Keeping it Cool
www.fridayschildmontessori.com
It’s been so hot lately! We hope you’ve all been managing to cope with it and even enjoy it.
The hot climate is one reason why a lot of people choose to live on the Gold Coast.
We certainly hope that you’ve been able to get some time off work so that you can go swimming with your children, either at the beach or in the pool.
Children can often get grumpy when they’re hot, especially when it’s humid as well as hot.
The human body, especially bodies that have European ancestry, still doesn’t seem to have got over the Ice Age and we seem to have more physical mechanisms to cope with cold than we do for coping with extreme heat.
As parents, we’ve probably read all the advice and all the rest of it written in colder climates that talks about the importance of wrapping small people up warmly because little bodies lose heat quickly
(although this might be a matter of debate – this writer once lived in a colder climate and saw a small child trying to run around outside in his underpants in the sleet and howled in protest when his mother tried to put warmer clothes on him and/or bring him in out of the cold).
But forget about all that in the heat. Choose clothes that let heat escape rather than trapping body heat.
If you have a small baby and he/or she is indoors, you might want to let him/her go around in just a nappy and nothing else (incidentally, cloth nappies are cooler than leak-proof disposables).
You should ensure that your children are protected from the sun, but look out for loose styles, and light natural fabrics like cotton and linen (silk’s a bit too fine for busy kids).
Ideally, summer clothes should be in lighter colours that reflect the sun’s rays a bit more than darker ones, but these show the dirt very easily – you have been warned.
Apart from clothes, what can you do to help your children stay cool (in both senses of the word) when the temperatures are soaring?
The following ideas might be helpful.
1. Evaporation cools us down, so if the day is hot but not humid, try soaking clothes in cold water.
This is particularly helpful for people large and small who don’t sweat as much as others, and it’s amazing how quickly a dripping wet T-shirt will dry off on a really hot, dry day.
Wet clothes feel a bit funny at first and are a bit harder to put on, so you may need to help your child get the clothes on, even if he/she normally can get dressed solo.
2. If humidity is a problem, the key thing is to get air circulating.
Hand-held fans made from cardboard taped onto a stick after being decorated can be a good craft activity that will keep small hands occupied and produce something that keeps them cool.
You can also try making a “cold tent� out of a wet cotton sheet draped over a string tied to two fixed points.
This makes a good playhouse that protects children from the shade and also keeps them cool if they flap he sides of the tent to get a breeze going.
Don’t worry about drips if you try this indoors – they’ll dry soon enough!
3. Keep up the fluids.
Water is best, as you’ve probably heard. However, most children seem to like plain water if it comes frozen, and ice will certainly keep them cool.
You can try making novelty ice blocks to jazz up drinks of plain cold water by dropping a leaf of mint, a strawberry or some other berry, or a wee piece of some other fruit in the ice cube tray before filling it up with water and freezing.
Also keep an eye out for novelty ice cube trays in interesting shapes – silicone chocolate moulds can double as ice cube trays and come in a number of novel shapes.
You could even try making giant ice cubes in muffin tins if you’re very keen.
Watching an ice cube melt and the resulting puddle evaporate is a good way for children to discover the different states of matter – basic science!
4. Ice cream is a wonderful part of summer but too much isn’t good for you or for your children.
Why not make your own at home to avoid endless trips to the convenience store at the end of the room?
The easiest way to make a healthy ice cream is to pop three or four bananas in the blender, add a dollop of yoghurt and maybe a bit of vanilla or cinnamon, whizz the lot up and then freeze it overnight.
Children can do this with only a wee bit of supervision.
Other possibilities include homemade popsicles made with fruit juice (popsicle kits can be bought in most supermarkets) or sorbet made by putting stewed fruit in the freezer “as is�.
Or you can get fancy and try an oldfashioned ice cream recipe with lots of real cream.
With all home-made ice creams that are frozen in a big tub, you get a better texture if you stir it every hour or so (children can do this, and standing by the freezer for a short period of time is another way to cool down).
Or freeze whatever you’re making in a flat tray with a bit of a lip on it (e.g. a baking dish) and run a fork through it when it’s solid to make a granita sort of thing. The tray method is usually a bit quicker, too.
5. Take a tip from the folk in Mediterranean countries and take a siesta in the middle of the day.
This may mean that you and your children end up getting up later and/or staying up later at night, but you do avoid the heat of the day.
Our bodies seem to naturally get an energy slump about lunchtime and this is the hottest part of the day that we ought to avoid in order to be sunsmart.
It’s a pity that Australian culture was so heavily influenced by British traditions (“The British detest a siesta,” as the song “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” tells us), as we could do with a siesta tradition over here!
This article is brought to you by:
Fridays Child Montessori