MMothers day is here and yes, this time Teachers won’t send home mother’s day surprise crafts. Sad but its always good to appreciate what you do by yourself. Correct? So this mother’s day, Moms have to do that surprise craft activity for themselves because tradition is always a tradition, and as I mentioned before there is nothing wrong with gifting to yourself. I always gift myself a book or flowers or Spa-treatment to feel good about being so awesome just like you are. Mommies are just the best.

Why am I so enthusiastic about Mother’s day? Just because I am a mom? No. The real reason is…Because I value my mom just like you do. I am so much grateful for what she has done her whole life and still doing to make me who I am today. When I needed a push to run a mile longer than my actual ability – She pushed me. When I needed that warm hug after losing a singing competition – She hugged me and at the same time pushed me to work hard for the next time. When I wanted to follow my dreams and needed those powerful wings – She gave hers too. When I needed someone to listen to my pregnancy tantrums – She was right there. And now when I am working on my business and need that extra comfort about ‘someone needs to listen to me!’ (another stressful tantrum by me to my mom), she is listening. And sometimes I just don’t talk and keep mum; no word comes out of my mouth when she is on Facetime with me – She is still there to share that silence.

So yes, being enthusiastic for Mother’s day is a must day to celebrate even though we value mothers every single day. It’s nothing wrong to show that extra love on such a day. Though we are past that mom-daughter gifting days, all she advises is to make myself more available to my kid and So here I am with some mom-child craft ideas that you can do with your little one as a team.

Research suggests that if you do crafts and creating art with your kids together, not by instruction-mommy but as an active participant, it increases and strengthens the bonding between you two and also improves a child’s child’s psychological health. Moms are natural Mom, cook, teacher, parent, guide, psychologist, caretaker, trainer, and comfortable pillow to the child.

So here are some activities that I did to celebrate my Mother’s day to increase the bond, learn new (children teach you many things every day), and became a little better version of me.

Lets start!

1. Baking

Baking is a fun activity to share with a little one. It focuses on attention, social skills, turn-taking, fine motor, gross motor (sitting and balance, or standing), hand manipulations, visual motor, hand-eye coordination, organization and planning skills, memory, creative thinking skills, perception, sequencing skills and much more!

Children crate better bond with their parents if they participate in household chores as family altogether.

2. Q tip Art

Get a paper and some of your (mom’s) favorite colors. And start painting! This is a great activity to improve attention, and sitting span as this activity needs kid to paint within the borders and that needs a great amount of focus.

3. Color the catterpillar

Provide yourself and your toddler different colors and draw a caterpillar on a paper. And the next step is to paint catterpillar in different colors!

4. Color the Flower

Gift Mommy a flower! while going to flower-store is tough these days, we thought to make flower art at home only.

5. Mom and kids yoga

Mom needs her exercise time and so kids too. Yoga is the best exercise form for kids to maintain their flexibility and improve overall physical health. We sometimes do yoga together and sometimes I do my exercises and she does hers. There are great kids yoga programs available on the web with fabulous videos. I am a no-screen time parent though I do this for yoga time as sometimes I know my limitations and a few things only experts can teach.

6. Good Cause Activities

As we all know, shelter-in-place time is tough. Appreciating those who truly are HEROES is important. So we did this task to tribute health care and Essential workers. A joint venture of mother and child to develop good-values is a great gift to one’s family during the mother’s day time. As these workers still work to provide you groceries, boxes, mails, keep your health safe, make your life easier, and hustle free. So yes developing values through craft during Mother’s day time is an awesome present for those Moms who leave their families behind and just WORK for the community and the world.

7. Dancing together

Dance therapy is so important to relieve all stress. Whether you dance on baby shark or you dance on mom’s songs. It’s important to be happy! Try that out today!

8. Story time with mom

Read stories to your little one. Reading has all the benefits. And that could be the best mother’s day gift to yourself. Investing time in kid now will give ripe fruits in the future.

10. Learn with mom!

Learning is fun and we can make it more fun by involving ourselves with our kids during educational activities. I tried to identify letter M by making a puzzle of letters on the chalk-board. Then I asked her to find letter M as her name starts with letter M. It was easy and no-mess by doing this activity on the chalkboard. It provided learning, education, fine and gross motor functions, visual tracking, figure-ground perception, pencil-grip development while gripping the chalk, problem-solving, and much more.

