Ideas For Summer Fun With The Grandkids

Summer Fun With Your Grandchildren
By G. Grigor

10 Fun Ideas to do With Your Grandchildren This Summer

Are you looking for ways to have some summer fun with your grandchild? Summer is a time when most children get to go to their grandparents house for a day, a week, or longer. So finding ideas to help keep summer fun can be daunting.

We are going to offer ten fun ideas to help get you started. Many of these ideas cost little or no money, but the memories that you can build will last a lifetime.

1. Plan a day that you can go on a nature walk and pack a picnic. You do not have to go any farther than your own back yard or to your local park. Take along a book that identifies different birds, plants, insects, or other animals. While picnicking, talk about what you have seen and read about them from the books that you have brought along.

2. Do you have a favorite family recipe? Or does your grandchild have a favorite meal? Spend time with them in the kitchen helping them learn to cook or bake. Then sit down and share that dinner. Eating a meal cooked together makes the meal taste extra yummy.

3. Go to a pick your own farm to pick strawberries, berries, or other fruit. Then bake a pie or other yummy fruit dessert. You could even make your own ice cream to top it off.

4. Do you live near the beach? Go collect shells or build sand castles. If you live near a lake, try rowing a boat, fishing, or canoeing. If this isn't possible, set up a small wading pool in your yard and splash to your heart's content. Yes, you too!

5. Set up a lemonade stand and let your grandchild chose how to spend the profits or save it.

6. Go camping in your backyard. Set up a tent, fire up the grill, make s'mores or roast marshmallows and tell campfire stories or have a sing-along. Catch fireflies in a jar. Point out different constellations, or just gaze at the stars before falling asleep.

7. Make a small area of your garden specifically for your grandchild. Get gardening tools that are their size and let them plant flowers or vegetables and care for this section by themselves. Or get a pot or window box and do the same.

8. Go to the local library if you do not have children's books around your house any more, and choose books that the two of you can read together. Start off by each reading a sentence, then a paragraph, a page and so on. This is an excellent way to keep a child reading and ready for the next school year.

9. Do you knit, sew, crochet, or paint? Teach your hobby to your grandchild. If you are not a crafty person, get two plain white t-shirts to decorate. You can paint them, attach "rhinestones", or tie dye them. Have a fashion show of your designed shirts. Just have fun, worry about the mess later.

10. Get some chalk and draw on the sidewalks or your driveway. Re-learn how to play hopscotch, draw your family, favorite animals, or a story.

This is just a small outline of things that you can do with one grandchild or ten grandchildren. Just remember to take lots and lots of photos of the time you spend together.

Something that you can do together or you can do alone is to put together a scrapbook of the time that you shared. If you do it by yourself, you can give the scrapbook later as a birthday or Christmas gift as a reminder of the great time that you had.

The most important thing is to spend time with them and have tons of FUN. To a child it is not important how much money is spent in the pursuit of fun; it is the quality of the time spent together.

For more grandparenting ideas, you can visit: http://www.grandparentscafe.com. This site offers information on grandparent's rights, distance grandparenting, as well as photos, stories, games, and more.

One of my favorite quotes that I have found since becoming a grandma is as follows: "If your baby is beautiful and perfect, never cries or fusses, sleeps on schedule and burps on demand, an angel all the time...you're the grandma."~Theresa Bloomingdale

Gillian is the proud grandmother of two 9 year olds and a new grandbaby boy.

Posted by Wee Care Nanny Agency

Toddler-Friendly Summer Celebrations

Some cute ideas for enjoying a little summertime fun with the children.

Toddler-Friendly Summer Celebrations
By Robin McClure

Flip-Flop Fun
For fashionable summer fun, you and your child can make a unique pair of flip-flops for a caregiver, babysitter, or friend. Have your youngster help you pick out some ribbon and gemstones or other decorative items to add to a pair of flip-flops. Cut a 19-inch strip of ribbon (you can always trim the ends shorter, depending on the style and size of flip-flop selected) and fashion a pretty bow from it. Trim the ends off at a diagonal. Use a hot-melt glue gun to fasten the ribbon onto the Y-part of the flip-flop (adults need to do this part, please). Add a charm, stone, or other item to the center of the bow (not using anything is okay too).
Your toddler will get a kick out of making them, and will love giving them as a gift even more.

