Blog

In today’s world, nurturing a child’s enthusiasm for learning is more crucial than ever. As parents, we have the unique opportunity to inspire curiosity and a thirst for knowledge in our children. By modeling a commitment to education and personal growth, we can set a powerful precedent. Whether it’s through pursuing further education ourselves or creating enriching environments at home, our actions speak volumes. Here are a few strategies to try when you’re ready to get started.

Model Your Own Thirst for Knowledge

Fostering a love for learning in your children is a rewarding journey that begins with your own educational pursuits. By embracing your curiosity and enthusiasm for knowledge, you set a powerful example for your children. If you’re interested in learning about human behavior and want access to a wealth of career options, pursuing an online psychology degree offers the flexibility to balance your aspirations with family responsibilities. This not only enhances your career prospects but also demonstrates the value of lifelong learning to your children, encouraging them to embrace curiosity and growth. Take a look at the requirements for a psychology degree online to find out when you can get started.

Create a Sense of Structure

Creating a daily routine that balances structured activities with unstructured time is key to nurturing a child’s passion for learning. Establishing regular wake and sleep times, along with meal rituals, provides a stable framework that promotes healthy habits. Allowing children the freedom to choose activities like reading or drawing during unstructured time fosters independence and creativity. This approach helps them develop a broad skill set while looking forward to learning time rather than dreading it.

Encourage Educational Trips

Regular visits to local museums, libraries, or science centers can significantly nurture your child’s curiosity and love for learning. These outings offer opportunities for children to engage with new concepts in an interactive environment. By interacting with exhibits, children can delve into subjects like electricity and magnetism in a hands-on way, which is often more impactful than traditional classroom learning. Encouraging these experiences can foster a lifelong passion for discovery and learning.

Let Them Help In The Kitchen

Engaging your children in cooking activities is a wonderful way to nurture their love for learning while teaching them essential skills. By involving them in the kitchen, you provide a hands-on experience that is both educational and enjoyable. Measuring ingredients helps children grasp concepts of fractions and volumes, while following a recipe enhances their ability to follow sequential steps. Additionally, cooking introduces them to the science of how ingredients interact, offering a practical application of chemistry concepts. This approach not only equips them with valuable life skills but also fosters a love for learning through everyday activities.

Give Them The Power Of Choice

Empowering children to choose their own books can greatly enhance their engagement and autonomy in reading. When kids select books that align with their interests, reading becomes a delightful activity rather than a chore. Research shows that self-selection of reading materials not only makes the experience more enjoyable but also aligns with their curiosity, fostering a deeper connection with the text. Encouraging children to explore libraries or online platforms to ‘shop’ for books supports their independence and helps develop critical decision-making skills.

Go Digital

To cultivate a lifelong love of reading in your children, consider integrating interactive e-books and audiobooks into their daily routine. These tools can often be found online for free and can transform reading into an engaging and accessible activity, accommodating various reading abilities. By incorporating audio elements like multiple voices and sound effects, stories become more vivid and captivating, enhancing both interest and comprehension. Additionally, using audiobooks at home or in the classroom can introduce children to a broader vocabulary.

Help Your Child Get Involved

Involving your children in community service projects is a meaningful way to cultivate essential life skills while building social connections. By selecting projects that resonate with their interests, children can learn about teamwork and empathy, and also develop a sense of responsibility and leadership. These activities offer a practical context for learning, enabling children to apply classroom knowledge in impactful ways and interact with diverse individuals, which can broaden their social networks and future opportunities.

By embracing these strategies, you can ignite your child’s passion for learning and equip them with the skills and mindset needed for lifelong success. Encouraging curiosity, creativity, and community engagement not only enriches their educational journey but also fosters a love for learning that will last a lifetime.

Discover a new way to play with Walkie Chalk – the perfect outdoor toy for all ages that lets creativity soar without the sore knees or backaches!

(Guest blog post by our great friend Lillian Brooks - with  LearningDisabilities.info which was created to offer information and understanding to parents of children with learning disabilities, as well as adults who are in need of continued support to succeed.

Enjoy!

Creating a healthy lifestyle for our children is incredibly important. As parents and caregivers, your support, knowledge, and resources help kids understand the importance of their health early on. This support is key to developing healthy habits that will last them a lifetime. Your efforts teach them to care for their well-being, ensuring a happier future. This shows just how vital your role is in their healthy development. In this article from Walkie Chalk, we will explore various approaches aimed at supporting the development of healthy habits.

