Purchasing a Piano

You don’t need to buy an expensive piano to teach your child how to play. Even a simple keyboard is enough to help him develop coordination and the ability to read music. Visit a local electronics store, or consider trying Craigslist or Ebay to find something simple. The bigger the keyboard is, the more useful it will be to you in the long run, but it might be beneficial to choose a cheaper, smaller model. If your child doesn’t enjoy it, you won’t be out too much money. A standard keyboard has 88 keys, but try to purchase something with at least 42 keys.

Finger Dexterity

When playing piano, the goal is to develop finger independence, so that each finger can play each key of the piano effectively. The last thing you want is for your child to become frustrated because his fingers aren’t cooperating. So, have your child place all five fingers anywhere on the keyboard. Then, ask him to depress one key at a time very slowly. The goal is to try and depress the keys without moving any of the other fingers. This will be difficult at first, but with enough practice, he will learn to do this effectively on his own.

Identify Middle C

Music Lessons Can Increase Your Child's Intelligence

Finger Numbers

Next, you need to teach your child the numbers of each finger. When playing piano, early music has numbers written above the notes. These numbers tell you what finger to use to play a note. By learning the numbers associated with each finger, your child can more easily play songs. Have him hold both hands out in front of him, with palms facing away. Tell your son (or daughter) that the thumbs on both hands are 1s. Then, the fingers go up to 5, ending on the pinkies. Next, have him place his right hand on the keyboard. Tell him to play the finger that you call out. Call out random numbers until he correctly plays the finger associated with each number. Once the right hand is mastered, he can move on to the left hand. When he can play with each hand separately, have him place both hands on the keyboard, to see if he can play “hands together.”

Further Instruction

Work on these basic lessons for at least a month. Once your child has mastered these skills and developed some coordination, purchase a method book for young beginners. Guide your child through the book or hire a piano teacher to help him continue to develop. As long as you dedicate yourself, you can keep up with him for quite a while. Eventually, you’ll have to hand the reins over to a qualified instructor, but you can definitely save some money in the beginning while your child works through the first few books.

Guest Post
This post was written by Melissa Tyler. She likes to write, spend time with her family and frequent www.dentalinsurance.net.

Related Reading:

Help Your Creative Child Develop a True Love of Music
Suzuki Music Lessons
Ten Steps to Boost Your Child’s Creativity

Photo Credits:
Top: photo by Will Merydith.
Middle: photo by Iampeas

Some Children May Not Know How To Fall Asleep On Their Own

We All Need Our Sleep

There are few topics that cause more discussion or disturbance in the home than sleep, or the lack of it! Parents cannot deal with their children when they themselves are overtired. Children cannot learn, play, or grow properly unless they have adequate sleep. Lack of sleep can be linked to many other health concerns, including depression, obesity, even cancer. So, when you have a child that won’t go to sleep or stay asleep, and sleep through the night in his own bed, you have a serious concern!

What NOT To Do

Do not rock your child to sleep. Do not nurse, or feed a bottle to a baby to put him to sleep. You need to put a child or infant in his crib while he is still awake, but sleepy, and he needs to learn how to self-soothe, how to relax and let himself fall asleep. If you rock a child to sleep, then when he wakes up in the night, as all children will do, he may need you to get up and rock him back to sleep! If you rock a child as part of your bedtime routine, that’s wonderful. But make sure your child isn’t quite asleep yet when you lay him down. Do Not put a child to sleep with special music, or a movie, or a toy. If your child depends on that music, or movie, or toy, then he will not be able to sleep without it. The exception to the rule is, if you live in a noisy area and wish to use a “white noise” machine – you are not training your child to fall asleep with the white noise as much as allowing your child to fall asleep with the absence of disruptive noise.

What TO DO to Help Your Child Fall Asleep Faster

Develop a Solid Bedtime Routine

or ritual, and stick with it always and forever. It can be five steps long (as your young child can count down each step on his fingers). It should be written down and posted, so your spouse and babysitter and the grandparents can all follow the same routine. The bedtime ritual tells your child that it is time to unwind and get ready for sleep. What you do isn’t as important as the fact that you always do it. Your routine may include picking up toys, taking a bath, putting on pajamas, hearing a story, and saying prayers. Add or delete activities to suit your needs.

Develop a Daytime Routine

Make sure that your child’s entire day follows a routine. See that he eats, naps, and plays at regular intervals every day. This guarantees that your child will actually be SLEEPY at bedtime. If his meals are hectic, and his naps are sometimes early, sometimes late, sometimes skipped, then his body never knows when it will be tired. The more you get your days into a routine, the less difficult your child will be through the “terrible twos” and beyond.

