I'm a full-time mummy

I came across this article which I must definitely share with you guys as I'm very interested to know your thoughts on this.

For your convenience, I have copied the excerpts from the article here:

"Parents should give their children iPads almost as soon as they are born, according to scientists. New research by the University of London says iPads provided more sensory stimulation for babies than books do.

Annette Karmiloff-Smith, who is leading the research, says tablets should be part of a baby’s world from birth, adding: “They learn so fast on tablets. It is shocking how fast they learn – even faster than adults – to do things like scroll up and down text.

“Books are static. When you observe babies with books, all they are interested in is the sound of the pages turning. Their visual system at that age is attracted by movement.

“That is why tablets, which have moving pictures and sound, are very good.”

Professor Karmiloff-Smith believes children who are given the computers will show better signs of development, even if it not in a ‘conventional sense’. She said: “They might put a corner in their mouth. They will then explore it physically, but then they will use it to do things.

“Everything we know about child development tells us that tablet computers should not be banned for babies and toddlers.”

Neurologist Baroness Susan Greenfield, however, has previously warned that children’s exposure to computer screens and games could ‘damage the brain’, causing a form of ‘temporary dementia’. She explained how connections in the brain can be ‘temporarily disabled’ by activities with a strong sensory content – literally ‘blowing the mind’."

I am fine with using iPad as an educational tool to teach children provided it is age appropriate, supervised and used with moderation, but to let children use iPads from birth? Whoa... I personally think that is a bit extreme. I have reviewed tons of iPad apps for years now and most of the time, I only accept apps which are educational and that I find useful to our family and/or children.

Now why I think giving children iPads from birth is a bit extreme? Well, I personally know of people who shared stories of their friend's kiddo being exposed to iPad at a very young age and too much exposure, so much so that the child does not know what to do when being given a physical copy of a book. The book lays in front of them and the child just stare at it, trying to swipe the surface, expecting something to animate out of the book's surface (like how an iPad app should behave when you swiped on the screen) Sad right?

So for this article, I really disagree with what the scientists said this time. Not from birth definitely!

Do share your thoughts on this!

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I came across this article which I must definitely share with you guys as I'm very interested to know your thoughts on this.

For your convenience, I have copied the excerpts from the article here:

Handstands and cartwheels have been banned during break times at a primary school after pupils kept injuring themselves.

Children at Old Priory Junior Academy in Plympton, Devon, were stopped from carrying out all "gymnastic activities" two weeks ago. The school said it made the decision after a number of minor injuries to wrists and to backs. It said it had been contacted by one parent about the issue.

Interim head teacher Emma Hermon-Wright said: "Over a series of a few days we had quite a few [injuries] for the same reasons. The children said they had been doing cartwheels and handstands and had fallen and we thought it was causing us a problem at school.

"In PE lessons in primary schools they are carefully supported and carefully controlled to help learn skills of this nature and we have very good gymnastic capabilities in our school. "[On break times] we've got a lot of children in one go and you can't be supporting every child for a backward roll, forward roll, cartwheel, handstand or whatever they're doing at play time."

The school said it had responded to one parent who was concerned about the decision. It said: "Ultimately, the safety and wellbeing is our responsibility and it is paramount to everything we do here." It was not trying to stop children from having fun, the school said, and the ban was temporary while staff worked out a way of allowing them to take part in gymnastic activities under staff supervision.

Do share your thoughts on this!

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.

I'm in an on-going process to make more and more flash cards for our kiddos. My current goal in educating our kiddos is to instill their love for reading, do loads of flash cards and worksheets on spelling and writing and hopefully more practice and worksheets on Mathematics stuff later on.

I got some templates of animals and its young from the Twinkl website (loads of free stuff there!) and did some minor customizations based on our kiddos interests and my gauge on their understanding level at the moment. Printed out some pictures, laminate them and use a card ring to hold these cards together for ease of use.

What I did with our kiddos using these flash cards were based on each kiddos' age, level of understanding and learning style.

With our 6 years old boy, I get him to read out the name of the animals and test him on the animals and its youngs - body parts, habitats, how they move etc.

With our 3.5 years old girl, I just flip through the animals one by one while I say out the animal and its youngs' names, their color and name of their body parts and ensure our girl pronounced it correctly.

With our 1.5 years old girl, I did the similar to what I did for our older girl, just that I focused on the adult animals at the moment.

From time to time, I also look for videos on YouTube that shows how the actual animals and its youngs look like and behave in their natural environment. I checked with our kiddos as we watched the video, what are the colors of the animals, how they move, what they eat, identifying their body parts and so on.

Will share more in near future if possible ;)

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.