Balloons have popped, streamers strewn across tables and your ears are ringing from horns. It’s New Years Day and you are reflecting on the year that has passed. From watching your kids grow taller and older, you get a little emotional thinking how you want the best for them. Not to be too clich, instead of saying new year new me, why not introduce more mindfulness and healthy habits your whole family can benefit from?
How Minimalism Gives You More
When you have so much, it is a great opportunity to talk about gratefulness and abundance. Over the years your kids somehow collect a department store’s worth of clothes and toys, but does each product bring them joy?
Use this opportunity to pair their items back, instead of having the same shirt in 6 different colours, have 2. Having fewer items allows them to use each piece more decreasing the cost per wear/use and allows them to love what they do have instead of treating them as disposable. It could even prevent tantrums about tidying rooms when there aren’t mounds of toys and clothes to pick up.
Taking Pride in the Home
Getting your children involved in taking care of the home and garden is a great way to develop their sense of responsibility, pride and care for the home. Whether it is taking dirty cups to the sink, matching socks together, watering the garden or digging holes for new plants, these chores allow them to see all that they have. It also allows you to have a discussion that not everyone is so lucky and why their home needs to be respected and cared for.
Nurture a Reading Habit
Important to develop their comprehension skills, creativity and more, reading is an important skill that needs to be maintained at any age. Whether you already have an understanding of what they enjoy or let them choose themselves at the store, by starting a consistent routine early, your children can see story time as a joy rather than a chore. When you set a particular time each day you can create a habit-forming ritual they can maintain without much hesitation. You can learn how to develop an interest in reading here.
At Angel’s Paradise Early Learning Centre we believe that learning never stops at school or home.