Hippo Herald

As a young child, your child is most open to learning as well as suggestion. This means that your child may find a toy in anything around the house or they may be most interested in the Preschool Educational Toys you buy for them. Most usually any thing can be turned into a toy. While you may feel you need to spend quite a bit on Preschool Educational Toys you will find most good toys are usually fairly priced.

In order to help your child develop at a steady rate and prepare for school, you need to be a bit deliberate. The Preschool Educational Toys you may have can be extremely helpful, and you will find just sitting with your child and cutting, pasting, and drawing can be helpful too. There are many tools that will encourage your child to learn while playing and the most exciting thing is that they do not even know it. And when you have some creativity you can take those toys a step further in the learning process.

One of the best toys from my childhood was the memory game. I found this game to be the most helpful when heading in to school because it helped me expand my mind and use the memory. With the memory game I found I could remember numbers, words, and many other things with a higher degree than my brother who did not care for the game. I learned to see the picture as a hole as well as dissecting the picture for details. Now you can take this Preschool Educational Toy a bit further and put take a few pieces out, look at them and then hide them. Now you will have to remember which memory pieces are no longer available. You can also take the pictures on those memory cards and sort them in many ways. Sort them phonetically, by color, by shape, almost anything.

Most children like to learn, but have short attention spans, which means you have to change activities frequently. It is often helpful to take a toy and hide it for a few months and then bring it back out again. Your child will think they have a new Preschool Educational Toys. No matter the preschool educational toy or toys you choose, you will find even the simplest toy can help your child use their five senses as well as expand their minds. Preschool Educational Toys should allow your child’s entire mind to work. You may have to have a few different toys to get them to use each part of their brain in learning, but the rewards are worth it. Be deliberate!

Preschool songs are an invaluable resource when it comes to young children. Through preschool songs, young kids can learn many different basic and personal skills. The following article discusses the lessons that young children can learn from songs as well as naming a few ideal tunes for each category.

Numbers And Counting There are a great many preschool songs dedicated to counting and numbers. By putting the skill of counting to a snappy tune, young children are much more able to memorize and repeat back the numbers. Some popular songs for preschoolers that involve numbers and counting are Hickory Dickory Doc, Ten Little Monkeys (Beware: you will have to sing this one again and again because kids never seem to tired of it), 100 Bottles Of Pop (the non-alcoholic version of 100 bottles of beer on the wall. Consider counting by tens for young children with limited attention spans), and One, Two, Buckle My Shoe. However my favorite counting song is The Ants Go Marching, which is a rather long song and best for walks with young children.

Letters And Spelling Probably the most popular letter song is the Alphabet Song although it is by far not the only song that can help teach young children letters and spelling. Just like with the counting songs, letter songs make a basic skill that is often difficult for children to learn and makes it simpler. Well-known letter and spelling songs include Bingo, The Alphabet letter/sound/word Song (sung to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle) and Apples and Bananas (a vowel sound song). There are also many different versions of alphabet rhymes and songs that teach preschool-age children the order of the alphabet.

Body Parts Studies have shown that teaching young children to identify their body parts strengthens their sense of self and raises self-confidence and independence. Not only that but most body part songs are activity songs, which encourage movement. And best of all, they are really fun to sing! Most preschool children know Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes along with The Hokey Pokey. Other popular choices for teaching young children the parts of their body include Ten Little Fingers, Thumbkin, and If You’re Happy And You Know It (which is my personal favorite).

Although it is important that young children learn the lessons we’ve already discussed, preschool songs also teach kids the very important lesson that learning can be fun and that it is okay to be silly once in a while. Using preschool songs to teach young children basic skills not only makes it easier, it also makes it enjoyable. This can be a vital first step in creating a joy of learning in your young child.

Here are some tips from http://www.privacyrights.org/that you should find helpful.  We recommend that you sit down with your child and explore the web with your child and discuss safety issues that may come up. This should be the FIRST thing that you do once you hook your computer up.  The sooner you discuss internet safety the better off you will both be.  Second, understand that one of the easiest ways to protect your child is to be there.  Be there when they log on, be there when they surf, and ask questions. 

No matter how hard you try, your child will eventually land at a site that they didn’t intend to.  Your job is to help them understand why that site is inappropriate and then help them find their way back to a more suitable site.

Here are some tips on internet safety:

• Privacy policy. Read the privacy policy statements on the web sites visited by your children. Teach older children to do the same. Look for policies that explain what information is collected, if any, what the web site operator does with it, and how you can choose whether or not the child’s information can be collected.

• Consent. If your child is under age 13, you must decide if you are going to give permission for web sites to collect personal information from them, a requirement of federal law. Be sure to carefully read the privacy policy and terms of service before making this decision.

• Web seal. Look for a privacy "seal of approval," such as TRUSTe, www.truste.org , on the first page. Participants agree to post their privacy policies and submit to audits of their privacy practices in order to display the logo. Web seal programs also provide dispute resolution services. TRUSTe displays a seal especially for children under age 13. The Council of Better Business Bureaus also has a seal program, www.bbbonline.org .

• Contracts. Encourage your children, especially teens, to take responsibility for their online behavior by establishing a contract with them. The Federal Trade Commission’s "Site Seeing on the Internet" provides sample language, www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/online/sitesee.html . The web guide for parents, GetNetWise, also provides contract language, www.getnetwise.org/tools/toolscontracts.php .

• Family rules. You can establish family rules for online computer use. Among those suggested by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children ( www.missingkids.com ) are the following:

• Tell your children never to give out identifying information such as family information, home address, school name, or phone number in chat room discussions and when visiting web sites. They shouldn’t even reveal such data in private e-mail unless they know who they are dealing with. They must also not send out personal or family photos without your permission. It’s best for children to use "screen names" that are different from their own in chat rooms.

• Explain to children that passwords must never be given to anyone else, even someone claiming to be from the online service.

• Warn your children not to respond to messages that are threatening, suggestive, demeaning, or otherwise make you or the child uncomfortable. Tell them to report such messages to you.

• Set reasonable usage rules, including time limits, for your child’s use of the computer. Watch for excessive use of online services late at night. That could be a tip-off there is a problem.

• Try to make online use a family activity. Keep the computer in a family room rather than the child’s bedroom.

• Get to know your children’s online "friends," much as you try to get to know their other friends. Never permit a child to arrange a face-to-face meeting with another computer user without your attending at least the first meeting.

• Explain that people online may not be who they seem to be. Someone claiming to be a 12-year old girl might be a 40-year old man.

• Also explain that not everything they read online may not be true. Any offer that’s "too good to be true" probably is.

• Learn about the online services your child uses. Find out about ways to steer them to child-friendly sites. If you are a novice to online use, ask your child to show you what they do online and how to log on to online services. Better yet, take a class and learn to navigate the Internet yourself.

 You can also learn out more about browsing the internet with your kids with the book Super Sites for Kids.