Benefits of crafts activities for kids

 Crafts activities can provide hours of fun for kids if supervised properly.

There are so many reasons why we should encourage our kids to participate in craft activities.  Crafts projects help open door to creative process which helps later in skill development required for a successful life.

Here are few benefits of crafts activities:

• Brilliant for fine motor development, verbal skills, muscle coordination, concentration, achievement: One of the most important developmental phases for children is that time when they begin to master basic motor skills and eye-hand coordination. Learning to use fingers and hands deftly is an ongoing process which can be helped along through a variety of activities, including crafting.
• Learning to follow directions: While plenty of craft projects are flexible enough to allow children to explore their ingenuity, most of them involve a set of instructions that must be followed in order to produce the final product.
• It’s fun: Having fun is a cornerstone of childhood, and its value should never be discounted when coming up with interesting activities for children to explore
• Form of expression/ form of creativity
• ˜Takes them away from the TV”
• Something is produced so spouse other people can see kids been doing things ( daycare)
• Open ended art
• Enjoying the process, being creative, making decisions, using their hands
• Expectation
• Arts and crafts activities are a series of problem-solving activities. Kids are presented with a goal, perhaps a painting or a model. Using a method and a set of skills they either recreate this item or design an entirely new piece of artwork. Children must find ways to interpret and identify the best way forward from a whole set of ideas. As they proceed, they are constantly discovering the laws of cause and effect. The young artist will often have to think laterally and may have their perseverance tested. In other words, every craft project is one big problem to be solved so that it results in a real sense of achievement.
• Crafts are also a great way to keep kids occupied. Arts and crafts activities may be particularly valuable for more active children. The activities demand patience and results are only achieved with effort and time. It means that arts and craft activities provide a valuable opportunity for concentration and quiet time.

Useful links and resources:

* Benefits of Creative Activities for Children

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How to help your child build self esteem?

Self-esteem refers to how you feel about yourself. It includes such things as your self-confidence, self-respect, pride in yourself, your independence and your self-reliance.
All the ways you feel about yourself and your abilities are wrapped up in the term "self-esteem".

As a parent or a teacher, you have a great influence over the self-esteem of your child. For the first 4 or 5 years, parents are the most important contributor. When children start school, teachers and friends become important. Once they reach adolescents, peer groups begin playing a greater role in steering your child's self-esteem. The more positive their self-esteem was before adolescents, the easier it will be for them to resist negative peer group pressures.


In general, the more positive your self-esteem, the more successful you will be at dealing with life. The same holds for your children. The more positive their self-esteem, the more confident and proud they will be. They will try harder, be happier and have greater self-respect. They will make friends easier and will be more giving. Children with positive self-esteem are more secure and loving than children with negative self-esteem.


These are some ways to encourage self-confidence in children:



Children who are morally and spiritually conscience develop a sense of their own self-worth. Helping our children develop healthy self-esteem is one of the most important things that parents can do for them; it is the foundation of their faith and commitment to Allah. Children need to be assured that they are a special gift from Allah and they are to dedicate their talents and resources to Thy service--this gives them value, purpose and direction for life. Through every phase of a child's development, they need provisions for moral and spiritual enrichment that encourages them to truly reverence Allah and to thus value the beauty in themselves.

"We have indeed created man in the best of molds." (Quran 95:4) There is no fault in Allah's creation; to man, Allah gave the purest and best nature. Our duty is to preserve, and nurture the distinctive character that Allah has created.

Healthy feelings about oneself or high self-esteem is best started in the home, and this needs to be cultivated in our children from birth. Thankfulness for who Allah has made us to be is based primarily on how our parents or guardians view us. Children mirror others' perception of them; they measure themselves by the standards set by those shaping their lives. A child needs our unconditional love. While we may show disapproval of wrong actions, the child still needs to feel cherished. We are guided: "...truly no one despairs of Allah's soothing Mercy, except those who have no faith." (Quran 12:87) Our unconditional compassion for our children will promote and encourage their faith in Allah and instill the thinking that "I am lovable, I am confident."

