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Some of the challenges that families face in the summer are not having a huge budget to spend on things to do, meeting the needs of a variety of ages, and beating boredom.
We recommend you PLAN! :)
- Think ahead
- Post activities on a calendar
- Plan for structured and unstructured activities daily
- Include your children in the planning
- Schedule a break in the day for everyone to relax (e.g. read or nap)
Our parent educators have compiled a summer handout. Click on the link, save, print, share and enjoy!
You will need:
- white paper
- cotton swabs
- baking soda
- water
- purple grape juice
Here’s what you’re going to do:
- Have your child combine one tablespoon of baking soda and one tablespoon of water in a cup.
- Let your child dip cotton swabs into the mixture and make designs on sheets of white paper.
- Let their designs dry completely so that their papers look blank.
- Have them paint over their designs with purple grape juice.
- Watch what happens!
For more fun-tastic fall crafts, recipes, stories, activity ideas, and poems, download and print our Fall Funtastic Book!
“MOM, I DON’T GET IT!”
“CAN’T I DO IT LATER?”
“I SWEAR, I DON’T HAVE ANY HOMEWORK!”
Do any of these sound familiar to you? It must be homework time at your house. Homework can cause a lot of needless stress, both for students and parents— okay, especially parents! People for Education has a tip sheet that will help you win the homework battle, even though you still won’t understand grade 11 calculus.
Our Homework tip sheet is available in the following languages: English, Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, French, Gujuratii, Korean, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Tamil, Urdu. You can find them here.
As you may already know, on July 1st the harmonized sales tax (HST) began in Ontario. We thought the information below might be helpful to you. Low income individuals will benefit from the measures aimed to help with the transition to the HST:
- 93 per cent of Ontario taxpayers will get a permanent income tax cut.
- A new refundable sales tax credit, similar to the GST credit, benefits people with low incomes.
- The HST will not be charged on some items including basic groceries, prescription drugs and municipal transit.
For the entire list of what’s taxable under the HST and what’s not, visit http://www.rev.gov.on.ca/en/taxchange/pdf/taxable.pdf. This list is also available for download, as a free mobile application. If you are interested in the mobile application or any other information regarding the HST and how it applies to low income individuals, you can contact Sharyn Byrne Nearing at the Ontario Ministry of Revenue by email at Sharyn.MOR@ontario.ca or visit http://www.news.ontario.ca/newsroom/en/ . You can also follow Sharyn on twitter at http://twitter.com/SByrneMOR
For more information about the HST visit www.ontario.ca/taxchange .
My littlest was beading a mountain of friendship pins this week, and she had strung all the decorated safety pins on a long purple string. I noted that when I was little, my friends and I would put them on our shoelaces. She gave me the strangest look.
But what was stranger than her look was that it dawned on me that I had completely forgotten to teach my child how to tie her own shoelaces! Oh, the guilt. Thankfully, my resilience skills are up to par, and rather than dwell on the fact that I had potentially failed as a mother, I thought about how we were going to solve this issue.
During this time of reflection, I reassured myself that although she could not tie shoelaces, she could knit a scarf. It’s definitely not a lack of fine motor skills holding her back. However, apparently knitting is higher up on my parenting priorities than tying shoelaces. To be honest, I also thought about going against all the ‘rules’ and seeing how far in life she could go without ever learning how to tie shoelaces, and the non-conformist in me was inspired. Who says she needs to wear shoes with laces? The only problem with this option was that I think she would look super cute in hightop sneakers.
The irony of all of this is I’ve done this before – the whole teaching a kid how to tie her shoelaces. I seriously can not remember how I did it. It’s been almost ten years!
I asked the littlest if she wanted to sit down and learn how to tie shoelaces, and she simply said, “Nope.” With 15 years of parenting behind me, I’ve learned to pick my battles very carefully which really means, I don’t pick many battles at all anymore. They’re right when they say your parenting relaxes with subsequent children. I respect that she doesn’t want to learn how to tie her shoelaces. That’s cool. And I’m cool.
In the meantime, she’ll wear slip-on shoes and shoes with velcro and buckles a little bit longer. She’s down with that, so I am too. One day she will want to learn, and when she does, I have some handy reference links up my sleeve!
A to Z Kids Stuff | Tying Shoes
youtube videos galore
Tying shoes step by step
Until then, I’ll keep my eyes open for the pair of shoes that will inspire her to learn and keep my shoe-lacing skills sharp. :)
Written by Nadine Reeves, Administrative Assistant
A couple of weeks ago, we posted a series of activity ideas relating to a beach party in preparation of the summer. Today, we have the entire booklet for you to download and print for free.
What are you waiting for? Gather up your children and have fun! :)
Our ECE Resource Centre staff are always pulling together seasonal and themed activity booklets that are full of songs, fingerplays, games, crafts, recipes and activities. We sell these booklets to childcare providers, early years teachers, and parents – anyone who is looking after children. The price of a booklet is super low as we simply need to cover the printing costs. It got me thinking that we could skip the printing and make the file a pdf, and then we could share it with everyone online for free. Free and fun stuff makes me super happy.
So without further ado, I would like to present the first of our free, fun, easy to download activity booklets titled Ice Cream Shoppe! Skip the trip to Dairy Queen, and make your own blizzards while singing ice cream cone songs. :)
Please let us know in the comments if you found this useful! We’d love to hear how you incorporated into your children’s play and learning.