I hope you have an exceptional Mother’s day! Have fun with your child on this day.

Wishing you a very happy and awesome Mother’s Day, Dear moms!

“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.”.

That’s where parents come in. Because Play is an activity where children show their remarkable ability for exploration, imagination, and decision making. Playing gives your toddlers a chance to express their feelings and practice managing them.

The type of play children are engaged, and their purposes are changed throughout childhood thus each age period has a level of appropriate activities needed for healthy development that parents should pay attention to. 

Did you know that Age-appropriate activities have many benefits for your children’s physical&psychosocial health, wellbeing and cognitive development?

A recent study has shown that appropriate playing activity for children aged 1-3 years is vital for their healthy neurological development, including overall gross motor development, self-help skills, and auditory perception. The study has emphasized on your vital role here to provide and facilitate these activities for your children as a parent.

You may have realized that you don’t even have to struggle to make children play or provide motivation. That is because children seem to have a natural urge to play, and playing brings pleasure and interest to them, meaning that it can be maintained with and without external rewards. 

How do age-appropriate activities support your child’s development and learning?

1. Healthier Neural&Physical development

Physical activities promote healthy growth and development at various levels, such as:

• Developing stronger bones

• Developing gross and fine motor skills

• Building strength, endurance.

• Improving balance and coordination

• Improving posture

• Improving concentration

• Improving sleep

• Developing a healthy cardiovascular system

However, inadequate physical activity can bring young children many health issues. Lack of exercise may lead to weight gain or excess body fat, high blood pressure, bone health problems, and cardiovascular disease. Active children usually have fewer chronic health problems, are less likely to get sick, and are at a significantly lower risk of developing diseases or illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease, and depression.

2.Social and emotional development

The cornerstone of success at school and in life is a successful social-emotional development. For example, playing with peers provides young children the opportunity to develop basic communication, Recognize familiar people, Use his imagination and Start to understand emotions and improve fairness and empathy as they learn to play with other children.

Your Kids will begin to gain an awareness of other people’s attitudes, speech, emotional expression, and behavior during the infant/toddler years. Such development includes a child’s understanding of what to expect from others, how to participate in back-and-forth social exchanges, and which social protocols are to be used with which social situations are to occur.

Associative Play usually begins at this age(2-3 years), so your child will begin looking for other kids. It’s crucial at this stage to give your child plenty of opportunities to spend time with peers.

Also, you need to know that your child always learns best from you, so try to point out different feelings (happy, sad, frightened) while watching tv or telling a story. It will allow your child to be more aware of his or her own feelings as well as those of others. Also, children may begin to display empathy by offering hugs and kisses when needed.

3.Recognition of Ability

The developing sense of your children’s’ self-efficacy includes an emerging understanding that they can make things happen and have special abilities. Self-efficiency is related to a sense of competence that has been identified as a basic human need. The improvement of children’s sense of self-efficacy can be seen in Play or exploratory actions when they act on an object to achieve a result. They pat a musical toy, for example, to make the sounds come out. Older infants can demonstrate recognition of their abilities by “I” statements, such as “I did it” or “I’m good at drawing.”

4.Cognitive development

when your child plays individually and with others, their cognitive skills, such as thinking, remembering, learning, and paying attention, are developed. Children develop the following cognitive skills through Play:

• problem-solving
•  the power of imagination and creativity
•  concepts such as shapes, colors, measurement, counting and letter recognition
•  strengths, such as concentration, persistence, and resilience.

Another recent research has stated that engaging your children in physical activity and establishing good sleep hygiene are essential to support learning, indicating a critical need for your hand to build supportive environments and community resources to facilitate children’s optimized learning. In turn, better learning outcomes predict better chances to secure work and develop careers that will lead to improved family environments for future generations.

After discussing the importance of activities for your children, and the vital role of these age-appropriate activities for healthy development at various levels, we are sure that you are now wondering how you could find these trustable and science-based activities, well, no need to worry here is specifically what you are looking for! OTPark Box can take care of all the importance listed above and even more!

By a subscription, OTPark Box will provide you a monthly box with appropriate activities for your kids! 