Daily Outside Play Can Help Your Child Sleep Better

Make sure your child has plenty of outside play time every day. Don’t raise a couch potato. If he plays inside all the time, he’s not getting enough fresh air and sunshine. Remember how you feel after an afternoon at the beach? Don’t you come home feeling unusually tired, even if all you did was sit in the shade reading a book? Something about being outside helps your body to be tired by bedtime. Maybe it has to do with soaking up sunshine and getting your body to follow its natural circadian rhythms. If your child plays outside every day for two hours minimum (1 in the morning, and one after naptime) he will be far more likely to be sleepy at bedtime.

Regular Daily Naps Help Your Child Sleep Through the Night

Thumb Sucking Can Help the Child to Self-Soothe

Four Methods for Sleep Training Infants and Young Children

There are four basic methods for training your young child to sleep in his own bed. They are the Cry It Out method, Persistence, Sleep Training, and Family Bed. The final method isn’t really training your child to sleep in HIS own bed, but allowing him to feel safe and secure by sleeping in YOUR bed. This method is very popular among some groups, and goes along with the Attachment Parenting philosophy. It does not really solve the problem of your child not being able to fall asleep on his own. It merely postpones the issue, by allowing him to sleep with you. If you would like more information on co-sleeping, you may read The Family Bed.

Cry It Out Method of Sleep Training

The first method that is often recommended is called “cry it out” or CIO, for short. This method means to simply put your young child or infant to bed and let him cry himself to sleep. This may be hard to listen to, and can take from a few days to several weeks for it to work. This method is popular, because for many children, it does work. It is also the easiest on mom and dad. Cry it Out does not work for all children, or all parents, and should never be used on an infant less than four months old. For the Cry It Out method to be most successful, be sure to incorporate a good bedtime routine, which alerts your infant or young child that bedtime is near and helps him to settle down for the night.

Persistence Method of Sleep Training

Put your toddler to bed. Leave the room. When he gets up, you pick him up and put him back to bed. He gets up, You pick him up and put him back to bed… again and again and again, and again. You might have to do it 72 times the first night! But he will learn that you mean business, and he will learn that he must stay in bed. DO not get angry with him. Do not talk to him. Do not give him a drink, or more attention, or anything at all. Just quietly, firmly, pick him up and put him back to bed. This method is recommended on a popular television program about nannies, and I’ve seen it work. The next night, you might only have to put him to bed 50 times, then maybe only 20 times, and eventually, within a week or so, he’ll be trained that when he’s in bed, he must stay there. Of course, if he is still in a crib, he may not be able to get out of bed! In which case, you may need to go in and lay him back down 72 times, instead. Again, be sure that your child has a bedtime routine, and follow it consistently.

Self-Soothing Method of Sleep Training

Bedtime Can Be the Best Time of the Day

We all wake up in the night, several times a night. Most of us just roll over and go right back to sleep, and may not even remember waking up. Children are the same. The child who cannot self-soothe, though, will come fully awake and be frightened. Once you train the child how to self-soothe, he will be able to fall asleep on his own – when you first put him to bed, and when he wakes up during the night.

This method can take two months to complete, but the first week is the hardest. Don’t begin it unless you have the time and patience to see it through. The first night, after your bedtime routine is complete, you will lay your child in his crib or bed. Cover him up (Children under one year are not to be put to bed with a blanket), and then pull up a chair and sit right beside his bed until he falls asleep. You might need to put your hand on his back. You are NOT holding him in bed! You are just using your touch to reassure him that you are right there. Do not talk to him. Do not give him another drink, another story, another kiss… he has had his last drink, his story, and his kiss as part of his bedtime routine. Now it is time to sleep. This method is similar to the persistence method, but you do not leave the room until your child is sound asleep.

It may take your child an hour to fall asleep! Hopefully, not quite that long, especially if you have followed the suggestions at the top including plenty of fresh air and exercise during the day. Your child should not be hungry, or over tired, if you have a daily schedule that includes regular meal times and a nap. Your presence is only there to help reassure the child that he is safe. If your child is still awake after an hour, just continue. Do not give up. Do not get up. Do not get your child up. But be sure that tomorrow you increase your child’s activity during the day to help him burn off energy and become more tired.

If your child wakes up in the night crying, you will need to repeat exactly what you did when you put him to bed. You will need to sit beside his bed until he is asleep again. No talking, kissing, singing… just sit there and reassure him with your presence. Once he is asleep, of course, you may go to your own bed and try to catch a nap.

