Healthy Snacks and Your Preschooler

Healthy snacks are an essential part of a growing child’s diet. Childhood is a critical time for growth and development, and snacks provide important nutrients that your child needs between meals. During the week, this means children should have a nutritious midmorning and midafternoon snack at school to meet the nutrient demands of their growing bodies and brains.

Making snacks convenient and fun will convince even the pickiest eater. Try to include fresh fruits and veggies, make a healthy dip with greek yogurt or hummus. You can make a smoothie and sneak in veggies. Let them help make their snacks and pick the ingredients. Today at The Academy of Gateway we will have a grab and go snack at pickup. Happy snacking! For more great blogs click here. For more information about our preschool program click here.

Early Childhood Friendships

Establishing relationships with other children is one of the major developmental tasks of early childhood development. These relationships help children to adapt, learn social cues and norms, and build their self confidence.

Children can develop friendships as young as two but most develop true friendships in threes and fours. Early friendships support emotional and social development and help them understand the world around them.

Here at The Academy of Gateway we foster their growth of "true" friendships through creating a school family environment. In Toddlers and Twos we do Baby Doll Circle Time. This teaches the children by modeling behavior. They treat the baby's the way they like to be treated, focusing on kindness and gentleness. As the children move to Threes, Fours, and Pre-K they have the Kindness Tree. The children are able to put hearts on a tree when a friend does something nice. These are just a few examples of our Social and Emotional Development Curriculum in the classroom

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www.academychilddevelopment.com

Baby Sign Language

Teaching infants and young children sign language has many benefits.
First, it gives children a voice who may not be able to communicate.
Not being able to communicate is a very frustrating experience. Even as an adult it is hard to cope when you feel like you can't communicate properly. Baby sign language eases the frustration by allowing the child to communicate their wants and needs.
Secondly, early exposure to sign language helps develop their language and reasoning skills. They are learning words to communicate instead of crying or getting upset due to frustration. Long term benefits include, increased IQ, larger vocabulary, earlier reading and better grades.
Lastly, It helps form a stronger emotional bond between caregiver/parent and child. They feel more tuned in and spend less time trying to figure out what the child needs. Parents who know baby sign feel more confident as a parent.

At The Academy of Gateway Baby Sign is built into the curriculum and used throughout the day.

Here is a great chart of commonly used baby signs that we use in the classroom and you can use at home.

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Healthy Eating With Your Children

It's that time of year when we all reevaluate our eating after those holiday indulgences. No one wants to cook something different for everyone. Here are five of the best strategies to improve nutrition and encourage smart eating habits in your household.

1. Have family style meals. 

• Children that eat family style make healthier food choices and are more likely to eat fruit, vegetables and grains.
• Family meals are a chance for parents to introduce kids to new foods and to be role models for healthy eating. 
• Involve your children in meal planning and preparation 

2.Serve a variety of healthy foods and snacks.

• Work fruits and vegetables into the daily routine, aiming for the goal of at least five servings a day. Be sure you serve fruit or vegetables at every meal. 
• Make it easy for kids to choose healthy snacks by keeping fruits and vegetables on hand and ready to eat. Other good snacks include low-fat yogurt, peanut butter and celery, or whole-grain crackers and cheese. 
• Serve lean meats and other good sources of protein, such as fish, eggs, beans, and nuts. 
• Choose whole-grain breads and cereals so kids get more fiber.
• Be a role model by eating healthy yourself. 
• The best way for you to encourage healthy eating is to eat well yourself. Kids will follow the lead of the adults they see every day. By eating fruits and vegetables and not overindulging in the less nutritious stuff, you'll be sending the right message. 

3.Avoid battles over food.

It's easy for food to become a source of conflict. Well-intentioned parents might find themselves bargaining or bribing kids so they eat the healthy food in front of them. A better strategy is to give kids some control, but to also limit the kind of foods available at home.

Involve kids in the process.

Most kids will enjoy deciding what to make for dinner. Talk to them about making choices and planning a balanced meal. Some might even want to help shop for ingredients and prepare the meal. At the store, teach kids to check out food labels to begin understanding what to look for.

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