Category: your child is the star of each story

How To Deal With Children on the Death of a Pet

Posted on | by KD Novelties

For many people, pets are more than just animals – they are members of the family. A pet is a great way to teach your child about unconditional love, and about responsibility depending on how old they are. Unfortunately, pets do not generally have lifespans as long as humans, and pets may also experience a number of different health problems or exposure to risks tha
t may eventually lead to their passing.

The potential for the death of a pet is no reason to shy away from getting a pet to begin with, though it is an important topic that parents should consider. As heartbreaking as the passing of a family member is, even if it’s a pet, the experience can help children grow emotionally by teaching them valuable life lessons about the fleeting nature of life. As parents, it may be helpful to know how to navigate this sort of situation, especially if this is a new experience for your child.

Breaking the Bad News
When it comes to any kind of sensitive topic, it is best to divulge the news in a private place where kids feel safe. Try to talk to them one-on-one but make sure that they are comfortable as well. This will help the realization easier, though it will not make it any less difficult.

Depending on how old your child is and what their maturity level is, you will need to gauge just how much information they need in order to understand the situation and to come to grips with the reality of the events as well.

If your pet was sick before passing away, you may want to discuss the possibility of death or moving on beforehand and painting topics like putting them to sleep, surgeries, treatments, and simply passing in their sleep in as good of a light as possible. Just as you would console someone about a person passing, giving the news gently can go a long way, and promising that your pet is in a better place now can certainly help.

If the pet’s passing was more sudden, then you can calmly explain what has happened. Being brief can help to ease the pain, without being too specific. But if they ask, which older children may typically do, then divulge more information as you see fit but respect their desire to understand the situation and their desire to know more, even if it is difficult for you as well.

It may be tempting to tell your child that their pet ran away or is lost somehow, but lying will only beget more questions and may instill them with a false hope that their pet may eventually come back. Lying to children will only make matters worse especially if they discover that you have lied, which can lead to many other emotions and can tarnish your trust.

Caring and Coping
Dealing with death is difficult, and people grieve in different ways. Depending on the nature of their pet’s death children may feel anything from sadness and loneliness to even anger and frustration, especially if it was an accident or their pet had to be euthanized. It’s important to let children know that these emotions are natural, and that it is important to work through them. Try to encourage them to share their emotions or let them out in other ways, such as writing in a journal or drawing a picture to help them work through it, if they would rather be alone. Make sure to tell them that it is OK if they don’t want to talk about what they’re feeling at first, but gently remind them that you will be there to listen when they are ready.

Parents are likely to feel upset over the loss of a pet as well, especially if it was a family pet like a cat or a dog. Showing your own emotions around your child can help them cope with their own emotions, and it can help you as well. It’s only natural to feel sad after losing a loved one, and showing your child how you work through your feelings can help them work through theirs, too.

Moving On
There are many ways in which parents can help children come to terms with the passing of a pet, and many ways in which they can heal themselves and as a family. Having a special ceremony or a burial may help provide you with some closure as well as an opportunity to say goodbye or make something commemorative for the lost pet. Other projects can help as well, such as drawing pictures, making scrapbooks or collecting memories.

For many children, grieving over a pet is much like experiencing the loss of a person, and as a result they may be more emotional and upset than they would be about a distant relative. For children, pets are friends, family, and part of their daily lives. Encourage them to talk about their pet with love and remembrance, and help them work through their emotions. It is difficult to experience loss, especially since it feels as if the pain will not go away. Your child will always have fond memories of their pet and in time, the pain will lessen, but the memories will always remain.

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Why Spelling Matters

Posted on | by KD Novelties

Making reading a regular habit can help to significantly improve reading comprehension and understanding, but so can other skills – spelling being one of them. Studies have shown that an understanding of the key elements of spelling, the sounds and letters used to make up a complete word, can result in better reading skills.

A study conducted by Catherine Snow in 2005 underlines how the relationship between letters and sounds can be better understood for spelling, as well as reading. According to Snow spelling and reading build and rely on the same mental representation of a word. Knowing the spelling of a word makes the representation of it sturdy and accessible for fluent reading. The study also found that the ability to read words by sight, versus sounding out letters, is a skill that requires the ability to match letters and letter combinations with sounds. Not all words are visually distinctive, especially words that are similarly spelled or contain the same letters and in different combinations. However, learning to spell can help support memory for sight-reading whole words, which can be used in both spelling and reading as a result.