Persons with healthy self-esteem are more capable of making decisions; they exhibit thankfulness for their accomplishments, are willing to take responsibility, and are better able to cope with stressful situations. They meet and feel enthusiastic about challenges. Often a student with a high IQ and low self-esteem will do poorly in school, while a child with average ability and high self-esteem will excel. The thinking that is cultivated in a person in the early years affects his entire life.

An educational and entertaining site for kids and parents-Kids Konnect

Here is the beginning of my post.
'Kids Konnect' is one of those  free sites which can be called educational and entertaining as the same time or edutainment site. It is a valuable link for kids and parents to start searching the net in a safe way as they offer the links and sites which are most appropriate to be displayed on a Web site intended for children

It was first created to fulfill the requirements of a model technology school in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. But later when this site went upto the internet, it was decided to make this site available free worldwide.
Site was created by a retired teacher "Jan Belzer" having a long teaching experience.

Site link: Kids Konnect.com

Primary goal:
To find the best sites available and provide the students with the safest and most effective way of utilizing the Internet. And here is the rest of it.

The main goal behind creating the site can be divided into 4 parts:

- Allowing children to safely and effectively utilize the Internet.
- Site covers the curriculm areas taught in school, so site is also helpful in studies.
- Lots of fun site links for kids to visit.
- Keeping the site free.

Target:

For teachers, students, and parents who utilize KidsKonnect at school and at home.

Achievement: Kids Konnect receives 280,000 unique visitors each month, with an average of 700,000 pages viewed monthly with 2 pages per visit. It has over 413 pages right now, adding more pages whenever needed.
There is very impressive and informative report about internet safety from the Kids Konnect.com. I have taken a part of the article which is about "important facts to think about"

1. In a study of 4 million children between the ages of 7 and 17 who use the Internet, 29% indicated they would give out their home address and 14% would give out their email address if asked (NOP Research Group, 2002).

2. 81% of parents of online teens say that teens aren’t careful enough when giving out information about themselves online and 79% of online teens agree with this (Pew Internet & American Life Project, March 17, 2005).

3. Approximately 89% of sexual solicitations of youth were made in either chat rooms or through Instant Messaging (Pew Study reported in JAMA, 2001).

4. 1 in 5 youth ages 10 to 17 received sexual solicitation or approach in last year (Online Victimization, NCMEC, June 2000).

5. “30% of teenage girls polled by the Girl Scout Research Institute said they had been sexually harassed in a chatroom. Only 7% told their parent because they were worried that their parents would ban them from going online” (Girl Scout Research Institute, 2002).

6. "86% of the girls polled said they could chat online without their parents’ knowledge, 57% could read their parents’ e-mail, and 54% could conduct a cyber relationship” (Girl Scout Research Institute, 2002).

7. Law enforcement officials estimate that as many as 50,000 sexual predators are online at any given moment (Dateline, 2006).

8. 42% of parents do not review the content of what their teenager(s) read and/or type in chat rooms or via instant messaging (The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and NetSmartz, June 2005).

9. 95% of parents didn’t recognize common chat room lingo that teenagers use to let people they’re chatting with know that their parents are watching. Those phrases are POS (parent over shoulder), P911 (parent alert), BRB (be right back), LOL (laughing out loud) and A/S/L (age/sex/location) (The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and NetSmartz, June 2005).

10. 30% of parents allow their teenagers to use the computer in private areas of the house such as a bedroom or a home office. Parents say they are more vigilant about where their teen(s) go online if the computer is in a public area of the household (NCMEC/ Cox5/24/05).

11. Nearly three out of 10 (28%) of parents don't know or are not sure if their teens talk to strangers online (NCMEC/ Cox5/24/05).

12. One-third of youth ages 8-18 have talked about meeting someone they have only met through the Internet (Polly Klaas Foundation, December 21, 2005).

To read full report:
Internet safety for kids and parents

Search at the site, taking time as there is a lot to discover. For example I searched for "stories online and the page came up with 68 site links.

I have searched through some links and providing the page link as well for easy browsing:

* Doorway to the internet providing you with very cool links to other kids sites.
* Online encyclopedia and reference guide
* Fun sites for kids
* Word games sites
* Primary Mathe sites
* Maths sites
* Phonics sites
* Quotables