Really parents are the child's greatest teachers. There's intentional and unintentional teaching moments that happened all around us all the time. It's taking time to notice those moments that are happening. One of the ways that you can do that is through including children in your daily routines. For example, you're including children in the cooking process, which offers so many developmental teaching moments you have measuring for the opportunity of cognitive development and math. There's reading recipes or words, also food boxes, which provide the opportunity for language and early literacy.
With the Coronavirus pandemic, disrupting so many parts of our lives in the spring of 2020. A lot of parents are finding themselves doing double duty, working from home and serving as homeschool teacher and daycare supervisors for kids who are also under shelter in place directives. A lot of parents are asking, How can I keep my kids engaged? And especially for younger kids? How can I help with my child's development in this situation? This is random acts of knowledge presented by Heartland Community College, I'm your host, Steve fast. Today we're speaking with a child development specialist about what she does to engage kids in a preschool setting and how that might transfer to home.
I'm Michelle RASSMAN. I'm a child development specialist here at Heartland Community College.
Well, during this time, where we're all dealing with the Shelter in Place situation, social distancing, it's causing a lot of time with your family that maybe you didn't expect. And it's also keeping kids out of some of the developmental areas that they can thrive in with teachers that can help them develop some of their skills. And I wanted to ask you, Michelle, a little bit about, first of all, what are kids missing out on while they're not going out for school or preschool or daycare,
peer relationships are one of the most important roles of development. And it helps children to build self confidence and sense of self worth, which is needed to build and maintain meaningful relationships with their peers. And in general, a wide array of experiences that actually shape who we are. And they're missing big group gathering experiences out in the real world and larger cities, zoos, things that will help us shape us who we are.
So what are some of the things that we can do at home, that maybe not replace those experiences, but help keep them as part of the development that kids would have? Anyway, I think that nothing is going to be exactly the same. But what are some of the things we can do to give kids that kind of sense of social awareness that they might have otherwise?
Well, really, parents are the child's greatest teachers. There's intentional and unintentional teaching moments that happen all around us all the time, it's taking time to notice those moments that are happening. And one of the ways that you can do that is through including children in your daily routine, it's an excellent way for them to learn. For example, you're including children in the cooking process, which offers so many developmental teaching moments you have measuring for the opportunity of cognitive development and math, there's reading recipes or words. Also food boxes, which provide the opportunity for language and early literacy is the whole process of changing states or adding different materials to create something new, that's your science and your cognitive development. These developmental domains will be met through different areas and indicators for different stages, and ages of children. Math, for example, older children will be learning about numbers, fractions, orders and temperature. Younger children will be learning the process and the order, and just mathematical language in general. So that as they get older, they can apply these past experiences and have a better under standing of more complex mathematical learning that they've done.
So really, it's not just involving your kids in these things, but explaining what's going on while you're doing it.
Right, a lot of self talk. That's what we do at school a lot. You may walk into the lab school and hear us say it, we're walking over to the seat to wash our hands, but just a lot of self talk so that children understand what's happening, what's going to happen, and what they should be doing at that time.
Do you find yourself doing that? When you get home at the end of the day explaining to adults that you're you know, now I'm going to the sink to wash my hands?
Absolutely. And I use a lot of signs, Baby Sign with my family as well. And often I get caught out by my husband saying, you realize I'm not too right.
Let's talk a little bit about how so one of the things that I've heard a lot of people say isn't adjustment is we're all home together during the shelter in place, and that's making it so there are a number of kids that are home with their parents who are working at home. You have to create those distances sometime to do work and keep kids in their area while you try to do your stuff. And maybe that's part of that experience for kids to learn a little bit about what doing a job is like and what parents are doing and explaining what's going on. Is there anything in particular that you would suggest that parents do to talk about creating those boundaries and barriers for working while you're at home,
one of the things that I would suggest is having a good routine children thrive off of routine. And it's not necessarily saying that every day at 920, we're going to do this. But a good routine would be set, waking up knowing that breakfast comes next. And then maybe playtime with mom and dad or with one parent. And then knowing that after that 30 minutes, Mom's gonna go back to her office, or to a bedroom or a different place in the house and shut the door. And she's gonna have that time to work at home, while you're playing with a dad or an older sibling. So that there's a boundary of at this time, when I'm in this place, that there has to be some quiet and they have to do
some work. Well, let's talk a little bit about some of the things you can do after that, really, you can find time to spend some quality developmental time with your kids during this period. And you can, for instance, plan activities, what are some of the things that you would suggest, you know, within the boundaries of social distancing, that are things that you can do with kids to kind of build on that experience and give them something that works into that family time. Playing outside,
of course, is an awesome thing. You learned so much from being outdoors and in your own nature, going for a walk, doing a scavenger hunt, while you're out doing your walk, looking for different items, maybe it's a blue car, or you're looking for the fire truck. The other thing is doing things at home that you have, I like to call it kitchen chemistry. Chemistry has been one of the big things that we've been working on before we had to leave school. And it's just using the different materials and ingredients that you have in your house to create things baking soda and vinegar is fantastic and the results that it has.