Spelling can be difficult for some, but there are plenty of ways parents can encourage these skills, much like how they can encourage reading outside of books.

Break It Down Daily
Ask your children to read off road signs, cereal boxes, you name it – but have them sound out letters as well. Tracing words, drawing words, and familiarizing them with letters can help tremendously.  Listening skills also play a crucial part in daily activities such as asking your child “what letter does ‘bat’, end with? What letter does ‘sock’ begin with and so on. Playing these games can help your child’s ability to hear sounds in words.

Encourage Vocal Skills
Spelling and reading are both intrinsically tied to the sounds of letters and letter combinations. Encourage them to read aloud. Children need to use the language they will be writing. Having a conversation, telling stories, playing word games and even play-acting can help kids develop key vocal skills as well as improve their vocabulary.

Bring Writing into the Mix
Writing regularly can significantly help children spell, and read as well. Writing can help children get their thoughts down on paper and can help them sound out and express their thoughts and feelings. By creating a visual element, such as writing down letters and words, kids are more likely to develop key spelling and reading skills. Their penmanship, and their spelling, may not be perfect at first, but if it is a routine activity, they will grow more and more familiar with the act of writing, spelling, and communicating effectively.

For younger kids you can write each of the words, and then have them trace it with a black crayon. Just make sure your child uses straight, not curved, lines when he outlines the word.

Get Creative
Applying study skills you may have used in college can help, too. Just as a university student may color-code their notes and post-its, using anything from highlighters and finger paints to cut-out construction paper and sidewalk chalk, you can help bring letters and spelling to life by making it a little more fun, and vibrant, too.

Old methods still work well such as purchasing letter magnets for the refrigerator and having them spell out words. Rhyming games are fun and help children to think and make similarities with letter sounds.  The idea here is to do it in daily bits and segments so that each time you do some sort of spelling lesson it becomes a game and children will love to learn.

Are Kids Getting Enough Recess at School?

Posted on | by KD Novelties

For many of us, recess is one of the the more memorable staples of our early childhood school experience, along with long summers and sweet treats. For many kids, recess is the most anticipated part of the day, but in many schools recess only comes once a day given that the weather allows it. As schools across the country are looking for ways to improve the experiences that they are providing for their students, one school in Texas has taken recess to a whole new level.

For the most part, schools tend to offer recess for children once a day around lunchtime. Oftentimes, the scheduling of recess relies on the weather, indoor space, and other scheduled school activities, but at Eagle Mountain Elementary in Fort Worth, Texas, recess knows no bounds.

At Eagle Mountain Elementary, kids have several recess sessions: The youngest kids at this school now enjoy two 15-minute breaks in the morning and two in the afternoon. That makes for a total of one hour of recess a day, which is three times longer than they used to get.

The faculty and the staff were anxious about enforcing the change, but they have found that increased recess time has actually improved their students’ overall performance.  They also found that their students are more focused and less fidgety, contrary to what most will think when giving kids too many breaks, that they would lose focus.

The secret behind this success?

According to Debbie Rhea, a kinesiology professor at Texas Christian University, allowing kids time to run around, play, and be generally active can help children focus better once they’re back in class. Rhea is actually the creator of LiiNK, a new program that boosts the amount of recess for the youngest students. The goal of the program is to allow kids the time to “reboot”, helping them function at their best level.

With lessened activity, children are more likely to become fidgety, impatient, and even to misbehave. By allowing kids to release their excess of energy in a healthy and positive manner, issues that teachers normally face are less likely to occur or affect their students.

The idea of “rebooting” is not a foreign one. Have you ever been told that taking breaks while studying or working can actually help increase your productivity as well as your brain’s ability to intake and retain information? Much of the same principles apply. By allowing kids to take a break and move around, they are more likely to willingly devote their attentions to more sedentary activities while also gaining more from the experiences overall.

Staying active has benefits when it comes to health, as well, which is a major concern for American children in particular. Putting more of a positive emphasis on recess can help to encourage more active lifestyles and healthy living while also improving a child’s overall academic performance.

Did you like this article? Feel free to pass along and let’s start a movement on bringing recess back to schools and making them for longer periods.

For more parenting resources be sure to check out the KD Novelties blog and check out our unique books for kids to promote literacy and boost self-esteem.