The cafeteria for a kid is less of a dining experience and more of a social scene—this is why so many perfectly good sandwiches come back home uneaten. Many children who would eat up said sandwich at home in front of happy parents pretend to turn their noses at it before their friends. Vegetables they like suddenly turn uncool and they reach, instead, for a bag of cookies or chips.

Uneaten lunches amount to wasted resources and nutrients, and who knows what your child is eating instead of your carefully prepared meal?

• Allow your child to choose his or her lunch. Ask for input as to what they’d like to eat and they might surprise you with very doable options. This goes for vegetables, too. Many picky eaters push plates of vegetables away to begin with, but if you ask for input, you might be pleasantly surprised. Your child may prefer broccoli to baby carrots and adding a small container of low-fat vegetable dip with a baggie of fresh veggies might get him/her to actually eat them. The very act of choosing his or her own destiny, er, lunch may make the food more appealing.
• Compromise. Add a home-baked cookie or a bag of baked chips. Even if your child starts the meal off with dessert, he/she will likely realize he/she is still hungry and reach for the main course.
• Relax. There is only so much you can do for your child, and part of growing up is in the difficulties and misadventures we have on our own. Your child may spurn your lunches for a time, but work with him or her so he or she is at least getting necessary nutrients at home.

Bio: Maria Rainier is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at First in Education, where recently she's been researching different types of mechanical engineering degree programs and blogging about student life. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

by Les Scammell - editor Just 4 Families.

Is it just me, or are our children having more and more time off school every year. This Friday is a pupil free day at our kids school - about the fourth for the year now. I sat down last night and worked out that, on average, most kids spend around 16 weeks away from school each year. In Australia we have the following time away from school:

• School Holidays - around 12 weeks each year
• Public Holidays - another five days (or one week)
• Sick Days - an average of 5-10 days each year (or one to two weeks)
• Pupil Free Days - around five each year (or one week)

That's a total of 16 weeks of non attendance at school. So why do teachers need that day off from school. Apparently it's for training and administrative work. Surely, given there are 12 weeks of school holidays each year, and teachers are only entitled to four or five weeks annual leave, there is plenty of time for their training and administrative work.

What would happen if that principle entered all work places? Consider the following:

• Supermarkets declared that one day every three months was to be a customer free day. Workers would attend, but customers were not welcome?
• Doctors and nurses declared that one day every three months was to be a patient free day. All in-patients were to be sent home for the day and no new patients accepted - even emergencies?
• Police declared a crime free day one every three months. Police would not attend to any criminal matters on that day - only administrative work or training?

I could add ambulance and fire services to that list, but I think you get the picture. I know I have gone to extremes, but when we are in a situation where employers are claiming that young people are entering the workplace with inadequate numeracy and literacy skills, perhaps rather than spending more time away from school, our kids need to spend more time at school.

Just a thought - my gripe for the week. What are your thoughts?

by Adriana Noton

A child who is playing with a toy, some might argue, is a child learning. Nevertheless, many parents and experts maintain that wooden educational toys are the best toys to teach children when compared to plastic toys.

Wooden toys offer many benefits to the consumer. A quality wooden toy is durable enough to withstand decades of play. Before too long what was once a toy might become a treasured family heirloom.

Wooden toys are much more earth friendly than plastic toys. Wood is an earthly phenomenon, whereas plastic is a human endeavor. This signifies that wooden toy production has a gentler impact on the environment and produces less waste, making a healthier world for all the world's inhabitants. However, the healthy benefits of wooden toys do not end with the environment.

Many wooden toys come untreated or are finished with non-toxic paints. In comparison, recent studies indicate that some plastics can have harmful effects on human health. In addition, wood has antibacterial properties, in fact, a wooden toy in the same room as a plastic toy is said to have less germs. This is important to many parents who understand that their infants chew on toys as often as they touch them.

It is possible to further enumerate the advantages of wooden toys. Dense, grainy, or smooth, many children enjoy touching wooden toys. Some children are drawn to the natural warmth exhibited by the toys, even to the extent that they are soothed and drawn to them. This inherent quality, some might assert, heightens the educational experience of a child, because they might play with a wooden toy more frequently and for longer periods of time. However, wooden toys not only appeal to the sense of touch but also to the sense of smell. Many wooden toys are carved from aromatic woods and thus provided further sensory stimulation for children.

There are numerous wooden toys said to promote learning. Toys for learning are meant to encompass the social, intellectual, emotional, and physical growth of a child. An infant might first play with a chew toy or a rattle. This experience begins to develop the their motor-skills and sensory levels.

There are toys geared towards older infants and toddlers. At this age children are beginning to understand spatial relationships between objects and to identify colors and shapes, in addition, they are still developing coordination. Wooden sorting toys or wooden stacking games are perfect to engage these skills. Moreover, children can gain awareness of balance and hand and eye coordination though play with large building blocks (later on they will graduate to basic building blocks).

For children who are a little older there is a wide variety of wooden toys to choose from. These children will enjoy learning about animals on the farm, at the zoo or in the wilderness by playing with wooden animal sets. They may even feel like they have traveled to all those places. They can also better understand everyday life within their house and community when they place with housekeeping, baking and building sets. Wooden number and letter sets develop language and counting skills. Also, these children might still want to engage with wooden toys geared towards younger children: rattles and stacking games. Just as they might want to adventure out towards more analytical toys, such as puzzles and mazes.