So what are some other resources that parents might want to look to? I imagine that a lot of parents over these last several weeks have been scouring the internet and trying to find things to do to keep their kids busy. Do you have any suggestions yourself of things people might not have thought of that they can use as resources to keep the kids engaged in give them some more to do you know, once they've run out of ideas a little bit? Sure.
First off, your child's teacher or your child's earliest childhood educator is a great resource if you can reach out and make contact to them see what maybe they were working on in their classrooms and things that you can extend on. Locally, we have a site that's called macaroni kids in Bloomington. And they provide live and anytime type of resources. They also have good Parent Resources and articles. And the normal Public Library has live readings and live activities where you can do a make it at home. The Children's Discovery Museum is also a great resource. They have lots of activities and some live activities that they have been doing. The Cincinnati Zoo has some really fun activities. They try to single out one animal and do a bit of a live broadcast for that day, and then give you activities and things you can do at home, representing those animals. And then of course, Pinterest is a never fail, just Googling activities at home, on your Pinterest account will get you lots of good information as well.
With a situation like the COVID 19 crisis, it's very difficult to try to explain to kids, especially young kids, I guess, you can kind of do it in a very simplified manner. But when kids see everything change, or maybe they see their parents being anxious about a situation like this, a lot of that anxiety can kind of build, and there might be a lot of uncertainty. So how do you deal with younger kids that start to have fears about something like this, that they might not quite understand what's going on? How do you calm them and let them know that this is something that is manageable without downplaying it too much?
Letting them know first that their feelings are validated, validating their feelings, letting them know that it's okay and that you're feeling some of those same things. Different families will approach it differently as well. I think it's kind of a touchy to go kind of thing. Some will just say that this is just what has to happen. And some might explain it a little bit further. I know I have an older daughter who's 15 and we talk about it a lot and how she's helping by staying home and I understand how she's feeling and we've tried to come up with some ways to help her not feel so anxious such as contacting her friends FaceTiming she's a lunch gathering or a social with her friends in my class. Through, we've been meeting with families over zoom and having a classroom discussion and, and that's infants, toddlers and two year olds that are zooming and we've spent hours on there looking at their for instance toys. So I think that just showing some normalcy helps calm their anxieties, familiar faces. You
know, there's a lot of debate over screen time that kids have when they're developing. And that has to be very particularly hard to manage nowadays. And I think that when people talk about too much screen time, they're not talking so much about things that are as interactive like dealing with other people on a, on a zoom call, or Skype line or FaceTime, or anything like that. So I do think, however, people talk about endless hours of video games, or watching lots of videos on Netflix, that can sometimes get a little overwhelming.
So I would think that you're definitely going to pick up a little bit more screen time, but just to be present to pay attention on how much you're actually letting your child have, and still taking those opportunities to get them outside to do things in the kitchen and provide other activities or opportunities for them.
So let's look ahead to something that I think we're all anxiously awaiting. And that's that time whenever it might be that we can get kids integrated to going back to school or preschool or an environment where they're not in the house for an extended period of time. What do parents need to do to start to prepare their kids when it is time to go back to school to make that adjustment.
So I think trying to maintain a schedule as similar as you possibly can to what your normal routine was before social distancing is a good way to keep yourself somewhat prepared and ready. And then continuing talking to your children about their friends about school, what it is that they're working on currently, what they're going to do when they get back. I know personally, our school has done a great job at coming by with buses and teachers and waving and putting things in our yard. So just keeping that connection with your teachers and your friends. Will thanks a lot. Thanks
for taking the time to do this.
Yeah, thank you very much.
Michelle Russman is a child development specialist at Heartland Community College. Check out other episodes of this podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, audio boom or wherever you found this one. Thanks for listening
