February 1, 2023 by Christopher Hooker

10 Winter Activities for Pre-K Kids!

It’s been a wonderful winter and we were blessed to have a White Christmas. And thankfully, the snowfall has not been too heavy this year.

Colorado Springs is no stranger to snow days. In January, we’ve had a few where our public schools had to be closed– thankfully, none where we had to close the doors at Creekside Kids! Snow days are especially hard on young kids. It’s a disruption to their routine, preventing them from the daily activities that give their life structure and the social interaction they crave.

While snow days can be hard on kids, they can also be hard on a parent who’s supposed to be somewhere else and trying to reign in an unhappy child who doesn’t understand why they can’t go into Child Care today. We’d like to offer some tips for things to do to prepare for that day when everyone’s stuck indoors and trying to make the best use of their time.

Stock emergency supplies from the thrift store. We don’t mean for power outages (although it’s great if you have such a kit); we mean for snow days when the kids can’t go outside. Invest in a small stack of activity books, coloring books, and craft supplies.
Stash some cookie dough in the freezer. If your kids go to the refrigerator and can see a tube of cookie dough waiting there, it will seldom leave their minds until they taste it. Wrap a tube of cookie dough in tin foil once you are home from the store and hide it at the back of the freezer for a snow day. When the occasion comes, you and your kid can fill your home with the exquisite smell of a batch of fresh-baked cookies as part of your day. Making cookies might seem a pretty simple activity, but consider all the things you can teach: prep, safety, cleaning, and at the end, there’s a pretty satisfying reward.
Yoga for Toddlers. Want to make sure you and your kid get some exercise, but the cold outside is just too much? Consider Yoga for Toddlers! It’s great exercise and following the video will help teach kids to stay in place when getting instruction.
Work together on your child’s room. Help your child clean and reorganize their bedroom. Ask them about elements that may be out of date (i.e., has your child moved on from Paw Patrol to the Avengers?) and work on a plan to change out some of the less expensive touches to their current favorites.
Read together and snuggle. Make time for togetherness and soft contact such as sitting side by side doing puzzles, reading or playing a board game. Nature is giving you the chance to slow down—-take it!
Go outside and play in the snow! Scoop up the snow and make a hill of it. Slide down it, roll down it and then later, hollow it out to be a snow cave. Get a few squirt bottles and add hot water and a little bit of paint or watercolor and create a Jackson Pollack style mural in the snow.

If you’d like to discuss a place at Creekside Kids for your kids, we invite you to click this embedded link to schedule an appointment. Let’s get to know each other! Like us on Facebook to follow our stories for news and updates. We’re located at 1201 W Cheyenne Road, Colorado Springs, CO 80906, and we can be reached at (719) 635-9111. Our new hours of operation are 6:45 am until 5:45 pm, Monday through Friday.

January 1, 2023 by Christopher Hooker

COVID-19 and Our Kids: Social/Emotional Development

part 1 of a 2-part series

At Creekside, our co-learners spend a great deal of time playing and learning from your child about their worlds and views. Things have not been the same for us since March 2020, when COVID-19 first began to affect our way of life as Americans.

Teachers and administrators have just begun to notice the differences we’ve seen since school shutdowns and isolation have inflicted upon this new generation.

We’ve noticed that there has been an enormous change in kids since COVID-19 first struck North America. Kids have lost many of the social skills we at Creekside Kids used to help refine at this point in their development. The long isolation has changed a generation of kids. We must reconcile this information as our kids advance into kindergarten and later.

The Long-Term Fallout From the Pandemic May Take Years to Realize

During the Pandemic, infants and toddlers had limited social interaction with each other. In isolation or even a year later, as we dealt with shutdowns, our kids suddenly lost the reassuring guidance of growing up next to each other and learning from each other. We see this manifested in the increased number of children who have difficulty sharing and taking turns. As Jennifer Barnes, founder and owner of Creekside Kids, said, “Kids aren’t reading each other’s body language. Some struggle to cooperate purely because they haven’t practiced cooperation yet.”

