GUIDING PRINCIPAL #1: Healthy Choices

The evidence from years of medical research is very clear - adults and children have a much better chance of staying healthy when they:

• get enough sleep every night
• make healthy eating choices
• stay hydrated
• get regular exercise
• choose healthy methods to manage stress and maintain mental health

What activities can you do together to model these behaviours and help your child develop healthy habits?

SLEEP

Have a regular bedtime and a regular routine to get ready for bed.  This can include:

• calming activities
• reading together before bed
• a warm bath
• a bedtime snack
• a bedtime story told from memory

HEALTHY FOODS

1. Look through the Canada Food Guide or other current guides together.  Make a grocery list, planning meals and snacks that your child will enjoy, that maintain a healthy balance.
2. Bake cookies, cakes, jelly squares, etc. as special home-made treats.  They are less expensive and healthier alternatives to many mass-produced commercial treats.  (And of course, you're doing practical Math using fractions, temperatures, measurements, etc.)
3. Start planning and cooking meals together. This develops valuable life skills!
4. Plan a picnic (to eat outdoors, if you can)
5. Cut out food pictures from magazines and advertising flyers to make your own food group chart, or a collage.

WATER

The human body sends uncomfortable signals when a person is getting dehydrated.  Headaches and constipation are two well-known symptoms, but there are others.  If your child has a headache or stomach ache with no other obvious cause, start with a glass of water.  Even if your child is just feeling uneasy or grumpy and can't say why, start with a glass of water.  If your child doesn't want it, or asks why, tell them it is the first step to feeling better. If they are doubtful, set a timer together for 15 minutes, and check then to see if they are feeling better than before.

Of course, children watch adults and others, and learn by copying their behaviours. (see Guiding Principal #2)  Drinking water regularly is your opportunity to be a positive role model and stay hydrated at the same time!

EXERCISE

Exercise is a natural part of so many outdoor childhood activities.  If you are confined indoors, get creative about safe ways to exercise together.  Some ideas include:

1. Hide and seek
2. Doing Yoga together
3. "Just Dance for Kids" YouTube videos
4. GoNoodle dance videos at https://www.gonoodle.com/
5. Do you have one or more Nerf™ guns? After you put the valuable tchotchkes away in a safe place, play Nerf™ tag!

MINDFULNESS & MANAGING STRESS

Throughout history, people have experimented with many ways to "cope" with stress. Today, we know about many healthy ways to manage our stress.  This is a great opportunity to help your child become aware of many possibilities, and for you to explore and practice them together.  This develops another key set of life skills!  Try a few minutes of familiar activities, but also explore some new, less-familiar activities.  You may discover something new that you enjoy together!

      Physical

1. Yoga
2. Tai Chi / Qi Gong introductory YouTube videos 
3. Tapping - a fairly new trend that is being taught in many schools give children more self-calming strategies
4. GoNoodle mindfulness videos at https://www.gonoodle.com/

      Passive

1. Read picture books where the theme is about dealing with challenges, then talk about how the characters were feeling in different parts of the story.  What solutions did they try that didn't work, and how did they solve the problem at the end?

• Younger children often enjoy the Franklin the Turtle series and the Berenstain Bears series.
• Middle elementary school students often enjoy the Howard B. Wigglebottom series
• Google "mindfulness for kids" for many more possibilities

Multi-disciplinary activities

School tends to be organized by subjects: math, science, reading, writing, social studies, physical education, etc.  Real life is multi-disciplinary.

Grocery shopping is a multi-disciplinary balancing act.  It involves:

• time - when does the store open, how much time do we have to shop?
• money - what is our budget today, what is the best deal on this item, are we buying only essentials today, or do we have room in the budget for a treat?
• planning - checking the fridge and cupboards to see what we need, making a grocery list, checking off the items as we buy them, circling the ones we can't find today
• organization - remember to bring the shopping bags, placing items in the cart in an organized way, placing items on the conveyor belt to make them easy to scan, keeping frozen items together so they don't melt on the way home
• comparing value between products of different sizes
• social interaction - with store staff, other customers, other drivers in the parking lot

Successful project planning - Tip 2

Knowing that children are more likely to get engaged and enjoy working on real-life challenges, include your child by asking them to help you with real-life tasks.

1. Plan a meal together.  What do we need?
2. Plan ahead, then go grocery shopping together. When you get home, put the groceries away together.  How are things organized?
3. Build something together that requires drawing a design, measuring, cutting, attaching, etc.
4. Ask your child for advice about how to help another (anonymous) child who is having difficulty with something. (Real or theoretical situation) Listen to their ideas, and talk together about more possibilities.
5. Think about what your child is really interested in right now.  Can you assist or enable them to explore their interest(s) further?

GUIDING PRINCIPLE #4 - Children get more engaged when working to solve real-life problems

Children get more thoroughly engaged when working to solve real-life problems. 

For a younger child, this can be as simple as:
"Oh no, I broke my shoelace and I don't have another one.  What can I do"
or
"Oh no, that character in the story can't find its mother!  What could it do?"
or
"How could we make a house that would be just right for the cat/dog/hamster/etc."

Children often like to think of many ideas when they feel that there is a real problem to be solved.