Many older children want the challenge of toys that engage their analytical skills. Whether they enjoy puzzles, mazes and labyrinths, model building or play sets, wooden toy makers will likely have something to engage their imaginations and challenge their critical thinking skills. Regardless of a child's age, some experts and parents agree that wooden educational toys promote a child's confidence, encourage the use of their imagination, and create fun.

Buying baby toys isn't just to provide your child with a fun activity - it's also to help them learn! Shopping at local toy stores will provide you with educational toys that are both enlightening and fun, all at the same time!

by Adriana Noton

As children grow, they need a lot of positive stimulus to help them develop properly. Creating a playroom in your home is a great way to set up a fun play environment for your children that will allow you to include educational items as part of their playtime. As well, a playroom will allow parents to keep all of the toys and other items in one area instead of having them scattered all over the house, A well designed play room will provide the kids with hours of entertaining activities in a safe environment. As well, while the children are busy, a busy parent can take some time to relax. A playroom should be fun and imaginative and provide the kids with a lot of activities to keep them engaged. Below are a number of tips to creating a children's playroom in your home:

Imagination:

A play area that invokes a child's imagination should be a key part of a playroom. It gives a child the chance to be creative while having fun. There are many options available when creating an imaginative area. You can set up a theater puppet stage, a small stage for the children to put on shows complete with a trunk of old clothes and accessories for costumes. You can also set up a kitchen area complete with the essential toy dining wear, pots, pans, and children's stove, refrigerator, sink, and microwave. You can also add creative toys and games that will encourage children to use their imagination.

Let's Pretend:

Children love to play make believe or pretend. An area set aside for pretending is an important part of a playroom. For instance, you could set up different occupation zones such as a construction zone, fireman zone, policeman zone, nursing zone, veterinarian zone, etc. You can add a number of different items such as building blocks, wooden blocks, leggo blocks, job relevant toys such as children's tool kit, medical kit, etc. It is important that the area you set up is big enough to hold all of the items.

Motion:

It is important for children to be able to interact and move when they play. It is important to have items that children can ride, rock, and can be pulled. This can include rocking horses or another rocking animal, rocking boats, sleds, ride on trains, ride on fire trucks, ride on dragons, ride vehicles that children can pedal, and much more.

Rhythm:

Children should be able to experiment with things that produce sound. Set aside an area where children can develop rhythm skills. Items that you can add include: children's piano or keyboard, children's drum kit, children's banjo and guitar, a child's CD player, and much more.

Toys and Games:

It is essential to have a wide variety of toys. You can even include educational toys and games. Toys can include a wide variety of animal plush toys, balls, blocks, remote controlled cars, rag dolls, quirky stuffed toys, and more. It is important to have toys and games where children can learn such as puzzles, science games, memory games, and more. You can also set up table games and board games that are appropriate for the child. Include some thinking games such as checkers.

Setting up a children's play room is a great way to give your children a place to have fun without causing damage to the rest of the home. Children can get creative and sometimes messy. It is important to educational and child developing items that will help a child develop important skills. There are many unique items available to provide a child with many hours of fun. ? - 35303

Offering the highest quality of educational toys for over 15 years, delivering joy and excitement into your children's upbringings. A wide range of safe and durable products is available, including baby toys and wooden toys.

by Julie Ashton-Townsend

Parents often say 'my baby can read' but is this true? We can see videos of babies reading flash cards from a very young age. How is this possible? And is every baby capable of this?

I would say as a teacher that any baby given the right level of stimulation right from birth and even before birth is capable of reading flash cards at an early age. So what does reading involve?

If we break down the different aspects of what it takes to read we can see that reading requires the following: - the ability to hear the sounds and the difference between the sounds, the ability to see letters and to discriminate between the letter shapes, the ability to remember the sounds the letters make, the ability to articulate the sounds the words make.

They are quite complex skills. If a baby is exposed to language both spoken and written from birth and given a variety of stimulating experiences then any baby can learn to read early.

I did this with my own three children. From birth I surrounded them with language and music. I played story tapes, read to them and talked to them from day one. I gave them toys to reach for and hold on to as soon as they were able. I encouraged them to crawl and explore.

I stimulated their brain development and built connections and neural pathways in their brains. It paid off in a huge way. My children could read easily without much formal teaching from me past the in initial alphabet and three word blending stage.

As teacher I am all for reading programs which teach baby reading activities. There is so much evidence now to prove that learning reading skills and stimulating baby's brain right from birth is the way to make sure that reading and learning comes easily and early.

The first five years of life are the critical time for brain growth and development. Language is best learned in the early years when baby's brain is primed for language learning. It is now though that some forms of dyslexia could be caused by learning important pre-reading skills too late of not at all if the baby has hearing or other difficulties which are not spotted early enough.

The basic fundamental skills of learning to read involve listening, seeing and speaking skills, together with written skills later, which are essential to the language learning process.

These skills can be taught easily from birth by a loving involved parent who knows the techniques to use to teach all that is needed for reading well and indeed learning anything. There is no need for expensive computer based learning program which remove the close parent and child bonding which can take place while reading and sharing a book. These are only useful with older children who can sit up and respond to a computer screen. Young babies learn best in the arms of a parent by hearing stories, poems, rhymes, songs and being shown , posters and pictures of stimulating things. and interesting things in the environment in which they live

Use these with your own children and they will be able to read easily and well before school. The methods really do work!