In the Pandemic, cooperative and group play-based learning was keenly missed. As we instruct them now, the COVID generation finds play-based learning more complicated than their predecessors. They’ve missed the entry cues that their older brother and sisters had all along. Bottom-of-the-pyramid skills are missing due to the lack of social interaction, which finds us teaching kids to coexist instead of thriving together.

A Delayed Generation

Jennifer considers the new issue to be about learning basic skill sets long after children usually acquire these skills. “The kids didn’t have those typical playground/at the park experiences that toddlers used to have regularly in which one kid takes another kid’s toys or pushes into another child’s space or one ends up pushing the other, hitting, etc. Those are natural things little kids learn on their own before coming to preschool, for the most part; however, due to the delay in exposure to other toddlers/preschoolers, our kids are learning this vital process at preschool. The kids can overcome this, but it may make parents feel like their child might be overly aggressive or a bully, or it may make a parent concerned that another child is overly aggressive or a bully. The reality is that the kids just haven’t learned those skills yet due to isolation. They’re on delay.”

Many kids have experienced high-stress levels, especially those going from being one-on-one with a parent to being 17-on-one in a classroom. Our current 3-4-year-olds were used to small groupings or staying at home for about two years–most of their lives! Then suddenly, school resumed. Additionally, the close quarters eroded parents’ ability to cope with kids while balancing staying home and/or working remotely, especially those with special needs.

How Do We Navigate Our Kids Through This Time?

The most significant step needed with the COVID-19 generation comes in the elements that Reggio Emilia-style learning does best: mindfulness and patience. As teachers or coworkers, we must be aware that disruptive behaviors often stem from the Pandemic’s disruption of our kids. We must patiently and openly work to ensure we can supply as much routine as possible. Routine helps kids build understanding and trust in their environment. Life will always be a little different for the COVID generation, but we can get them back to normal with some extra help—and give them a great story to tell their grandchildren!

December 1, 2022 by Christopher Hooker

Holiday Frustrations and Tantrums

The Dark Side of the Holidays

The nights are starting earlier, Thanksgiving is done, and Christmas lights are sparkling all over Colorado Springs. The Holiday season is upon us once again, and with COVID-19 mostly behind us, we’re able to have those big family gatherings and togetherness that we missed in 2020 and 2021.

As wonderful as the holidays can be, and as precious as our children can be during these bright days, there’s a dark side to it all. With an easy wrong turn, children can go from adorable cherubs to angry, frustrated versions of themselves–all in the blink of an eye!

Santa: Rat Fink

He sees you when you’re sleeping

He knows when your awake

He knows when you’ve been bad or good

So be good for goodness sake

– Santa Claus is Coming to Town,

Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie

The holiday tantrums seem to be related to the idea of gifts and Santa Claus. Kids struggle with understanding the ethos of gift-giving unless they have been walked carefully through an understanding. It’s important to know that Santa is a terrible problem for most children. He’s an omnipresent, omniscient character who can decide how their holidays will resolve.

Parents have long used Santa Claus as a means of demanding better behavior from children. Does it really work the way it should, though? Do kids have the capacity to alter their behavior in that way? Can they retain those rules so strongly that they adopt better behavior?

The answer is: not very well. Kids are still forming their characters and have many lessons to learn before they can effectively deal with an offered ‘wish’ being threatened by their own natural behavior. The threat of displeasing Santa and not receiving a nice gift has many negative effects on kids. The worst being that it makes love and appreciation transactional if it works at all.

The threat of Santa punishing them with coal (or just not bringing the gift they most want) makes children aware of a consequence for naughtiness at too early an age, and teaches them that they will be rewarded if they comply and punished if they fail to be ‘good’. A pre-school age child who enters a conflict with another child isn’t thinking of Santa. They’re thinking of how to navigate, survive, and thrive in a social situation with limited supervision from adults. But once a rule is broken, then, they will think of Santa– and contemplate the loss of a reward they were hoping for.