Encouraging the Joy of Movement

The foundation of a healthy lifestyle begins with discovering activities that not only bring pleasure but also promote physical well-being. Encouraging children to sample a variety of pursuits—from sports and dancing to hiking and painting—helps them uncover passions that encourage regular exercise. It’s vital to convey that being active transcends physical health benefits; it also plays a significant role in enhancing mood and managing stress. This holistic approach to physical activity is essential for fostering a lasting appreciation for staying active.

Supporting Outdoor Play

Supporting and encouraging children's outdoor playtime is essential for their physical and mental well-being. Engaging in outdoor activities fosters creativity, promotes physical exercise, and encourages social interaction. Introducing tools like Walkie Chalk adds an extra layer of fun and creativity to their playtime experiences. Walkie Chalk allows children to stand up and draw, unleashing their imagination and enabling them to create vibrant sidewalk art or design imaginative games.

Focus on Education

As adults, we can model the pursuit of dreams by continuing our own education, even amidst busy schedules and responsibilities. Pursuing an online degree offers the flexibility to balance personal and professional commitments while working towards career advancement. For instance, if you're a nurse, obtaining an online RN BSN degree not only enhances your skills but also elevates patient care and opens doors to new opportunities in healthcare. By investing in education, both for ourselves and our children, we empower future generations to reach their full potential and contribute meaningfully to society.

Promoting a Healthy Self-Image

In today’s media-saturated environment, children are bombarded with images and messages that can distort their perception of body image. Combatting this influence requires fostering an atmosphere of body positivity at home. Open discussions about the variety of body shapes and the often unrealistic portrayals in the media are crucial. By encouraging children to accept and love their bodies, you’re helping them build resilience against negative external pressures and promoting a willingness to engage in beneficial activities.

Cultivating a Curiosity for Nutritious Eating

Involving children in the kitchen not only makes meal preparation a shared adventure but also sparks their curiosity about nutritious foods. By engaging them in selecting and preparing meals, you turn nutrition into an exciting, hands-on learning experience. This approach not only demystifies healthy eating but also equips children with the knowledge and skills to make beneficial food choices independently.

Applauding Healthy Lifestyle Decisions

Recognizing and celebrating when children make healthy choices plays a pivotal role in reinforcing these behaviors. Whether opting for a wholesome snack or choosing outdoor play over screen time, your positive reinforcement underscores the value of these decisions. Celebrating these moments encourages a continuous commitment to healthful living, fostering an environment where making healthy choices becomes second nature.

Being Mindful of Caffeine

It's crucial to caution children about the potential dangers of excessive caffeine consumption. While a little caffeine can provide a temporary energy boost, too much can lead to adverse effects like anxiety, insomnia, rapid heart rate, and high blood pressure, which can negatively impact their health and well-being. Encourage them to be mindful of their caffeine intake and to opt for healthier beverage choices. It's helpful to look up the caffeine content of drinks online to make informed decisions about what they consume, avoiding heavily caffeinated options like espresso, particularly for young individuals whose bodies may be more sensitive to its effects.

Enhancing Daily Meals with Nutritional Choices

Actively improving the nutritional content of meals is a pivotal strategy in fostering healthy habits among children. By carefully incorporating a diverse array of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins into daily meals, parents and caregivers can play a crucial role in shaping their children's dietary preferences. It's not just about the variety but also how these nutritious options are presented; making them visually appealing and tasty enhances their attractiveness to young palates.

Furthermore, ensuring that a range of healthy snacks is readily available, while simultaneously reducing the accessibility of processed and sugary treats, naturally guides children towards making healthier eating choices. This approach not only educates them on the importance of good nutrition but also empowers them to develop a lifelong appreciation for foods that nourish their bodies.

The importance of empowering children to make healthy choices cannot be understated. Your unwavering support, guidance, and exemplary behavior are invaluable in creating a supportive environment that celebrates wellness, encourages positive reinforcement, and facilitates personal development. By laying this foundation, you equip your children with the tools necessary for a lifetime of healthful habits, ensuring their well-being now and in the future.

Guest Author: Lillian Brooks

If your child has learning disabilities, it’s essential to encourage them to participate in the arts. The arts can improve communication skills, grow self-confidence, and increase fitness levels. Here, the creativity experts at Walkie Chalk present five of the best options for children with learning disabilities.

1. Music

Participating in a music class or learning a musical instrument requires complete focus. As a result, music is ideal for relieving stress, teaching your children to concentrate, and helping them gain a creative outlet.

