So for the parents, uncles and aunties here, is there any specific fun and educational activities you can recommend for a very active little toddler girl? This is for my daughter, she is one of those very active toddlers constantly on the move, sometimes very loud when she doesn't get her way.
What do you do for fun with your kids? also when they misbehave how do you discipline them?
I often give her timeouts to calm down and stay quite, but she then screams "I am quite now", obviously not understanding the irony of what she is doing.
For fun, I take her to the park to run around, and am considering taking her swimming during summer. The play groups I find are not stimulating enough for her, sometimes it's like she's miles ahead of the other toddlers, watering plants and generally investigating everything in her path, at the same time taking things from the other kids and trying to start conversations with the parents. She never sits still when the nursery nurse starts group singing and starts singing and dancing int he middle of the class
Kudos to you for being hands-on father.
Evidence tells us that a person’s life success is linked to having stimulating early childhood. Caring, loving and supportive environments filled with lots of resources increase children’s chances of a successful transition to school.
When choosing activities, do not use them as tools to keep them busy. Make sure to cover all the developmental domains such as motor/physical, cognitive, social/emotional, communication/language. Provide plenty of resources and observe your child in their natural environment and see what they do with the resources in front of them. From this observation you can draw a conclusion of what they enjoy playing with the most.
Examples
Fine Motor Skills: Blocks. Maybe you can start off by building the blocks first and direct your child to do the same thing. This activity enhances child’s fine motor skills by using their hand and eye coordination to put the blocks together.
Gross motor: Dancing. Play fast music and instruct your child to jump around, shake their body and put their arms up in the air. This is not maalaayacni, dancing has great values. Having fun while improving and working on their gross motor skills by using large muscles of their body.
Communication: Sing a song. It could any nursery rhymes for example “if you happy and you know clap your hands”. This activity will encourage children to express their feelings, communicating through a song (it also covers emotional/ facial expressions).
Creativity: Sand play. If you live in a house that has backyard try setting up a little sand play area with equipment’s such as trucks, buckets, cups and funnels. This self-directed and individual play allows children to use their own imagination to create something using own ideas/thoughts. You can also try play dough, puzzles of ABC and 123, painting and reading a story to her.
Now to disciplining, you need to show authority by avoiding coming down to her level when speaking to her in a loud and clear tone. Do not repeat yourself and avoid giving her extra attention. You can also write up flash cards of the house rules and the consequences for breaking each rule.
