Toddler Tuesdays - Week 11 of the 12 weeks of winter

Welcome to week 11 of ‘Toddler Tuesdays’.  You can find more of our ‘Toddler Tuesdays’ activities here, we hope you are enjoying them.  This week’s activity is Rainbow Fish.  You may already be familiar with the children’s book, The Rainbow Fish, if not you may like to extend the activity by borrowing this book from the library.

You will need -

1. 1 paper plate.
2. Gluestock.
3. Scissors.
4. Coloured spots - you may like to cut out magazine pages as spots, wrapping paper, coloured paper, or these spots we have prepared for you here.  You’ll need quite a few spots, especially if you have used a large dinner plate sized paper plate.
5. Marker pen.

Instructions -

Have all of the items ready for your child at the kitchen table or toddler table before presenting the activity to your child.  The ability of your child will govern how much assistance you provide to them with the activity, encourage them to try each step.  First cut a wedge shape from the paperplate, the wedge will then be glued on as the tail of the fish and the opening become the fishes mouth.  The coloured dots can then be stuck all over the fish to create a rainbow fish.  Finally give the fish an eye using the marker and you are all done.

Focus -

This activity has a heavy focus on fine motor skills and co-ordination.  When your child is cutting encourage them to keep their thumb on top.  If they struggle with that concept you might like to draw a smily face on their thumb and remind them to make sure they can always see the smile when cutting.  Even removing the glue lid and twisting up the glue encourages hand strength and fine motor control.

If you try out one of our activities please let us know what your toddler (and you) thought.  Feel free to leave a comment here or post an image or comment to our Facebook page.  If you enjoy the activity we would encourage you to share this post with your friends.

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Pregnancy Babies and Children's Expo 2014

The Pregnancy Babies and Children's Expo 2014 was held over the last three days and Tiny Sparks WA was proud to host our first stall at this event. 

We met some fantastic families over the weekend. Some who had 'met' us online and came up to introduce themselves, some who were proud to see their children's photo displayed as one of the 'faces' of our community, some who wanted to learn more about our community and the services we provide, other local organisations excited to see a local charity and wanting to collaborate, some just wanting to support with a greatly appreciated donation.

Our kanga and joeys certainly attracted the eye of the children and we even had one little girl convince her mum to buy two! We were also grateful to the families that purchased a 'Buy 1 Gift 1' kanga and joey so that we can send one into a current NICU family.

We could not have manned the stall without the support of our fabulous volunteers and members, including Eloise, Michelle, Sharon, Maria, Madalyn, Amber and Bronwyn. Also thanks to the partners and parents who helped look after our children while we were busy at the Expo!

Hosting our stall would not have been possible without the generous donations of our community. To ensure we are able to continue to raise awareness and support our community, we would appreciate your ongoing support. Tax deductible donations can be made by clicking here.

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Toddler Tuesdays - Week 10 of the 12 weeks of winter

Welcome to week 10 of ‘Toddler Tuesdays’.  You can find more of our ‘Toddler Tuesdays’ activities here, we hope you are enjoying them.  This week’s activity is sensory play with your very own goo!

You will need -

1. A large plastic container or ice-cream container
2. 2 cups cornflour
3. 1 cup of water
4. A painting apron or old clothes
5. Optional - 2 drops of food colouring
6. Optional - towel or plastic sheet to cover your floor or table

Instructions -

You may like to do this activity in an empty bathtub to contain the mess, or use a towel or plastic sheet to cover your table or floor.  Have all items ready but don’t mix your goo together just yet.  Depending on the age and ability of your child they may be able to do all of the mixing themselves or you might need to do this for them.  Place the cornflour into the large contained and add your food colouring if you are using it.  Next add the water to the container and start mixing using your hands.  This may take some time.  Encourage your child to play the mixture as they are mixing and to describe what they are feeling if they have the language for that.  If they don’t you might like to commentate for them.  Once it’s all mixed together let them have some free play.  You will find that when you move the goo quickly and compress it, it will hold together and once you stop pushing it will become runny again.  This is an open ended task governed only by imagination.