You will need to sit by your child’s bed every night for two weeks, your hand on his back or forehead. Maybe it took an hour the first night for him to fall asleep, but after two weeks, maybe it only takes him twenty minutes. This is a sign that your plan is working! He is already learning that he can sleep in his own bed, that you are there to protect him, and that you love him dearly, but that it is bedtime! You are not talking to him, you are not giving in to his demands for a drink, a story, or more kisses. You are serious, calm, and consistent!

After about two weeks, you will continue to sit by your child’s bed, but do not touch him. Maybe you need to keep your hand on his pillow so he can see it, but try to train him to fall asleep without actually touching him. Continue on this step for several days to a week.

After three weeks, move your chair a foot away from his crib or bed. Continue to sit with him until he falls asleep. He should be falling asleep in about fifteen to twenty minutes. If it is taking longer, increase his activity during the day, or re-evaluate his diet to see if he is getting any artificial colorings, preservatives, caffeine, or other chemical that could be affecting his sleep.

After four weeks, move your chair two feet away from his crib or bed. Continue moving your chair a little bit further from the child’s bed every week, until you are sitting out in the hall. By now, your child should have learned how to self-soothe. He should know how to relax and allow himself to fall asleep on his own. Next time he wakes up in the night, do not go right away to his crib, but wait a bit and see how long it takes for him to fall asleep on his own.

This method may sound exhausting, but in about two months, you’ll have cured the problem. Keep the goal in sight, and document your progress. If after all that you’ve done, he’s still not sleeping, then it may be time to speak with your pediatrician. Keep a “sleep journal” to share with your pediatrician. List the times your child sleeps and how long he sleeps, and how long it takes him to fall asleep. This will help your pediatrician to see if there is a cause for concern, or if diet or exercise might be more to blame.

No matter what method you try, do it will calm assurance. If you are uptight, angry and frustrated, your child will become uptight, angry and frustrated – and he will never fall asleep. You may need to nap with your child during the day, or call a babysitter or neighbor to give you a break so you can catch up on your sleep.

For More Information:
Cry It Out Method: Good or Bad?

Related Articles:
Bedtime Routines for Preschoolers
Mastering the Nap
Common Bedtime Mistakes Parents Make

Photo Credits:
Top: photo by Jill M
Middle: photo by John Lustig
Bottom: photo by Sally

Personal views aside, just what is Halloween, and what does it teach our children? Is it really a harmless custom, allowing the children to dress up and engage in make-believe? Or could it be more sinister? If I were to write a lesson plan for Halloween, what concepts would the children be learning? Perhaps, my list might include…

A Mom Consoles a Child Who Just Learned She's Going to be Burnt at the Stake

• People die and are buried in the ground.
• We put tombstones on the grave to mark the place.
• We write irreverent poems on the tombstones.
• Ghosts and goblins haunt cemeteries.
• Black cats are a sign something bad is going to happen.
• Some people turn into vampires when they die, and drink blood.
• Witches are ugly and cast spells on us.
• Some witches eat children. (Remember Hansel and Gretel?)
• It’s okay to knock on the doors of strangers and beg.
• It’s okay to take candy from a stranger.

Now, is there anything on that list that you actually want your child to learn?

Research Suggests Halloween is Scarier Than You Think

Dr. Cynthia Dell Clark, Associate and Fellow of the Center for Children and Childhood Studies, conducted a three-year study on the effects of Halloween on young children. She writes that parents underestimate the effect of Halloween horror on young children. While we realize that it is all just make-believe, young children have a harder time differentiating between imaginary and real.

And Halloween is definitely getting scarier! When we were children, costumes were usually home-made. We dressed up like characters in books or cartoons. You might have met Superman, Snow White, and Rin Tin Tin knocking on your door. These days, vampires and zombies far outnumber the more benign beings. That young children even know what vampires or zombies are, is something I find unbelievably tragic.

The CDC reports that children are four times more likely to be hit by a car on Halloween than any other time of the year. Children have also been known to suffer eye injuries from their costumes, or burns from flammable costumes. Some face paints have been found to be toxic, yet masks pose a greater threat by obstructing the child’s vision.

Even if Your Child's Costume is More Cute than Creepy, She May Still Be Frightened By the Experience

Then, right away in November, we began the cycle again with Thanksgiving songs and poems, Thanksgiving stories to read or write, and a Thanksgiving party to plan. When December arrived, no one had much enthusiasm or energy left to handle Christmas. Santa Claus got a little attention, Jesus got none, and we all looked forward to January when “life could return to normal”.

So before you do your share to contribute to the shaky economy by purchasing quantities of candy and costumes, just step back and reflect for a few moments. Is this something you really want your child to learn?

Relating Reading Material:

• Who Is Raising Your Child: Battling the Marketeers for Your Child’s Heart and Soul by Laura J. Buddenburg, Kathleen M. McGee
• “Mommy, I’m Scared”: How TV and Movies Frighten Children and What We Can Do to Protect Them by Joanne Cantor PH.D.
  
