fun learning for kids: June 2015

Thursday 25 June 2015

Free Animal Number Puzzles for Kids

I'll confess. Sometimes I get inspired by a product that I buy for my daughters and I use that idea to come up with a printable activity. In this case, I bought a great pack of Princess sticker puzzles from Michael's. I thought it was such a great idea to practice numbers, so I made a few animal themed cut & paste number puzzles to share with you! Sure, not as much fun as stickers, but just as educational!

These FREE Animal themed Number Puzzles come in two levels of difficulty. One set includes numbers 1-16 and another set includes number 1-32. Use whichever puzzles suit your child's skill level.

Just cut the images along the grid lines, shuffle the pieces and give to your child to glue to the blank grid sheet. For added challenge, have the child cut out the puzzle pieces!

Click here to Download your Free Animal Number Puzzles!

If you are interested in the Sticker Puzzles product I purchased, here are some Amazon affiliate links:

10 Tips to Help You Feed Your Toddler a Healthy Diet

I am pleased to feature this very helpful guest post by Dr. Orlena Kerek, who is a pediatrician, a mother of four, an author and a blogger at Snotty-Noses.com! On her blog you can find a wealth of information on children's health, illnesses, symptoms, healthy eating, and many great recipes!

10 Tips to Help You Feed Your Toddler a Healthy Diet

I think it’s fair to say that toddlers have dubious table manners. They shout, they scream, they fling food and cutlery, they try to sprawl themselves across the table. Well at least they do in my house and we have two. Dinner times are far from civilised.

It can be difficult for parents. Faced with these very determined little people, we try hard to give them a healthy diet. More often than not we see our nice green broccoli flying through the air. Count yourself luck if you have a dog to help you clear up.

One of the things that parents really struggle with is introducing new foods to young children, especially toddlers. Here’s my top tips to make it easier for you:

1. Be Patient. I can’t say this enough. Toddlers can be difficult. The behaviour described above is perfectly normal for toddlers. It’s frustrating yes, but hang in there.

2. Keep presenting new and healthy food. It takes time for children to accept a new food. The first time they see it, they probably won’t like it. You just need to keep presenting it. (The norm is 10-15 times but some children take longer.)

3. Toddlers' tastes can change. My oldest used to love bananas. He’s nearly 7 now and won’t touch them. He can smell them in anything. He truly doesn’t like them now.

4. Let them feed themselves. I know it’s frustrating and messy but exploring food is a great way for them to learn about the food and to learn how to feed themselves. (If they ask for a bit of help from time to time that’s fine too.)

5. Don’t pressure them. Toddlers, like most people, don’t like to be told what to do. It will only serve to make them more stubborn. (There is lots of evidence that pressurising children to eat has adverse affects.)

6. Don’t bribe them. You can have pudding when you’ve eaten your peas? Let’s face it, it’s just pressurising them in disguise.

7. Learn to trust them. You choose what to offer them. They choose what to eat. When you trust them it’s much easier.

8. Remember that toddlers' appetites can be erratic. 4 weetabix for breakfast one day, 1 strawberry the next. Or only veggies one day and carbs and protein the next. As long as you offer them healthy food it doesn’t matter.

9. Offer variety. Research shows that the more variety you offer, the more variety they’ll eat.

10. Get them used to the idea of strange foods before they are presented with them. Seeing them in books, playing with toy vegetables or the actual food (not at the dinner table) are all great ways to introduce them to foods so that when they see them on the plate they won’t be so strange.

Feeding toddlers is a challenge. Getting them used to a healthy diet and into healthy habits is an amazing gift that will give them great health benefits later in life. The keys are patience and persistence. (And perhaps some ear plugs!)

Meet Orlena:

I’m Dr Orlena Kerek. I’m a paediatric doctor and mother of four young children and author of the book Crunch! Put a Stop to Picky Eating and Get Your Kids to Love Veggies. I used to think that healthy eating was easy, until I had children. Then I realised it’s easier said than done. Over the last few years I’ve been researching and practising on my own children to ensure that they develop healthy eating habits.

Monday 8 June 2015

12 Ice Cream Printables for Preschoolers (Love to Learn Linky #45)

I asked my kids what their favorite thing about summer is and they said ice cream! So I thought it would be fun to round up all the free ice cream learning printables for preschoolers and have them in one place for handy reference!

Practice spelling your name, one scoop at a time!

Match capital and lowercase letters with this ice cream busy bag printable.

Practice numbers and one-to-one correspondence with this math ice cream cone game.

Match pictures on the ice cream by their beginning letter sounds.

This popsicle matching activity is a perfect way to practice rhyming!

Create a yummy sight word sundae with this printable!

This ice cream file folder math game is perfect for practicing numbers 1 through 10!

And now for the packs...

Practice letter recognition, letter tracing and more in this Ice Cream ABC Pack!

Dot markers make learning fun. Use them with these Ice Cream Do-a-Dot Printables.

This ice cream game pack has several math and letter games.

This ice cream Pre-K unit has tons of different learning activities.

Here is another ice cream preschool pack that looks great.

LOVE TO LEARN LINKY

Visit my co-hosts to see their posts and features!

Canada Day National Flag Windsock Craft from One Time Through

Now it's time for some more links! I hope you'll join me and a couple of friends for a brand new linky party!

Bloggers, link up your posts every Thursday and watch as we round them up and share them all over the place.

Almost anything goes, we're just hoping your activities teach kids (or us!) something. (science, art, cooking, behavior, crafting, parenting, etc...)

Love to Learn Linky Etiquette:

Posts should be about educating our kids in any way - science, art, cooking, crafts, behavior, parenting, etc. Please keep them family friendly and please no Etsy shops or giveaways unless they are relevant to the topic.