Ice Cream in a Bag
Who needs to wait for hand-cranked homemade ice cream when kids can create their own individual, serving–size creation in no time and with no mess! This homemade ice cream recipe uses a toddler’s energy for a delicious outcome!

Ingredients
1 cup milk (use chocolate milk if preferred)
2 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1-quart resealable bag
1-gallon resealable bag
several spoonfuls of rock salt enough ice to cover the small bag Place milk, sugar, and vanilla into the small bag and zip the bag securely. Put the small bag into the larger bag. Add ice and salt. Let your toddler shake the bag gently for about 5 minutes. When it is done, the ice cream will have the consistency of soft serve. Enjoy!

Made in the Shade
Establish a shady outdoor area for special summer reading. Grab some chairs or a blanket and establish this as your special reading area. Find books about summer that involve outdoor activities, vacations, or just ways to soak up the sunshine and read them with your child.

Painting Van Goghs
It’s summertime, so why not let your little artists showcase their talent outdoors? Set up a large sheet of paper (or even use the large roll-sheets found at craft supply and teacher supply stores) either on an easel or on a flat surface. Dress your toddler in a swimsuit or old clothes, provide selections of water-based paint, and let the art begin! To encourage artistic expression, look at some simple art books together beforehand.

Tepee Hideout
Build your toddler a simple tepee for hours of backyard fun. Materials
3 white PVC pipes (8-foot pipes work best)
rope, canvas tarp, cloth, or blanket Using the rope, tie the PVC pipes together about 20–24 inches from the tops and then stand them up like a tripod. If possible, dig out an area of the ground so that the pipes are planted firmly. Cover the tepee frame with tarp, cloth, blanket, or whatever you have available.

Watermelon Cookies
Cut a seedless watermelon into 1/2-inch slices. Place the slices on a flat surface outdoors (to avoid a mess in your house) and use cookie cutters to cut out fun shapes. Kids will love eating their tasty “cookies,” and the shapes make the fruit easier to handle!

Robin McClure is currently the author of 5 parenting books.

Posted by Wee Care Nanny Agency

Greenwich Nanny's Arrest Prompts Hiring Advice

On June 1, 2009, the "Stamford Advocate" reported on the arrest of a live-in nanny working in Greenwich, Conn. She was charged with first-degree larceny, eight counts of third-degree forgery, eight counts of fraudulent use of an ATM card and breach of peace. The article discusses how the woman would ace her job interviews, get hired and then go on to defraud her employers. Apparently, she became very adept at her practice as she moved from family to family applying her deceitful trade.

We are always dismayed to read about the “bad apple” getting picked for such an important job. “When you allow someone into your house, you should know who they are,” said Detective Pasquale Iorfino of the Greenwich Police Department. We could not agree more. Unfortunately, more often than not, extensive screening and background checks are not properly conducted or done at all. We were disappointed (at the risk of sounding self-serving) that the article quotes the owner of a Web based "nanny" site for tips on screening and hiring a nanny. Mr. Lambert, the founder of Enannysource, stated that "screening is the most important part of the hiring process." That is absolutely true. However, these online listing sites by their very structures are unable to thoroughly screen a candidate. In fact, Web based sites contribute to many parents false sense of security in hiring a nanny. In effect, they are online databases with no barriers to entry. Anyone can post their profile and hold himself or herself out as an experienced and qualified caregiver. They merely list available jobs and caregivers and then offer an a la carte background check. Furthermore, many online sites advertise "National Criminal Checks" which can be very misleading. Those checks will often only determine if the subject was incarcerated in a state prison. Many online sites omit to inform you that those searches will not turn up persons that were convicted of a crime but not imprisoned or that served time in a county jail. Therefore, depending on the state, a county by county or statewide criminal check should also be done where the domestic worker has been shown to reside.

Since the hiring process can be overwhelming to a lot of families, we wanted to offer some additional practical advice. Most importantly, it is vital to meet and get to know the potential nanny in person. Together you should go over a detailed employment application and zero in on gaps in work history, discuss previous jobs and gauge responses to gently probing questions. For example, last week we had a nanny come in to register who seemed perfect. She was charming, sweet, athletic, a college graduate and had a recent six-year reference working with 3 children in the Tribeca section of Manhattan. However, the reference fell apart because the candidate told us she always lived in with the family but property records showed the apartment was only 600 square feet. Not a very likely scenario for a live-in job with a supposed family of five. Do online nanny sites expect a potential employer to think about that scenario or research it?