• Satan, You Can;t Have My Children: The spiritual warfare guide for every parent by Iris Delgado
  
• The Anxiety Cure for Kids: A Guide for Parents by Elizabeth DuPont Spencer, Robert L. Dupon, Caroline M. DuPont

Photo Credits:
Top: photo by Dkprincess6
Middle: photo by Paul Stumper
Bottom: photo by Andre Chinn

Block Play at the Children's Museum

It’s here, the “dog days” of summer – the time in late summer when the weather is hot and sticky and rainfall tends to be at an all-time low. Children may be growing cranky and bored; their parents may be counting down the days until the new school year begins. There is still a lot of fun to be had, before we pack away those summer shorts and swimming suits! Welcome to Beat the Heat - this week’s lesson plans for you and your preschool child.

This week, your child may learn:

• In late summer, some times the weather turns very hot.
• We say the air is humid, when it holds a lot of moisture.
• When it is humid outside, we feel even hotter.
• We need to drink water every day.
• When it is hot, we need to drink even more water.
• If we don’t drink enough water when we get hot, we can get sick.
• To keep cool, we should wear loose-fitting, light clothes.
• It is often cooler in the shade than in the bright sunshine.
• Water can evaporate – it can dry up and go into the air.
• When water evaporates off our skin, we feel cooler.
• The letter W makes the “whu” sound, as in “water”.
• We should always swim with a buddy. Two are safer than One in the pool.
• Your child should recognize the diamond shape.
• Your child should understand the concept of “clear” or translucent – having no color.

Places to Go to Beat the Heat

An Indoor Ice Area is a Perfect Place to Beat the Heat of Summer!

There are even some extra worksheets at the end of the lesson, besides the ones listed at the bottom of this page. If you aren’t yet doing worksheets with your child, just ignore them. The only reason why they are there, is because when the children get cranky, you need to have plenty of “back up plans”. Keep them busy, and they may be too tired to push your buttons.

Drink Water, Don’t Get Dehydrated

Remember to drink plenty of water, and that goes for your children, too. If you feel a little light-headed or dizzy, get some water immediately! Other symptoms of dehydration include headaches, dry mouth, yellow urine, decreased sweat, muscle cramps, dry eyes. If you develop nausea or vomitting along with any of the other signs of dehydration, seek medical help immediately. Heat stroke can kill you.

Five Star Picture Books

The Beach Was Made for Hot Summer Weather

Hot City by Barbara Joosse Teddy Bear’s Picnic by Jimmy Kennedy The Berenstain Bears Go to Camp by Stan Berenstain Mouse’s First Summer by Lauren Thompson Feel the Summer by Sarah L. Thomson F is for Fireflies: God’s Summertime Alphabet by Kathy-Jo Wargin Fireflies (Reading Rainbow) by Julie Brinckloe I Love You as Much by Laura Krauss Melmed Watermelon Day by Kathi Appelt One Hot Summer Day by Nina Crews Beach Day by Karen Roossa On the Way to the Beach by Henry Cole

Creative Toys and Products (Optional)

• Little Tikes Beach Ball Sprinkler
• Funny Castle Inflatable Pool
• Step2 Arctic Splash Water Table
• Penguins and Polar Bears Big Box
• Inflatable Bounce House and Slide
• Melissa & Doug Sunny Patch Sprinkler
• Small World Sand & Water Toys
• Beach Toys
• Playmobile Open Air Pool with Slide
• Little Tikes Jump ‘n Slide Dry Bouncer

Optional Worksheets for Preschool

Children Love to Play with Water

1. W Beginning Sounds Coloring Page
2. What Begins with W?
3. More What Begins with W?
4. My Itsy-Bitsy W Book
5. Count and Trace Number 2
6. Learning About the Diamond Shape
   
7. Shapes Flashcards

I’m not a big fan of worksheets, but flashcards are great. For the Shapes flashcards, you can buy sturdier cardstock for your printer. Print them off, cut them apart, laminate them if you wish, and cut them apart again. You can post the picture of the Diamond on the wall in your calendar area this week. Or if your child has a good understanding of the basic shapes, you can use these cards as flashcards. This set includes the three-dimensional shapes like cone, sphere and pyramid. Nice, and brightly colored, by TSLbooks.com.

Beat the Heat – Preschool Lesson Plans for Late Summer

Photo Credits:
Top: photo by Grandmamusher
Middle: photo by Fort Wainwright Public Affairs
Lower Middle: photo by GrandmaMusher
Bottom: photo by LadyDragonflyCC