Smart parenthink 2017 magazine (1st issue)

2017 July - Dec Issue

Nurturing Healthy Eating Habits In Your Child Robotics For Kids ​ avigating The Digital N Playground

WHAT ARE

HABITS OF MIND™?

WELCOME to the first edition of Smart ParenTHINK, a new magazine designed specially for parents of young children.

Parents are constantly being bombarded by contradictory advice and information, such as eat this, or don’t do that, which makes it difficult to know what to heed and what to ignore. We hope to cut through the confusion and give you ​relevant and reliable information from writers and experts in the various fields.

One of the greatest gifts of my job as an editor and educator is having the privilege of working with world-renowned experts such as Professor Arthur Costa, Dr Bena Kallick, both founders of the Institute for the Habits of MindTM, Dr Branton Shearer, ​ creator of the Multiple Intelligences Developmental Assessment Scales, Professor Tony Buzan, inventor of Mind Maps and many others. Every day, I am also inspired and touched by the stories shared by parents and practitioners in the various fields, and I certainly hope that you will enjoy the stories found in this issue, and find them entertaining, informative and useful.

In this issue Inside, you’ll find articles on a wide range of topics, from health to robotics and how your children are spending their time in the digital world. A nutritionist from Nature’s Farm, Cyrus Yeong, writes about how to nurture healthy eating habits in our kids while coding and robotics education expert, Yama, gives us his take on Robotics and educating our kids for our future economy. Speech Pathologist, Michelle Tham, gives a heartwarming account of how to have an inclusive society. You’ll also find special promotional offers specially for you as well as information on upcoming seminars by renowned speakers.

CONTENTS 04

What Are Habits Of MindTM

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Habits of MindTM Activities

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Nurturing Healthy Eating Habits In Your Child

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Creating An Inclusive Society Help Our Children Build Compassion At An Early Age

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Character Story Honest Oscar Does The Right Thing

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Prepare Future Ready Kids With Robotics And Coding

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Navigating The Digital Playground

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Character Story Responsible Ophelia

Do let us know if there are any topics you’d like to see covered in the future. We’d love to hear from you. Email us at info@nurturecraft.com Be involved with your children.

You’ll be glad you did.

Dr Henry Toi Editor of Smart ParenTHINK CEO, Nurture Craft International (a member of Global EduHub)

Published by: Nurture Craft International Pte Ltd 39B Jalan Pemimpin #03-02 Singapore 577184 www.nurturecraft.com email: info@nurturecraft.com

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Nurturing HEALTHY EATING HABITS In Your Child ​By Cyrus Yeong,

Nutritionist with Nature’s Farm Singapore

It is common to hear of parents who fret over their child’s eating habits, worrying if they are receiving enough nutrients based on the child’s selective food preferences. A usual opening line would sound like, “Oh but my child is such a picky eater, she won’t eat her greens, only likes French fries, refuses fish, loves fruit juices and doesn’t like to drink water.”

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The first question I would pose back to these parents is a simple one, “What about your own dietary preference? Do you consume greens daily yourself?

How much water do you drink versus how many sweetened beverages do you consume?”

While children will have their own unique taste preferences and may be fixated on certain types of foods, kids do also imitate their

parents to a certain extent. If you are a picky eater yourself, it is quite natural for your child to conclude that it is okay to be picky about foods too.

Ensuring your child is provided with a wholesome and healthy diet can prevent childhood obesity and other related health

1 Vegetables and Fruits to provide Vitamins and Minerals Fill half of the plate with colourful vegetables and fruits. The more veggies, and the greater the variety, the better it is. Vitamin B6, B12 and C are especially important for your child’s immunity.

2 Healthy Protein Children need enough protein to build their body tissues and muscles in order to grow strong.

Choose beans and peas, nuts, seeds, and other healthy protein options, e.g. fish, eggs, and poultry.

3 Diary Milk and other dairy products are a convenient source of calcium and vitamin D. Calcium is necessary for growing bones and teeth. Choose unflavored milk, plain yogurt, small amounts of cheese, and other unsweetened dairy foods.

4 Whole Grains / Carbohydrates Go for whole grains or foods made with minimally processed whole grains. The less processed the grains, the better. Whole grains including whole wheat,

conditions, plus provide your child with a good foundation to eat well as adults.

When planning and preparing meals for your child, consider using “My Healthy Plate”. It will give you a good idea of how much healthy proteins, whole grains, fruits and vegetables to provide at each meal.

Meal-times for your child (and the whole family in fact) should feature:

brown rice, and quinoa.

5 Healthy Oil / Fats Polyunsaturated fats (Omega 3 and 6) found in fish and grains, and monounsaturated fats in vegetable oils are healthier while saturated fats and trans fat can increase the bad cholesterol in our bodies. Omega 3 is crucial for your child’s brain & vision development.