We understand it is difficult to properly vet a potential in house employee without being a seasoned interviewer. Therefore, it’s imperative to be able to recognize some common red flags from the prospective employee and/or her references. They include: 

• Past employers who do not have a landline and can only be reached on a cell phone.
• Past employers who do not reside in areas employing a high concentration of nannies and other domestics.
• Tenuous explanations for wide gaps in employment.
• Unstable work history.
• Inability to provide authentic and valid federal and state photo identification.

Oddly enough, in my experience I have found that if a candidate is too perfect or throws around high profile names of previous employers, it’s usually a red flag that warrants a lot more digging. The stakes are too high to trust without verifying first.


Posted by Wee Care Nanny Agency

Helping Children Maintain Good Nutritional Habits During the Summer Months

Enjoyed this article from last year about helping children keep up good nutritional habits during the summer.

School Is Out, and Nutrition Takes a Hike
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/health/nutrition/24well.html

Posted by Wee Care Nanny Agency

Dealing with Young Children's Changing Emotions

The Emotional Roller-Coaster
By Playskool Advisor Lawrence J. Cohen, PhD

I was baby-sitting my niece once when she was around two years old. She had a hard time saying goodbye to her mom and dad and a hard time settling in to play or have fun with me. I went to hold her and comfort her but she ran under the table and told me to go away. I asked her if I could come under the table with her to keep her company and she said no, I should leave the house. I said I couldn't do that, but I would move farther away. I stepped back a little and sat on the floor and asked if that was far enough away. She said yes, and began to cry a little. After a few minutes she came out from under the table and said, "The tears just popped out." "They certainly did," I said, and we both smiled. "Let's watch Cinderella," she said, "that wicked stepmother is really mean. She says, 'hold your tongue!'"

I think the lesson from this story is that it can be confusing to us what to do as young children's emotions change dramatically about a thousand times during each day. They can swing from happy to sad to scared to worried to happy to everything in between. And they don't just feel their feelings. They feel them, extravagantly, like they just invented that emotion. Fortunately, our job as adults is not to keep them happy all the time, or to protect them from every tough feeling. Our job instead is to help them learn the skills they need to ride that roller coaster without flying off--to manage their emotions.

If I had left the room, my niece would have been all alone with her sadness. If I had moved in too close, she would have been mad at me for crowding her. If I had tried too fast to cheer her up, she would have felt invalidated about her feelings. But what happened instead is that she was able to cry about the separation, while knowing I was nearby. That made it possible for her to make the transition to enjoying herself. Many adults say that it hurts to cry. But when my niece said that the tears "just popped out" she was expressing how easily tears can flow if you aren't trying to shove them back in.

Here are some tips for helping children regulate their emotions as they grow--but don't expect them to learn it quickly!

Help them name their emotions, but do this a little bit tentatively so that we aren't telling them what they feel, we're just helping them find words for what they feel. As they get older, expand their emotional vocabulary beyond mad, sad, and scared. ("It looks like maybe you're kind of frustrated.")

Welcome a full expression of the feeling before moving into the "cheer up" phase. ("Tell me all about it.") We might think they are upset over a small thing, but to them it is big and deserves a lot of feelings. If they can truly finish expressing themselves, they are better able to truly cheer up.

Tell bedtime stories and play make-believe games with characters that have strong emotions, and who struggle a little with what to do with their emotions. ("Prince Ulrich was so mad he could scream, and he didn't know what to do. Do you have any ideas for him?")

It turns out my niece was right about that mean stepmother in Cinderella. "Hold your tongue" is just about the worst thing you can say to a child. In order to learn how to handle their emotions, they need a chance to speak up, let the tears flow, and explore what it means to be a person with the full range of human feelings.

Posted by Wee Care Nanny Agency

Nannies and Social Networking Sites

The Nanny’s Guide to Facebook

http://www.nanny.com/newsletter_may-09.php

Posted by Wee Care Nanny Agency

Babies, Breast-Feeding and Pacifers...New Research

Children: No Harm to Breast-Feeding From Pacifiers

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/health/05child.html?ref=science

Posted by Wee Care Nanny Agency