they are only left with their own imagination to fill in the gaps and create the story. While they may not know what the words say it is an important skill to be able to make an inference based on the pictures. So, how do I get my child to sit down and independently look at the pictures? Here are some tips to get your child interested in books. To further your child’s thinking and language skills try… There are a million more reasons as to why books are so important but for now I will leave you with a quote from Dr. Seuss (and in case you have no idea where to start Dr. Seuss has many fabulously fun books). “You can find magic wherever you look. Sit back and relax, all you need is a book!”  -Dr. Seuss Happy Reading!

The start of an academic year may feel intimidating but don’t worry, we’re here to help you make this a smooth transition! Parent-Teacher communication is key to getting parents involved in their child’s education and life outside of their home. Parent involvement may result in better school behaviours and improved social skills. Given all the positive effects of parental involvement, Kidz Village International Kindergarten regularly reaches out to parents with open houses, parent-teacher conferences, seesaw posts, websites & other school events. There is a possibility that these events and online communications are not enough for you. If that’s the case, what should you do? Here are some examples of ways to strengthen Parent-Teacher Communications: Communicate regularly during drop-off and pick-up times Talk Through Ideas & Successes, not only challenges both outside and inside of school) Offer Opportunities For Feedback: If your child’s behaviour concerns you at home, speak to the teacher about it to see what are the positives and negatives of such behaviours. Don’t jump to conclusions based off change in behaviour. See the best in others: Have an optimistic mindset at all times. Set objectives: It is absolutely okay to set weekly or monthly targets with your teacher to analyze your child. Take and receive all the support and suggestions you can get Most importantly, establish and nurture trust! And now it’s time to act on it! Pick a way you think would work best for you and give it a go! There’s no wrong or right way, you just have to try and believe.