6 Water Need we say more to expound the importance of water in your child’s diet? 4-8 glasses of water a day is ideal.

If your child is 4 years old and above, you may consider giving your child a multivitamin supplement formulated for kids to ensure your child receive all the daily nutrients he or she needs for healthy growth and development. A good children’s Multi-Vitamins and Minerals supplements will provide your child with almost the whole recommended daily allowance of the essential vitamins A, B, C, D, E and minerals such as calcium, magnesium, iron and zinc.

Tips to interest your child in healthy foods: • Engage your little assistant in helping you make simple and healthy dishes • Cut fruits and vegetables into fun shapes and/or present them in an interesting way to make it fun for your child to eat it • If your child rejects a food for the first time, be patient and try again on a different occasion • Be a role model yourself – if your child sees you eating and enjoying your greens and fruits, he or she will more likely to be open to trying it for themselves

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CREATING AN INCLUSIVE SOCIETY Help our children build compassion at an early age ​By Michelle Tham, Speech Pathologist/Clinical Director, Leapfrogs Pte Ltd

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It was a family day out with my husband and my little 20-month boy. We were having a meal, when a family stood around us apparently waiting for us to complete our meal so they could have our table.

Soon, another table near us became available and the dad signaled for the family to move over to take it. However, their 8-year-old son refused, stood fast, and continued to hover really close to us and would dash back to our table each time he was pulled away. Tension and impatience in that family mounted and the son, started to make high pitched noises and got more and more distressed. He was on the Autism Spectrum.

Sensing a potential “melt-down,” I spoke to my son very gently and said that “Kor Kor (meaning big brother) was very hungry and wants his food soon.”

This meant we were to end our meal and give up our table. We face many stares as part of the party where a lot of commotion was going on.

The above experience made me wonder how much we can do to be an inclusive society. Parents with special needs children may face even more challenges and struggles in their journey as a family; a child with special needs can act up and be easily overwhelmed.

They can run off, shout, or throw tantrums. While being ignored is unpleasant, being judged can be intolerable. Underneath these are deeper fears of prejudices and exclusion.

As a Clinical Director of a child intervention centre, I often think about the Singapore Government’s plan to make compulsory education for all special needs children by 2019 with the clear intention to facilitate what will be in the best interests of our children. For the success of the inclusion, it is important that we have to believe in the competence of the educational system and have confidence in the capacity of the schools to understand and effectively educate children with special needs.

And, we as a community need to play our part.

To start, as parents and adults, we can show our children how to embrace the differences by modeling acceptance and understanding.

When our children go to school, chances are that at some point they will have a classmate with special needs. How can parents help their children to be more accepting of their peers and guide them to be sensitive to the needs and feelings of their classmates?

- Discuss ways of helping or encouraging children to look for things that they can do together to strengthen interactions between them as making friends is not an instinctive ability of children with special needs - Strengthen compassion and acceptance through volunteering in a peer buddy program - Acknowledge the frustrations your child may feel about the behaviours of others and help him to cope by asking him ways he can help his peer As we drove home from dinner, my final thought was that such opportunities are a great gift for us and our children alike; to build skills like patience, compassion, understanding and acceptance. It not only helps us to get along with kids who are different from them, it helps us to broaden our perspectives, be more mindful and kind to each other.

Parents have many opportunities to lead by example and speak of kindness. Teaching children empathy and compassion will help them to understand the limitations of others.

Conversations are a great place to start. Some topics that a parent can discuss are: - That some children will struggle more than others because they are different.

- That no kid or adult wants to feel different and we should be considerate and respectful of their challenges - A child with special needs can do many of the things like others except it might take them longer or do it in a different way

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Character Story to share with your children Oscar the honest owl, was caught in a difficult situation.

Find out what he did.

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solving, communication, analytical and strategic thinking, project management, and creativity, which will prepare students to excel in any field where technological innovation and advancement are involved.

Prepare Future Ready Kids With ROBOTICS AND CODING ​By Yama Min,

Founder/CEO of ​In3Labs Tech Education

It is very important to prepare our kids for the future as the world is changing rapidly due to technology advances. Many new jobs will be created and more career opportunities will be available in coming future. As we are facing new challenges, we need to look for new approaches in educating our kids for an evolving future. They need to understand how to think and not what to think. They should be asking more questions than be given answers. They need to be challenged and inspired in their learning. Therefore, 21st century skills which are Collaboration, Creativity, Communication and Critical thinking (4Cs), are the keys to prepare our kids to be future ready.

Communication and Collaboration enable individuals to work effectively and foster leadership qualities.

Critical thinking and creativity make individuals to be good at problem solving and innovation.

Robotics program combines various learning aspects such as Computer Science, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (CS-STEM) as part of 21st century education. Using age-appropriate robotics platforms, kids will learn about robotics construction and programming as well as foster real-life skills through engaging & fun hands-on experiments. What makes robotics learning an essential part of 21st century education is the critical and invaluable skills one can acquire, such as problem

Robotics is suitable for kids to learn from age as young as 5 years old.

