Calendar

Is today a school day? When will my birthday come again? I brushed my teeth for fifty hours, can I stop now? Are you bombarded with these or similar time-related questions all day long? As kids grow, they become more aware of the concept of time, but for them, an hour can still seem like an eternity. So how, then, to explain how long a month or year is? Well, to be honest, it is not simple, but we have found that it is best to start with just helping your child understand small passages of time. For example, time your child running around the room and then stop when one minute is up. Discuss whether that seemed like a long or short amount of time. Do the same thing with other simple tasks like teeth brushing. Once your child can appreciate small chunks of time, she can then turn to tackling the trickier issue of how many years before she becomes a grown-up... Read More »

Not many preschoolers we know can actually prop those sweet little peepers open all the way until midnight on New Year's Eve, but we know plenty of night owls who sure try! And even the reliably early-to-bed types are picking up on the fact that it is even darker in the mornings but blessedly a wee bit lighter later into the evenings. All our little ones are steeped in time talk these days -- the cheerful exchanges of "Happy New Year!" on the street, the "Wow, can you believe the year is over?!" they hear their parents say again and again, the new calendars broken out all over the house. But these are kids who are still beginning their grasp of how time works -- what is all this "year" stuff, anyway? Here are our best ways to explain it! Read More »