
No matter what your tolerance level is for toddler painting; sometimes a different way comes along that you can just enjoy.
Roll-On Painters from Lakeshore Learning are easy to grip, minimum fuss and easy for your toddler to use. My toddler here was having fun taking the lids of everyone and making marks on the page. Whereas his older brother was busy making a picture.
I did have to get them going for the toddler.They are just like roll on deodorants
Easy clean up and set up. Perfect for those days when you don’t want to get out the easel and pour paint.
June’s radio show
** Do You Have an Oversensitive Child?**
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Even though it’s been a couple of days sitting on the side; I finally got around to reading the Sunday papers. After sorting into a pile of ‘to read’ and a pile of recycling, the pile to recycle seems huge- every weekend.
Today before the pile hit the recycling bin we started a project.
The big guy found and cut out all his favourite foods. Stuck them onto paper. This lead to an interesting discussion about food and drink.
He started to find his favourite clothes and that’ll be the next project to add to the large sheet of paper.
Often parts of the body are missing to get a good shot of the clothes so he’ll add legs and feet.
We then plan on moving onto the objects- gardening, patio, houses for sale etc
Eventually we’ll have a collage that we can weave a story together. I’m hoping he’ll tell the story with it.
Before you throw away recycle your weekend paper. Give your kids a chance to use the pages for other things.
Cutting and sticking isn’t just a random activity for toddlers but instead it can be defined and extended by preschoolers and older with a little imagination. Mixing media of magazine, newspaper, construction paper is a fun thing to try especially if you can sit with your kids and draw parts in with them.
He particular liked the freedom to choose what went onto the page and where it went.
Skills that naturally occur:
- Honing their fine motor skills
- giving them choices and letting them share their opinions
- creativity of what materials to use, how to place them on the page
- imagination to link the items into a story
- discrimination- accepting and rejecting objects from the many pages
- Sorting and controlling the environment ( Pile of cut outs? or cut, stick? or plan?)
Whenever planning a collage or large project, I’ve found it best to take bite sized chunks of time and allow the work to develop. They’ll be times when we have to jump in and times when they have a really good idea they need supporting on.
The perfect time for a project like this with summer almost here and all that time..
For more summer time activities try here.
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Welcome to the 14th edition of Carnival of Parenting Podcasts
It’s a place to share and find some new parenting podcasts from the podcaster and recommendations from those who listen to podcasts.
..Not sure about Podcasts? Try this ecourse.

Top 9
Send in your favourite podcasts of the fortnight.
- Thesatellitesisters: # Hear about Sheila’s Summer of Love
# Liz reviews the News
# Lab Rats test Stain Removers
Send in your recommendations to be included in the top 10 favourite podcasts of the week fortnight.
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I read this news report with interest. No I don’t think we should be rewarded for doing our job but some days I would gladly take a reward.
Who would get these rewards?
Perhaps parents who spent time reading to their children, going to school parents evenings or helping out in their school, could get higher payments, she suggested.
She acknowledged it was a complex area and that there would always be some parents that would be hard to reach, but that did not mean it should not be tried.
Such a system sounds great but must be totally unworkable. How would you practically monitor who did or didn’t?Nevermind, what would constitute the ‘right’ amount of reading time?
Parenting is such a hard full on rush punctuated with bouts of tiredness and bewilderment. It’s no wonder we all have troubles from time to time. But being paid to do something through the benefits system would take away the pleasure of the fun things that parenting produces for me.
Punitive steps like fining parents for truanting children rarely worked, National Association of Head Teachers president Clarissa Williams argued.
I do agree that fining and pointing the finger at parents rarely helps but sharing good practice and giving support really does help parents. This is something much more worthwhile to do.
Instead of concentrating on opposites of rewarding good behaviour and punishing bad why not instead focus on injecting good practice through mentoring in parenting areas.e.g. through playgroups, play associations, Dr offices, schools. Showing, listening and helping parents is a much better approach than telling them they are good or bad parents.
What do you think? Have your say….
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