Here’s how it works. Say you wanted to buy me a $100 Season’s Greenings gift, you’d donate a $100 to one of the causes and then I’d get an email notifying me that $100 has been donated in my name from my friend so and so…The gifts go as low as $25; think of it as an inexpensive way of bringing an important cause into the household this holiday season…

The folks at Conservation International gave me a $100 dollar donation to give to one lucky reader. So, you know the drill. Leave me a comment telling me what you would like to donate to. Do you want to save a lemur? Help out a rainforest? Or keep freshwater flowing? Let me know, and then give me a little shout out on your blog. At the end of next week - Dec 17th, I’ll announce a winner and get your donation out to you.

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!

Children have a unique way of describing the world around them – through preschool art projects and drawings almost all parents graciously allow their children to do.

Aside from teaching their preschoolers basic arithmetic and word-object association, one of the most common recreation and entertainment activity give to their children is to engage them in preschool art projects – drawing, painting, coloring even sculpture through the use of modeling clay and building bricks.

Most parents see their children’s preschool achievements such as artwork, crafts, clay sculptures, ceramic painting projects and the like as an indicator of their child’s native ability. However, in most cases, it is actually not a measurable factor of a child’s success in the future. Most preschool art projects are simply an expression of how a child sees the world around him and how he relates to it. It is therefore not advisable for parents to pin their hopes and aspirations on a child’s preschool projects unless the child happens to be a prodigy and exceptionally gifted.

What children do in their preschool years are indicative not of their artistic inclinations but as their way of sharing with adults how they see things, objects, animals (in fact everything) around them and how they interact with them in their innocence.

Parents should learn to appreciate the effort, thought and perseverance their children put in creating their preschool art projects and other related things if they want to enhance their child’s emotional and intellectual capability. Why? Because this is what children need most, acceptance and the knowledge that their efforts are appreciated no matter how basic or simple their masterpiece may be.

Criticism should be done away with by parents and replaced with encouragement, guidance, appreciation and unwavering support in order to make their children stronger not only physically but emotionally and mentally as well. Never compare your child’s preschool art projects with those of others as this would definitely damage the child’s self-esteem and confidence in communicating and relating with the people around him.

Simply show how gladly you appreciate their work and encourage them to do more to make them happier and contented as children and you will surely contribute to making a better adult in the future.

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.

Sometimes we all take a break in the middle of the day and play a game together. Most of the time, I just make sure we play games so that we all have fun together. I can get so caught up in things that I’ll go from one task to the next and forget to have a little fun.

Today, after several pleas from my kids, I got out the Uno cards. Today I would be playing with six-year-old Ryan and three-year-old Maegan. In the past, Maegan would sit on my lap and help me with my cards; but today, she wanted to be her "own team".

Not feeling sure how things would go, I dealt seven cards to each of us. Maegan picked up her cards and held them in her hand.

I flipped over the first card and asked Maegan to go first. "Do you have a yellow card to put down?"

"Yep," she answered and put down a yellow card on top of the pile.

Round and round we went, with Maegan putting down the correct color on her turn all by herself. Then finally a turn came that she didn’t have the right color.

"Do you have a card," I asked, pointing to the large symbol in the middle of the card, "that has a circle like this one?"

While I still had my finger next to the symbol, she went through each card, one a time. She carefully checked to see if she had a "match" - and when she found one, she put it down on top of the pile.

The game was a great success–especially since she won the first round!

"That’s one point for the team ‘My Little Pony’ (as she had named her team)," I congratulated her. She beamed with pride. She had won and she had done it all by herself.

As I sat there admiring her accomplishment, I realized how easy it is to miss opportunities like this that are educational in nature. This game taught her taking turns, sorting, colors, and shapes.

It’s always a great asset as a home school parent to have one more way to help our kids learn and practice what they’ve been learning. So, "Uno away"!!

About The Author…

Laura Bankston is author of Internationally selling Cooking with Kids Curriculum: Homeschool Cooking in a Box and the Homeschool Cookbook. She currently home schools her three children, maintains home school support websites, and manages their family-owned service business. For information on her curriculum and free home school support services, please visit her website www.homeschoolcookbook.com

The one thing I dread about Halloween is carving the pumpkin. I am not very good at it! My poor pumpkin always ends up with one tooth that looks like it’s about to fall out, and it always looks a bit more sad than spooky. I just don’t have the skills needed to carve a pumpkin. So I went on a quest to come up with another option and came across this cool Pumpkin Painting Book. 

You can create something that is really special, and no knife skills required! Plus, your pumpkin lasts much longer than a traditional Jack-o-Lantern so you can keep it on display till Thanksgiving if you want.

Hope you all have a happy Halloween!

Oh and don’t forget to check out some of the Halloween Crafts on KnowMore.com! They are great for kids of all ages and skill levels.