For older children:

Example 1
My Grade 3 & 4 students (7 to 9 years old) got really engaged in a multi-week project when I presented them with this scenario:

• We have received a message from the Canadian Space Agency asking for our help.  They are thinking about sending a space ship with hundreds of people to the nearest habitable planet in the solar system of Kepler 42b.  We have been asked to:
• design a spaceship with all the rooms and areas that people will need
• plan what supplies they will need to bring
• figure out how to feed everybody
• make a plan to keep everyone healthy
• decide how many people we can carry on each spaceship
• plan structures for the people to build when they get to the new planet

Example 2

In another project, we read about a girl in a wheelchair who wasn't able to use her neighbourhood park because it wasn't wheelchair friendly.  Our task was to design a brand new playground that was completely wheelchair friendly.  This includes:

• suitable surfaces for wheelchairs to roll easily
• new, safe equipment designs
• a surrounding landscaped garden with raised beds 

Example 3

I had a student who lived for skateboarding, but resisted all academic work in school. Coincidentally, I found a news article about an older student who lobbied his city councillor to build a skate park in the community across the road.  So, our new mission was to design a brand new skate park for our community!  (Students who were not interested in skateboarding loved the chance to design a new playground for the elementary school.)

GUIDING PRINCIPLE #3 - Children learn best through hands-on experimentation, dialogue with others, and thinking about the experience.

Children learn best through hands-on experimentation, talking with others about what they are working on, and thinking and talking about the experience afterward.

As parents, we sometimes feel like a child is talking all the time, and we sometimes "tune them out" a bit.  There are also times when it feels like the child is taking "forever" to do something, and we want to jump in and do it for them so we can move on to the next task.  (Of course when time is of the essence, we do what we have to do.)

When possible, consider these questions:

1. Does my child often have a constant running narrative, talking about what they are doing while they are doing it?  This is a strong indication that your child learns this way!  (Some children are very quiet while they are learning, and need that quiet to concentrate on what they're doing.  Imagine that!)
2. Is my child stalling because they lack confidence to perform the task? Are they savouring the moment because they enjoy it?  Is this a stalling tactic because they don't want to move on to the next thing?  Is this a way for them to exercise some control over the situation?  

Setting up successful learning activities

1. Plan activities that are hands-on, keeping the child actively engaged.
2. Allow your child to talk about their activity as they are doing it.  Ask occasional "key questions" to help them think about who, what, where, why, when and how questions.
3. Refer back to the activity in conversations after it's done.  What did your child learn?  What did they enjoy? What questions do they still have?

Science experiments and projects

Do you remember seeing or doing any Science experiments that really caught your attention?

Outside

1. Bottle rocket
2. Mentos™ and cola
3. Giant bubbles
4. Pond or stream study
5. Birdwatching - set up a feeder, look for nests (without disturbing them), listen for and/or record bird calls

Indoors

1. Make a colloid with corn starch and water (add a bit of food colouring if you wish)
2. Pickle an egg to the point where it bounces like a rubber ball
3. Vinegar and baking soda volcano (a small one in the sink, perhaps?)
4. Experiment with buoyancy - things that float and things that sink.  Can you make a boat that will float using Plasticine™?
5. Experiment with combining colours using felt pens or watercolours. (You can do this on white paper or in your journal.)
6. What happens when you colour a circle on the bottom of a coffee filter using a black felt marker, then drop a few drops of water on it?
7. Can you build a device that will launch a table tennis ball across the room?
8. Create a dominoes maze so that tipping the first one over will knock all the others down in sequence?

Project ideas: (using materials from the recycling bin and around the house)

1. Build a maze for a marble to roll through.
2. Build a Rube Goldberg machine
3. Use what you know about the six "simple machines" to build a device that can do something
4. Sprout seeds that will grow into food you can eat!  
5. Start a vermicompost bin - a worm farm for composting food scraps! (Not for everyone, I know.)  You can buy a bag of worms where people buy bait for fishing.

The Internet is full of many more suggestions for home Science experiments and projects!

Quiet Working Time (for both of you)

If you are working from home right now, this is an excellent opportunity to model and build a work ethic with your child.  You can't entertain them all the time, and long hours of screen time are not healthy.  What can you do?

1.  Set up a quiet task for you child to work at the table beside you.

• playdough, colouring, quiet building materials, a feltboard, etc.
• make a journal for your child to record thoughts, ideas, pictures, etc.  Kindergarten and Grade 1 students can make one page for each letter of the alphabet, drawing pictures and writing words that start with that letter. If they are able, they can write a sentence or two about their pictures.  An alternative to drawing (for those who get frustrated) is to cut out magazine pictures and glue them in.  Older children will probably have used journals at school, and have many ideas about making their own, personal journal.  When you hear, "I'm bored!" or "I don't know what to do!", suggest writing about it in their journal.

2.  Set a timer (that your child can see) so you both know when it's break time.  Break time can include a healthy snack and drink and some physical movement/exercise time before you both get back to your work.

3.  Have a glass of water for each of you to sip on while you work.  Water actually helps your brain to function at increased capacity!

GUIDING PRINCIPAL #2 - Children learn by watching and copying others

Children and teenagers learn by watching and copying adults and other people in their community, including classmates and family members.  They try things on for size, gauging other people's reactions, and watching to see what happens next.  Some behaviours are very positive, and some are not. 

Our job as parents and teachers is to encourage positive, productive behaviours, guiding children away from negative words and actions that will lead to increasing difficulties down the road.  This can feel like a troubling, thankless task at times.  Peter Ustinov said, "Parents are the bones on which children sharpen their teeth." Think back to your childhood and teen years. Did you sometimes dish it out to your parents?

★ Teachers and Parents are role models. Children are watching and learning, and are likely to try their own version of what they see and hear.