If the threat against their wish is revealed to be just a threat, it can be harmful to their character, leading to entitlement and a lack of respect for the behavior that is expected from them. Empty threats just don’t work.

We can’t blame Santa alone

There are other factors leading to highly emotional, volatile tantrums during the holiday season:

Sugar Highs

Most Holiday celebrations include lots of sugary treats, and the peaks of a sugar high eventually lead to the valley of a sugar crash. Be mindful of what your child is eating and keep sugar treats to designated times, for everyone.

Disrupted Schedules and Routines

The more typical the routines over the holidays, the better with the exception of slowing down and dropping a few typical activities in favor of baking and cooking together, reading stories and snuggling and playing games. Late nights and too many parties/activities can really throw a preschooler out of whack.

Social Tensions

Kids are receptive to family strife, from parents with underlying anger to relatives who resent being in close quarters with the extended family. The emotional pressure kids can build on these kinds of factors could lead to a terrible tantrum.

So what can we do?

The most important thing we can do for our kids is to let go of the expectation of perfect behavior. Walk your child through some of the likely pressure points they will feel and help them navigate their darker feelings. Be mindful, and watch their sugar intake, and the influence the extended family has on their wellbeing. Be patient, and don’t hold Jolly St. Nick over their heads, for goodness sake.

If you’d like to discuss a place at Creekside Kids for your kids, we’d like to invite you to click this embedded link to schedule an appointment. Let’s get to know each other! Like us on Facebook to follow our stories for news and updates. We’re located at 1201 W Cheyenne Road, Colorado Springs, CO 80906, and we can be reached at (719) 635-9111. Our new hours of operation are 6:45 am until 5:45 pm, Monday through Friday.

November 1, 2022 by Christopher Hooker

21st Century Parenting and Letting Go of Dr. Spock

It’s a new era for kids

Life is a constant state of seeing new possibilities and learning from past mistakes. There’s a time to tear down the old standards and make room for better ideas. This is true of many things, and one of them is childcare. As I was writing this article, a favorite song came to mind:

It’s a new dawn

It’s a new day

It’s a new life for me

— “Feeling Good”
Anthony NewleyLeslie Bricusse

Living in the 21st century has so many advantages however there are many societal norms which have created unexpected disadvantages. Most of these issues come from the difference in how we were raised to what we know today about how to raise thriving children.

We’ve had to contend with our own upbringing and learn from the mistakes our parents made. And as uncomfortable as it makes us, we must accept that our own parenting will come with mistakes of its own, for multiple reasons– clinging to past ideas, pressing into new ones, and dealing with the difference in a changing society.

This is an especially hard time emotionally, as our children are all post 9/11, in a new political era, and are still reeling from the behavioral norms and societal fissures created by the COVID pandemic. Old norms of how we treat one another have been rewritten. We are tasked with understanding the differences in now and then, and accepting that what may have worked for our own parents may cause harm in a different era as well as understanding that that some of what did work for our parents and grandparents had to do with connection and closeness.

I’ve discovered a book that meets the challenges of this time, and want to recommend it to parents who are looking to keep up with the times for their children’s better development.

Childcare is an Evolving Science

We learn more day-by-day about how children learn, grow, and thrive. In his book “21st Century Parenting: A Guide to Raising Emotionally Resilient Children,” Dr. Rick Capaldi outlines the importance of building emotional resilience in children and provides practical strategies for parents to do so.

One key aspect of 21st Century Parenting is understanding that emotions are not inherently good or bad, but rather a natural response to our experiences. As such, Capaldi emphasizes the importance of teaching children how to manage and regulate their emotions rather than suppress them.