In addition, a recent survey produced by AARP found music listeners had higher scores for mental well-being, higher levels of happiness, and better cognitive function. In fact, sixty-eight percent of parents that introduced their children to music rated their child’s ability to learn new things as very good or excellent. However, this was only 50% for parents who hadn’t exposed their children to music.

2. Acting

Transferring energy to performing arts can be helpful to an active child, and acting is one of the best options. Your children can gain confidence, a sense of achievement, teamwork skills, and multiple creative skills from acting.

In addition, acting can boost your child’s communication skills. Around 86% of employees state poor communication is the main reason for workplace failures. Therefore, you should promote your child’s communication skills at a young age.

3. Painting and Drawing

Children often enjoy drawing things; when we become adults, we often stop drawing due to our busy adult lives. But drawing can relieve stress and anxiety in adults, so it’s a shame most adults forget about their painting passions.

With that said, painting is excellent for children. It helps them build confidence, develop problem-solving skills, create a shared learning experience, increase brain development, enhance senses, explore color, and convey individual ideas.

You and your child can also get outside to draw using Walkie Chalk. This fun modification to classic chalk drawing makes it easier for adults to play along. Plus, kids with sensory challenges can enjoy drawing without getting chalk on their fingers!

4. Dancing

Young children have so much energy, and dancing is one of the best ways to focus that energy. Dancing can enhance creativity, encourage socialization, increase cognitive development, and boost emotional development.

Dancing is also excellent for helping your child’s physical fitness. It improves their flexibility, overall balance, coordination, muscular strength, heart and lung condition, and spatial awareness.

5. Crafting

You’ll struggle to find a better creative outlet for your children than crafting. It can improve self-confidence, reduce overall stress, decrease anxiety, raise a child’s focus, and grow emotional development.

Crafting is also superb for teaching colors and shapes, encouraging critical thinking, building resilience, and increasing pattern recognition.

Design an Arts Room

By creating an arts room in your home, you and your children can explore the world of art in a comfortable and familiar setting. When designing your arts room, be sure to include plenty of storage for all of your supplies. And be sure to leave plenty of open space for painting, drawing, or whatever other creative pursuits you enjoy.

Not only will an arts room make your home more attractive to potential buyers, but it will also give you and your children a place to relax and express yourself. Keep track of any upgrades by keeping receipts and taking before-and-after photos because this new addition may be a valuable selling feature when you eventually choose to list your house and move.

Start Teaching Children Yourself

Teaching children is incredibly rewarding. You may find a passion for teaching children arts and crafts when you share the benefits with your children. If so, consider teaching your arts and crafts lessons to children of all ages and backgrounds.

You can work as a self-employed teacher, but consider registering your new teaching business as a limited liability company. It’ll offer you more flexibility, less paperwork, and various tax benefits. If you’re not sure how to start an LLC, use a formation service to avoid costly legal fees.

Get Children Involved in the Arts Today

While the arts are great for helping everyone to get in touch with their own creativity, they can be especially fantastic for children with learning difficulties because they give them an outlet in a world that otherwise doesn’t always seem to take their feelings and perspectives into consideration. You may even decide to start your own business teaching art to children!

(Welcome! Here is a GUEST Blog post by our good friends at Wise Marketing, enjoy!)

Think you’ve got a bad case of cabin fever? Your children are likely feeling it too.

With schools being shuttered, classes moving to an online space, and a cloud of general misery hanging over our heads because of the pandemic, it’s no surprise that some of our kids are acting out.

This is normal; the coronavirus has deprived them of the chance to meet with their friends and enjoy their youth. But it’s our job to help our kids cope with their emotions in a way that’s healthy, and not destructive.

Unfortunately, most parents nowadays might turn to smartphones to pacify their children. We understand the appeal - the phone keeps them occupied, freeing you up to work or do household chores. However, too much time indoors poses a problem. It’s even prevalent enough to be called a disorder – more precisely, nature deficit disorder.

The symptoms probably sound familiar to you by now, and can include increased stress, crankiness and anxiety due to a severe lack of exposure to outdoor spaces.

With that said, how are we supposed to keep our children entertained at home without excessively relying on gadgets?

We can take a cue from people running daycare businesses from their homes. Home-based daycare providers have developed detailed curricula, and invested in toys, arts and crafts, and educational materials all aimed at helping children make the most out of playtime. These have helped the industry develop into a $27-billion market, but that doesn't mean having to spend a fortune just to give the same experience to your kids. Here are a few of their tried and tested activities you could do at home:

Try sidewalk chalk games

At home doesn’t necessarily mean indoors.

