How to introduce colour into early years teaching

The importance of colour in early years.

Babies begin to learn from the second that they are born. But stimulating a child’s mind and helping them develop their awareness are crucial to ensuring that they absorb as much as possible in the early years.

Where does colour come into learning and development? Infinite Playgrounds, designers and creators of playground canopies, investigate:

Colour and early years development

When a baby is born, they can only see in monochrome. Until around eight months when their colour vision is fully developed, an infant is unable to distinguish the difference between colours. However, by ages three or four, a child can recognise basic shades — and frequent exposure can help strengthen this skill.

Why do children need to learn about colour?

When a baby reaches eight months, it can be beneficial for them to be surrounded by different colours. This can help them make colour connections early on in life and experts have said that showing patterns to a baby is important, as it provides visual and cognitive stimulation.

Being able to identify the primary colours is important, but so is naming shades. Learning these allows children to recognise significant visual hues — such as red as a code for danger. It is useful outside of the curriculum too — for example; knowing the difference between a red and a blue coloured tap.

When a child is confident in naming colours, they become more able to read and write maturely. Describing an object without saying its colour is difficult! Similarly, colour is an important part of descriptive techniques, so learning about colour also helps exercising their imaginations when creating a story.

The Importance of colour in early years Photo by Greyson Joralemon on Unsplash

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How To Be a Frugal Parent Without Missing Out

If you’re planning to have children, you need to know what to expect. While most parents talk about the reduced sleeping hours – and you will truly have to function on two or three hours a night in the beginning – not everybody is completely honest about the costs inherent to raising a child. Bringing up a child in the UK costs more than the average home, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research.

Ultimately, as a parent, you need to be prepared for a cost of over £230,000, which includes childcare and education until the age of 21. If you compare in terms of household budget, proportionally a British household will spend nearly 40% of their net incomes on raising a child. Of course, the more children you have, the more expensive it’ll be – although, thankfully, one household with two children spends less than two households with one child each.

Unsurprisingly, the costs vary depending on where you live in the UK. However, you’ll still be paying well over £200,000 to bring up a child everywhere in the country.

In other words, there’s no secret to cut down the expenses. But there are ways to maximise frugal living to make sure that you don’t break the bank!

Frugal Parenting Without Missing Out

Each child costs a quarter of a million

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The Sunday Pregnancy Diaries #2

How will I cope with a baby and a toddler?

I have many questions on how to cope with a baby and a toddler and here are a few to start with. Baby girl will be 2 years 2 months when baby number 2 arrives.

The Sunday Pregnancy Diaries #2 - How will I cope with a baby and a toddler?

How will I manage?

You see Baby girl is a little live wire. She’s into everything, want’s to be everywhere and doesn’t nap during the day anymore.

I stopped breastfeeding her at 18 months old. So I’m wondering how will she react to me breastfeeding a baby. She is still very clingy to me. Loves to sit on me loves to snuggle up and always wants her mumeee. I don’t want her to feel pushed away. I still want the same closeness with her.

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Top Tips On Car Seat Safety

*This is a sponsored post

Car seat safety is extremely important. Every year thousands of children around the world are injured or worse killed in car crashes. Keeping your child safe from harm is top on the list. It can be very overwhelming finding the best car seat on the market and also having it fitted correctly.

What car seat you require depends on the age of your child, the weight and type of car you have. A good tip is to make sure you fully understand how to fit the car seat before you bring your baby home from the hospital if you are expectant parents.

It’s better to keep your child rear-facing for as long as possible, until they are at least 2 years old. Baby girl is 21 months old now and we plan to keep her rear facing as long as possible.

Top Tips on Car Seat Safety

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Do you Have the Most Kid Friendly Laptop for Your Children?

Whether they’re used to boost their grades at school, watch their favourite films, or safely explore they’re curious about the world, laptops for children are becoming increasingly common in many tech-savvy homes.

While many homes used to simply allow children to use the family computer, the rise of personal laptops, as well as online threats, has made sharing an unsecured device a risk most parents aren’t willing to take.

Do you Have the Most Kid Friendly Laptop for Your Children?

What you should look for when buying a kid-friendly laptop

When purchasing a laptop for your children to use, your first consideration should be for what the laptop will be mostly used for. Will it be mostly for homework? For games? Watching movies? Keeping in touch with friends? The answer to this will better help guide what you should purchase since different laptops outrival others based on this.

For example, if you want your kids to be able to watch videos on their laptop or use it for gaming, a laptop with a bigger screen will benefit them more. On the other hand, if you are looking to provide your much younger child with a computer, consider something like the Discovery Kids Teach ‘N’ Talk Exploration laptop. This laptop doesn’t provide the functionality of a traditional laptop but instead offers interactive teaching games.

You should ideally look for a model that is portable can fit easily in a school bag. Laptops weighing under 3.5 pounds will be better for your child’s growing body and will make it easier to transport.

Storage will also depend on what your child is using the laptop for. 32GB should be a safe amount for most children, but you can also err on the side of caution by getting a model that allows expanded storage through a multi-format SD media card reader.

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City Smarts: Keeping Your Kids Safe on a City Break

It can be an exciting adventure taking your kids away on a city break but you do also have to think about keeping them safe in such a busy part of the world, while still being able to take in all the sights.

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