He also highlights the role of technology in modern parenting and offers tips on setting boundaries while allowing children to benefit from its advantages. Furthermore, Capaldi stresses the significance of fostering strong relationships with both parents and peers as well as promoting a growth mindset in children.

One of his most important ideas is that “when your child is in school, you are in school, too”. If you want the best outcome for your child, you must accept that you don’t have all the answers and prepare to engage with your child in a way that brings you both understanding and enlightenment. Only by taking an active role in your child’s education will the family achieve success in their mutual education.

Overall, Capaldi offers a comprehensive approach to 21st Century Parenting, providing valuable insight and practical advice for parents looking to raise emotionally resilient children.

It’s time to let go of the past

Dr. Spock has had his time, and was extremely helpful for new parents in his era, but in a post-Spock world, it’s time to look to new, research-based thinking in how to supply our children with the tools to handle the complex new world they’ve inherited.

October 1, 2022 by Christopher Hooker

Explaining Halloween to Your Kids

Another October means pumpkin spice, autumn splendor, and, of course, another spooky Halloween! Halloween will be a forgotten legend to many kids kept at home due to COVID-19 concerns. Older siblings will have told them of going out door-to-door in a fun costume and returning with a bag full of sweet delights.

Most adults know that Halloween is a Christian holiday (All Hallow’s Eve), formed in the British Isles when Christianity was being brought to the world and the Celts were absorbed into the expanding Roman empire. It replaced Samhain, the pagan festival of the end of the harvest and the turning of the season to Winter. Pope Gregory I looked for a way to transition these Celtic holidays into Christianity. The result was All Saint’s Day or All Hallows Day, a holiday to commemorate the saints of Christianity, and the night before would be All Hallows Eve, allowing the pagan traditions to continue and to be absorbed into Christianity.

But did you know that almost every culture in history has their own form of Halloween? It dates back as far as ancient Egypt, when families would have a meal with their deceased family members as the guests of honor. It seems that Halloween is a universal theme, that stems from very human concerns.

There are two main reasons why Halloween has such a common thread. The first reason is that it takes place at the end of the harvest. This is the time of the year when plants and vegetation begin to wither and decay. It gives us a moment to say goodbye to autumn and prepare for the coming of winter. It’s also about acknowledging our fears– specifically, our fear of death. It seems that almost every culture has some way of dealing with their fear of death and the turn of the seasons.

For kids, the changing of the seasons is easy to understand, but death is a bigger concept than they may yet know. They understand that some movies are scary, and that some scary movies are too scary for their age. They understand their fears and that sometimes fear gets the better of even the adults.

Talking to children and introducing them to Halloween needn’t be difficult. Kids talk to each other, and they are extraordinarily keyed into signals. Black cats, skeletons, and Jack-o-Lanterns are early associations with Halloween. So are costumes, when they begin to learn how even adults are culturally allowed to wear costumes on Halloween!

At Creekside, we’re big proponents of costumes and make-believe, and given that Halloween is both an annual rite of passage and a bit of fun play, we love it! But we also appreciate another value of Halloween: dealing with fears. Just like those scary movies kids are so eager to watch, Halloween is like a vaccination of fear, allowing children to experience a specific rush of fear in a controlled, supervised, and safe way.

If your child is beginning to ask questions about Halloween or trick-or-treating, take the opportunity to build a dialogue with them. Ask what they know about it and gently explain the difference between real dangers and imaginary monsters. Talk about the importance of staying with your parents, not running off, and not eating candy until you get home, to prevent dangers.

It’s also helpful to talk about expectation and privilege. The demand-and-get nature of trick-or-treating can confuse a child if a household is not Halloween-friendly or is a little too scary. It’s also the first hurdle in getting through the holiday season where getting and giving are a confusing system for a child to navigate. But by answering questions, explaining how reciprocation works in communities, and talking about giving for the pleasure of giving (without measuring it in what we receive), we can teach a vital lesson for the holidays.

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10 Winter Activities for Pre-K Kids!