Tips Category
It’s Tip Tuesday
Today’s Tip Tuesday talks about your toddler. (Yes, we did want to see how many t’s we could put in that sentence! 
) It’s no secret that toddler’s can be fussy eaters. At times meals can turn into “food wars” if your toddler won’t eat. All sorts of tactics are used from bribing them to desperate pleas to eat. One way to make your toddler’s mealtime fun is to use a cookie cutter to make his food into fun shapes. Your toddler will look forward to see what surpise shapes will be on his plate!
What creative ways have you helped a fussy toddler eat his food?
Teaching Your Child About the Environment
Teaching your child about the environment and caring for the earth helps shape their perspectives, values and how to interact with the environment. It also nurtures a sense of wonder, imagination and creativity. It exposes them to beauty and helps them remain active. A few simple ways you can start teaching your child about the environment while having fun:
- Gazing – Grab a blanket, lie on your back and look up. Ask your child what he/she sees in the clouds. Ask him/her why they think the sky is blue. If you want a night adventure, ask what stars your child likes. Look on the internet what planets will be out that night and see if you can find them. You may even see a shooting star while you are gazing!
- Wildlife Habitat - Create a wildlife habitat in your backyard for your children, grandchildren or neighbor’s children. Invite them over to observe changes in the wildlife refuge especially with the different seasons.
- Explore – Check out the bugs, butterflies and birds in your own backyard or neighborhood. Grab a magnifying glass and notebook and let your child record her/his findings in their very own bug adventure book!
What are some ways you educate your child about the environment?
Teaching Your Child To Be Green
As we continue to celebrate earth week, this Tip Tuesday we are featuring easy tips to teach your child how to be green and care for the earth. Being green is something that everyone – no matter how young or old – can do. Your child learns so much from you from values to lifestyle, so why not incorporate these few easy tips to teaching your child how to care for the earth from a young age?
Water – Teach you child that a little water goes a long way. When brushing his teeth or washing hands, a pencil-thin line of water will do.
Light – When leaving the room, have your child turn off the lights. If your child is too small to reach the switch, pick her up so she can flip the switch off. It can become her special job when you leave the room.
Walk – Instead of running errands in your car, walk to the store. This will give you time to bond with your child and get exercise. Be sure to bring your stroller in case your little gets tired!
Recycle - Make recycling fun by putting your child in charge of recycling certain items like paper towel or toilet paper rolls, paper or cardboard. If you don’t have a special recycling container for these items, let your child decorate a container. This will give your child ownership over their part in recycling.
How do you teach your child to recycle and be green? Please share your comments with us!
Helping Your Baby Crawl
It’s amazing how babies seem to go from not being able to roll over to all of a sudden crawling and then walking. If your baby is learning to crawl you can encourage him by sitting on the floor in his line of vision. Cheer him on by calling your baby by name, clapping and smiling. You will find that your baby enjoys and responds to your encouragement and you will love his response to you!
What tips or insight do you have from when your baby began to crawl? Please share them with us!
Ideal Window Treatments for Your Baby’s Room
You want your baby’s room to be peaceful, beautiful and above all safe. Our friends from Horizon Window Treatments have written a few tips to keep in mind when you decorate baby’s room.
- The window treatments in your baby’s room are going to control how much natural light is let in through the window. Obviously, trying to get a baby to sleep during the bright light of day is very difficult if you don’t have something covering the window. Your options here are going to depend on where in the house your baby’s room is located. White sheer curtains should be sufficient if the baby’s window does not receive direct sunlight at any point during the day. However, if it does, it is probably best to go with a heavier, dark-colored curtain instead.
- Another thing to take into consideration is noise. This may not be a problem if you live in a more rural area, but if you live in a big city and your baby’s window faces the street, noise reduction is definitely needed. There is no such thing as a soundproof curtain, but curtains made from felt or velvet have been found to reduce noise. The only downside to noise reduction curtains is that they aren’t that elegant looking and tend to be rather expensive.
- The most important factor to take into consideration when deciding on window treatments for your baby’s bedroom is safety. You want to avoid floor length, trailing curtains pooling or lying in a puddle on the floor as the baby might try to pull up on them. Also, stay away from anything that comes with a long cord as there have been a number of cases of children accidentally strangling themselves on the cords that are used to control blinds and shades.
- Finally, always make sure there are no loose hardware pieces, holdbacks or curtain rods that could fall on your child.
Do you have any window treatment tips that have worked for you?