Step outside onto your driveway or sidewalk to do these activities. All you’ll need are some colorful pieces of chalk and, of course, your face masks to keep you safe.

There are tons of games you could play with just chalk and an open stretch of pavement. Try some sidewalk twister, tic-tac-toe or Pictionary. For more of a brainteaser, you could even try classic hopscotch, with a few math equations thrown into the mix.

Establish a daily routine

The pandemic has disrupted everyone’s lives, but it has perhaps placed a heavier burden on parents whose kids have special needs.

If you're taking care of a child who requires special care, one thing you can do to alleviate the stress is to establish a regular timetable for activities.

Set specific times to eat breakfast, take a bath, do some schoolwork, and enjoy some leisure time. According to experts, repetition and routine offer comfort and help stabilize most kids with learning disabilities.

This is only a palliative solution, however. Careful coordination among parents, special care providers, and concerned agencies is required to address the children's needs and ensure their well-being in the long run.

Go backyard camping

We’ve already mentioned how important it is for children to connect with nature and the outdoors. What better way to do that than to go camping in your own backyard?

You’ll need some sleeping bags, a pop-up tent, and some blankets to start. Once your camping site has been set up, you could hold a scavenger hunt, and even tell spooky stories while eating s’mores over a campfire if your backyard has the space for it!

Create artwork

Making art is a great way to channel boredom and frustration, and it also helps nurture your children's creativity. Additionally, it can also serve as an avenue for you to learn how they're making sense of the pandemic and their current reality.

For this, you will need some coloring materials and paper. When the kids are done with their art, you can place their masterpieces on the refrigerator door, or even hang them on a cable on your fence to make a makeshift art gallery for your neighbors to see.

There are countless more ways to keep your kids busy at home, and we hope you enjoyed our above suggestions. If you think we missed any fun activities, let us know through our social media!

After a long day working, running the household or completing errands, the last thing you want is to put your hand down on the counter and feel something sticky on the surface. But for many parents? Cleaning up after the kids is part of the job. 

Luckily, there are ways to ease the burden of cleaning and teach your kids to share the load. By showing them that cleaning can be fun, quick and painless, they can pick up clean habits that will make mopping up a spill or folding their laundry second nature rather than a chore. 

One way to teach kids not to fear cleaning is by playing cleaning games  with them while they’re still learning. Check out this list of fun games that can help you build a culture of cleanliness in your home. Take a look!

The Clean Lantern

Link to download this mockup image.

Turn your kids into a superhero who is on a mission to find and defeat the evil Dust Bunny. Create a cape using a sheet, then use this printable superhero eye mask and badge to turn your kids into the Clean Lantern. Challenge them to fight evil using their mops and washcloths. 

Laundry Room Races

Once the laundry is finished and ready to be folded, line your kids up at a starting line and have them race to get their clothes folded, taken to their rooms and put away. There’s nothing like a little friendly competition to get chores done. For added fun: have them shoot their socks into the laundry bin like a basketball before they can move on.

Link to download preview image.

Chores and Ladders

Give each child a token such as a coin or bottlecap and use this printable game board to make cleaning a game of chance. Line up at the starting line and roll a 6-sided die, then move the number of spaces indicated and complete the corresponding task. The game board even includes blank spaces for you to leave blank so your kids can get off the hook, or write in house-specific chores. 

Sprinkler Time

If there’s an outside mess to be cleaned up — chalk on the driveway, anyone? — make it more fun by playing games with sprinklers or a hose. Put on bathing suits, turn on the hose and have fun spraying each other while you clean up chalk or wash the car. 

Link to download preview image.

Dust Monster

Make sweeping more interesting by turning the dustpan into a monster that is hungry for dirt and dust. Print out the dust monster printable, have your kids color it in then attach it to your dustpan with tape. Every time your kids sweep dirt into the pan, it’ll look like the dust monster is eating it up.

Cleaning Karaoke

Turn your cleaning day into a concert while mopping, sweeping or dusting. Use the broomstick, mop handle or spray bottle as a microphone and sing along to your favorite pop hits. Bonus points if you dress up like a diva! 

At the end of the day, creating a culture of cleanliness at home means making it so your kids don’t fear cleaning. Make chores fun for them by making it a family affair that they look forward to.