OTPark Box brings a wide variety of developmentally appropriate, expertly designed activities straight to your home. Each box is thoughtfully designed by a pediatric occupational therapist who has had a vast array of experiences working with children of all ages and developmental levels over the past 8 years.

Subscribe to OTPark Box for detailed tasks and activities that will focus on your child’s gross motor and fine motor skills; Cognitive Skills, handwriting development, ideas, and tasks focused on activities of daily living skills such as brushing teeth, dressing, etc.; visual-motor; and social skills related tasks –All in one box, in addition to daily routines, family time, and joyful learning.

References:

Jirout J, LoCasale-Crouch J, Turnbull K, et al. How Lifestyle Factors Affect Cognitive and Executive Function and the Ability to Learn in Children. Nutrients. 2019;11(8):1953. Published 2019 Aug 20. doi:10.3390/nu11081953 / https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6723730/

Silva Batista MA, Almeida Honório SA, Jones GW, Matos Serrano JJ, Duarte Petrica JM. The influence of extra-curricular physical activities in the development of coordination in pre-school children [published online ahead of print, 2017 May 31]. Minerva Pediatr. 2017;10.23736/S0026-4946.17.04981-7. doi:10.23736/S0026-4946.17.04981-7/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28565901/

Pakarinen A, Hautala L, Hamari L, et al. The Association between the Preference for Active Play and Neurological Development in Toddlers: A Register-Based Study. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020;17(7):2525. Published 2020 Apr 7. doi:10.3390/ijerph17072525/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7178213/

Let’s just be honest – working moms have two full time jobs.  Motherhood is a full-time job in and of itself.  24/7 in fact. Moms are full time cuddlers, full time listeners and full time finders of lost things.  On top of that, we working moms have our “real jobs.”  They require us to take a shower, change out of pajamas and actually talk to grown-ups.  Some days things run flawlessly and some days we can’t believe we signed up for this. 

At OT Park we know that sometimes it feels like you’re doing both things half way.  We know that sometimes you wish you could just focus on work and other days you wish you could just curl up in your pajamas and watch Daniel Tiger with your toddler all day.  And we know that almost all the time, it feels like there’s not enough of you to go around.  But take heart, mama.  You’re not alone.  What’s more, we’re sure you’re doing a fantastic job.  

At OT Park we get it.  We’re working moms too. That’s why we’ve rounded up some of the best tips to keep everything running smoothly (and help you keep your sanity to boot!). 

Leave work at work:

We know it’s hard.  Reminders ding, e-mails pop up, clients call.  But when you can, do your best to leave work at work.  Give it you’re all while you’re there and then check out.  If you’re able, silence your phone or even put it on airplane mode when you get home.  Disconnecting from work is hard, but it’s good for you and it’s good for your family.  And trust us when we say that taking a break will make you a better employee when it’s time to reconnect. 

Decide What’s worth your Time:

Working moms are the queens of wearing all the hats.  We do dishes, plan meals, make sure everyone has a clean outfit for school in the morning.  But there comes a time when you have to decide what’s really worth your time.  If you’re anything like us you have two priorities:  your family and your job.  After that, most things are optional and that’s okay.  Every meal doesn’t have to be Pinterest worthy, every outfit doesn’t have to be front page ready.  Let your priorities run your life and let the other things go.  

Have a plan for family time:

When you finally get home from work it can be overwhelming to decide what to do.  Dirty dishes call from the sink, a pile of laundry taunts you from the stairs and your toddler hangs on your leg calling “mommy, mommy, mommy!”  If you head home with a plan you’ll feel in control.  At OT Park we’re here to help.  That’s why we’ve created OT Park box.  Each OT Park box includes ready to go activities to do with your child.  Walk in the door, put down your bag and pick up OT Park box.  No prep required.  With OT Park box it’s easy to walk in the door and jump straight into quality time with your little one.  

Its “ok” to put yourself first:

Not all days are same. Some days you need to push yourself beyond boundaries and put yourself first before everything else, and when I say everything else, that means EVERYTHING ELSE including kids. NO mommy-guild should hurt you for your 30 minutes relaxing massages. Its okay to be first in the family to run the family. If mom is happy, family is happy. If mom is healthy, the family is healthy. 

And last but not the list, have fun!