Focus -

This activity encourages the strengthening of fine motor skills and co-ordination using sensory play to manipulate the goo.  Touch is the focus of this sensory play.  Many prems have sensory issues so it’s important to work within your child’s limits with this activity.  Some may like to stir with a spoon but not like to get their hands grubby.  Some may be ok to touch it but only using gloves.  Work with what you already know about your child to make this activity fun for them.  You may need to model getting grubby so they are comfortable with that.  As this activity is open ended it is an excellent base for imaginative play and language development.  Encourage the use of descriptive words whilst playing.

If you try out one of our activities please let us know what your toddler (and you) thought.  Feel free to leave a comment here or post an image or comment to our Facebook page.  If you enjoy the activity we would encourage you to share this post with your friends.

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Toddler Tuesdays - Week 9 of the 12 weeks of winter

Welcome to week 9 of ‘Toddler Tuesdays’.  You can find more of our ‘Toddler Tuesdays’ activities here, we hope you are enjoying them.  This week’s activity is based on the children’s rhyme 5 little speckled frogs, however we will only be using 3.  If you are not familiar with the rhyme the words are -

3 little speckled frogs

sat on a speckled log

eating some most delicious bugs

yum, yum.

One jumped into the pool

where it was nice and cool

now there are 2 more speckled frogs

glub, glub.

Each time through the song 1 more frog jumps into the pond until there are no more speckled frogs.

You will need -

1. 3 popsticks or straws.
2. Sticky tape.
3. A copy of our free printable frogs and log which can be found here.  You will need to cut out these items.
4. Crayons.
5. A large piece of paper, A3, scrapbook page or newspaper.
6. Glue stick

Instructions -

Set out all of the items at the kitchen table or toddler table ready for your child.  Assist your child to stick a pop stick or straw to the back of each of the frogs so that they can jump off the log and into the pond.  Assist your child to glue the log across the mid section of their page.  Encourage your child to ‘colour’ a pond at the bottom of the page.  Use appropriate key word phrases to encourage your child along the way.  Once completed sing the rhyme through with your child and encourage them to have their frogs also jump into the pond.

Focus -

This activity promotes fine motor skills and is a great opportunity for language development.  You may use key phrases like, ‘stick it’, ‘turn over’, ‘green frog‘.  Remember that even when your child isn’t responding to your comments you are imprinting that language and correct grammar on their brain for retrieval when they developmentally get to that stage.  If your child is already using some of those key words themselves then add an additional word to your phrase like, ‘big brown log’.  This rhyme is a great opportunity to introduce counting, 1, 2, 3.  It’s also a fun and happy rhyme so you might encourage discussion about the frogs being happy that they are now in the nice cool pool.

If you try out one of our activities please let us know what your toddler (and you) thought.  Feel free to leave a comment here or post an image or comment to our Facebook page.  If you enjoy the activity we would encourage you to share this post with your friends.

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Workshop - Relaxation Techniques: An Introduction

It is well understood that the trauma associated with high risk pregnancy and/or having a baby born premature or sick increases your chance of experiencing anxiety, post traumatic stress and/or post natal depression.

As part of our holistic approach to supporting families, our second workshop will focus on relaxation techniques. 

Helen Heppingstone

We are pleased to introduce Helen Heppingstone as our presenter for this workshop. Helen runs her own successful yoga business, Yoga Masala with Helen, is a Trained Yoga Teacher and Committee Member of Yoga Australia. After qualifying with a Bachelor of Arts in Leisure Science, she has spent the last 30 years in the fitness industry including the last 5 specialising in yoga. 

Helen will transform you with her knowledge and humour, guiding you through an introduction to relaxation techniques. The workshop will see you sitting in a chair, learning to balance the body and connecting with the breath to calm the mind. The session will introduce you to the benefits of these techniques in bringing your system back into harmony, reducing blood pressure and reducing stress levels. The workshop is designed to give you take home techniques that you can use anywhere, at any time.

The workshop will be held in Subiaco on Wednesday 20th August at 7pm.  It is open to all families affected by high risk pregnancy, premature birth or having a sick newborn and medical professionals working in this stressful environment.  To register for this workshop please visit the registration page.

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