Think play dough is just for pre-schoolers?
I am always amazed at how much time older children and even adults will spend happily squidging and modelling if they get their hands on it.
I have used play dough to divert teenagers at youth groups, as an ice-breaker at grown-up parties and as a medium for imaginative play and learning.
Topics: High School, School Holidays, Primary School, Preschool, Prep, Toddlers, Craft
I don’t think it matters if it’s the makeup on your daughter in Year 11 or the ice blocks with your Prep child, sooner or later your child will try and convince you that you are the ONLY parent drawing a line in the sand on any given issue.
Topics: Parenting, High School, Behaviour, Primary School, Preschool, Prep, Toddlers
We love our kids. We want to provide for them, do our best for them and protect them. But sometimes our desire to make them happy and our dedication to looking after them can lead to ‘over-parenting’. With the best intentions in the world, we can over-praise, over-indulge and over-protect our little darlings ... and risk raising self-centred, entitled dependents, unable to think for themselves.
Here are some red flags that indicate you might be raising a spoilt child:
Topics: Parenting, Teens, High School, Behaviour, Primary School, Social Skills, Preschool, Toddlers
"Keep all digital devices out of the bedroom!"
"Be a parent, not a friend"
"Don't let your child do anything online that you wouldn't let them do offline"
These were the three key statements repeated by cyber safety expert, Susan McLean, at King's 'Growing Up Online' Cyber Safety Seminar on 4 October 2016.
Topics: Parenting, Teens, High School, Internet, Primary School, Technology, Social Media
You know how important it is to read to your child and you've diligently read bed time stories to your kids since they were tiny. But now they're reading The Chronicles of Narnia on their own, do you really need to keep reading to them? At what point do you draw the line and just let them get on with it?
Topics: Parenting, Literacy, High School, Primary School
“Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin …”
So began the famous BBC radio program, 'Listen With Mother', which broadcast stories read by women to children (and their mothers) from 1950 to 1982.
Reading to children has always been associated with mothers. Think of any image in the media depicting 'story time' and chances are it will be of a mother snuggled up with one or two children and a huge book.
Topics: Parenting, Literacy, Primary School, Preschool
