Bona Vista's Child Care Solutions

In the frenzy of the holidays, it's easy to overlook safety hazards. But while you're busy wrapping the presents and trimming the tree, it's important to keep your little ones safety in mind.

You already know that toddlers will put anything in their mouths from dog food to Christmas candy. With this in mind you must be extra careful about the decorations that you set out when there is a toddler in the house. A simple bowl of potpourri, a dish of hard candy, or a present decorated with a tiny bell can become a choking hazard for a little one. An easy way to check to see if something is a potential choking hazard is to try and drop it through a toilet paper tube. If it can fall through consider it a hazard and keep it out of little one’s reach.

When wrapping presents little ones love to help, and with close supervision this can be lots of fun. However, clean up carefully after wrapping presents. Young toddlers love scrap pieces of tape, ribbon, and wrapping paper (especially shiny foil papers) and could choke on them. Be careful to clean up your tools as well because, you don't want your child getting his or her hands on scissors and other sharp tools used to cut paper and ribbon. Even the edge on a tape dispenser is sharp enough to cut little fingers.

Stringing lights is a beautiful holiday tradition that requires a few tweaks for safety when little ones are in the house. Sparkling lights are highly attractive to little ones, but they can easily become entangled in them leading to cuts, abrasions, and possibly even strangulation. So if possible keep lights up out of children’s reach or carefully supervise children around the lights. There has also been concern in recent years about lead at the solder joint of Christmas tree lights. While it is true there are trace amounts of lead this is not something to panic about. To keep your children safe do not let them chew on lights (a good idea anyway) and have everyone wash their hands after handling them.

A final concern is holiday plants. They are beautiful and festive but some can be toxic. Your best bet is to talk to your local nursery about which plants are safe to have in the house around small children.

With August just around the corner, many teachers are gearing up to restart preschool curriculums that they have let slide over the summer months. This is the perfect time to do a quick check to make sure that your curriculum is meeting the educational needs of your little ones, particularly two-year-olds. All too often two-year-olds are roped into participating in full preschool programs which they are not ready for. Two-year-olds are still mentally toddlers, in that they learn primarily through repetitive use of senses. When you try and force preschool style learning on two year old brains the results can be explosive, resulting in incidents of biting, tantrums, regression, and other challenging behaviors. So what should a curriculum for two-year-olds involve? Here are some quick learning experiences for two-year-olds that should be incorporated into any developmentally appropriate curriculum

• Daily reading experiences that include interaction with book through turn taking, finger plays, and re-enacting stories
• Comparing differences in size
• Frequent conversations about diversity that recognize differences in a positive way
• Simple sorting experiences such as sorting item by color or size
• Exposure to the natural world with an emphasis on caring for items in nature such as watering flowers or feeding birds
• Daily physical exercise that allows for jumping, throwing, crawling, tumbling, and yelling to allow children to explore their body’s strengths and challenges
• Simple science experiments that encourage questions

1. For example placing ice in a sensory table with water, hammers, sponges to explore melting
   

• Large blocks of uninterrupted play with toys that promote early learning such as

1. Dramatic play toys that allow children to recreate scenes that relate to real life
2. Block sets that include different sizes and shapes of blocks
3. Matching games
4. Art materials that are open-ended or are not focused on an end result but rather focused on learning how to hold tools and be creative
5. Quiet area that allows for reading and snuggling
   

Toddlers move fast, learn fast, and get into trouble fast. Their fast pace makes for great learning opportunities and fun, but it can also lead to challenges. When working with toddlers it is essential that there are a variety of appropriately challenging activities available for them. Finding activities that are appropriate can be difficult, and it is easy to get stuck in a rut. While checking out resource books from the lending library is a great idea, sometimes a quick reference is helpful. Early Childhood News has numerous articles that are great for quick reference. Click here to check out one of my favorites: 10 for 10: Ten Activities to Occupy Toddlers.