Share them with us in the comment section!
Special thanks to Horizon Window Treatments for their expertise on window treatments for baby’s room!
Spring Cleaning with Kids
Spring brings flowers, budding trees, birds singing and… cleaning! Whether you are someone who likes to do major cleaning a little at a time or all at once, it can be a challenge to get children to help out. We decided to dedicate this Tip Tuesday post to spring cleaning and how to make it as fun as possible for you and your children.
Make Spring Cleaning Fun:
- Host a cleaning party complete with music. Let your kids chose a special cleaning outfit (make sure it’s clothes you don’t mind them getting dirty), give them party hats and blast music throughout the house. End the party with a special treat to celebrate your clean house.
- Have a cleaning contest. Divide into teams. Each team takes a room and cleans it. The team that cleans the fastest and the neatest wins. The prize for the winning team can be that they pick the dinner menu for a night during the week.
- Make cleaning a scavenger hunt. Hide prizes in the rooms or within projects that have to be cleaned. For example, if you have a lot of laundry to fold, hide a prize in a sock in the laundry pile. If you have several rooms to clean, hide prizes in the hard to clean places of the room. Prizes shouldn’t be expensive. You can hide a small amount of money, an inexpensive prize you buy from the Dollar Store or a little coupon valid for special time at your child’s favorite park, etc.
- Create a surprise cleaning jar. Put pieces of paper with jobs written on them in jar. Each person picks a job out of jar. When one job is finished, the person gets to pick out another “surprise” job out of the jar.
What ways do involve your children in spring cleaning?
Share your tips with other parents in the comment section!
Children’s First Aid Kit
No parent ever wants to think about having a medical emergency with their child, but no matter how vigilant you are, your child will get sick and can have an accident. One thing you will always want handy in the car and at home is a child’s first aid kit. You will want the kit to contain medications, “instruments” such as sharp scissors, tweezers and emergency contact numbers of your pediatrician, etc. A great resource for suggestions of what to put in your child’s first aid kit can be found at babycenter.com.
Do you have an emergency plan or first aid kit for your child?
If so, please share with us what you have included in it.
Diaper Dilemmas
Whether you are a fan of cloth diapers or prefer to dispose your diapers, one thing is certain when it comes to the diaper debate – you go through a lot of them on any given day. There are many sites for “diaper tips” that we love, but we wanted to highlight two that might help your diaper dilemma.
- For the cloth diapering parent, we love Holly’s blog at The Cloth Diaper Experiment. Holly shares the ups and downs of cloth diapers. She has reviews from a wide variety of cloth diaper companies, great giveaways and all sorts of secret tips on the best diapering methods. She even has posts on how to use cloth diapers while on vacation!
- For those who prefer to go the disposable route, we love the Pampers site. This is more than a “diaper site.” Pampers has a registry, pregnancy widgets, forums and our favorite – a rewards program! The rewards program gives you gifts for buying their products! There is a wide range of gifts from toys to baby gear. We may be a bit partial, but our favorite gift is the Jeep® Wrangler All-Weather umbrella stroller. Check it out – you and your wallet will thank you.
Which side of the “diaper dilemma” do you fall on – cloth or disposable?
Share your thoughts and tips on the diaper debate with us!
(And Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all our Irish & not so Irish readers!)
Sleep Routines for Baby
Sleep routines can be challenging for parents especially when a newborn just doesn’t want to go to sleep. Developing a sleep routine can help with this. Keep bed time consistent and develop soothing rituals such as singing, rocking, reading to, or cuddling baby. These rituals can not only help baby sleep, but become ways of connecting with your baby.
What special sleep routines have helped your baby sleep?
Is there part of the routine that you look forward to the most?
Leaving a Legacy for Your Baby
Did you ever wonder what it was like for your mom while she was pregnant with you? How you acted as toddler? How your parents adjusted to being new parents? Perhaps your mom, dad or grandparents left photos or a diary behind for you to read. Or maybe you had to rely on asking them questions about your childhood.
One thing you can do for your own child is give them the gift of their legacy. Write monthly letters to your baby while you are expecting and store them in a safe place. (If your baby is already born, it’s not too late to start! Every stage has its own joys and challenges that you can record.) Continue doing this until they hit a significant milestone such as marriage or having their own child. You can then give these letters to them as a very personalized and meaningful gift!
What ways have you been able to capture your first moments with your child? Will you share that with your baby when he/she is older?