Hands-on Learning in robotics enable children to explore and selfdiscovery. It helps them to build logical and critical thinking skills from a very young age. Some of the robotics platform that we can use in teaching are LEGO MINDSTORMS, WEDO, Beebot and KIBO as they are easy to construct and learn programming concept using block-based programming.

Robotics technology make kids to learn about CPU, motors and sensors that are related to our reallife products such as Mobile phones and other electronics products.

Children shouldn’t just play games on mobiles, tablets or computers but they should learn how to create these games that will help them in problem solving and increase their creativity. Learning to Code provides children with skills that enable them to create apps, software and websites. It also promotes computational thinking – a combination of mathematics, logic and algorithms that gives you a new way to think about the future world. In the future, knowing the language of computers will be a primary skill as reading and counting are today. As part of a Smart Nation movement, Singapore has also prompted 19 secondary schools to offer programming as part of a new O-level subject called Computing.

Parents play a very important role in nurturing 21st century skills to their children at an early age. They need to communicate more with your children and talk about what they are learning. Prepare your kids to be future ready so that they can be successful and inspiring leaders, innovators, inventors and entrepreneurs at the forefront leading our nation.

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Navigating The DIGITAL PLAYGROUND

By Charmaine Ang,

Associate Lecturer

In today’s society, the digital world is the children’s favourite playground. Children are consuming digital media and technology at increasingly younger ages and for longer periods of time.

According to a Straits Times article, a study done by think-tank DQ Institute and the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) revealed that twelve-year-olds in Singapore spend almost 46 hours a week - or over 6½ hours daily - glued to a screen. Even nine-year-olds are spending over 24 hours a week on the various digital devices.

Most children go online to use search engines, listen to music,

watch videos and play online games. They are also regular users of social networking, with many checking their Facebook at least once a day. The study also revealed that 55 per cent of nine-year-olds are using social media and chat applications, even though social media platforms require participants to be at least 13 years old.

Dangers in the playgound As the digital universe is a vast expanse of infotainment and news, both real and fake, it is in this world that children are also exposed to many problems, such as cyberbullying, digital addiction, obscene and violent content, radicalization, scams, fake news and data theft. What they see, experience and who they meet

Total time spent on digital devices in a week 9 years old

24 hrs

168 hrs a week

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12 years old

46 hrs

168 hrs a week

online can influence their development and belief system greatly, even more than what their parents and teachers ever hope to inculcate in them.

With the fast and ever evolving nature of technology, proper internet governance and policies for child protection are slow to catch up, rendering them ineffective and our children vulnerable.

What’s worse is that much of the mistakes made in the digital world remain there. When a stupid photo or comment is posted online, it goes viral and remains permanently in cyberspace. Children must be made aware of this fact, as this has real-life impact on their future, sometimes even detrimental to them finding a job or life partner.

Prior studies have consistently found that excessive usage of mobile devices tend to be associated with poorer sleep quality, which affects mood and mental capacity, leading to weaker school performance.

Children who spend a lot of time in the digital playground also tend to put on weight. This is due to the number of food ads they are exposed to while watching, which can increase their appetites. Many kids also get into the habit of snacking and they naturally burn off few calories while watching compared to playing outdoors.

What can parents do?

How much time children spend onscreen, what digital content they consume and who they meet online - all these factors will have a significant impact on their health, well-being and greatly influence their overall

development.

Children have little to gain and lots to lose from spending time in front of screens, instead of playing and interacting with friends and loved ones.

Here are some ways you can limit your child’s screen exposure: • Get your young children involved in household chores, instead of putting them in front of the screen while you are doing housework.

This could be a great learning opportunity when you can teach them the names of objects and colors of vegetables you are cooking.

• Provide your child with simple toys that aren’t automated. The more the toy does, the less your child will do. Same goes for reading.

Reading stirs the imagination, whereas watching a video is a no-brainer.

• Make it a point to take family meals together and interact with your children by asking about their day. Make sure that no devices are allowed at the table.

• If your children watch something, watch with them, comment and ask questions about what they are watching.

This way, passive TV viewing is made more active.

• A movement, known as #DQEveryChild, was recently launched, to arm children with digital citizen skills to navigate the Internet safely. It suggests

that there are eight digital skills*, such as digital empathy, ability to manage risks online and critical thinking, which children should acquire. The idea is to help them be masters, not slaves, of technology.

Parents need to educate their children on the responsible usage of devices and set reasonable limits on their screen time, so they have time for other activities.

Ultimately, it starts by setting a good example. It is not uncommon to see a family at a restaurant, with all members engaged with their mobile devices rather than with one another. Parents should take the initiative to encourage and cultivate a culture of face-toface social interactions, in order for the children to spend less time in the digital playground.

*According to DQ Institute, there are 8 aspects of Digital Citizenship.

These aspects are often overlooked as most people tend to focus on creativity and entrepreneurship. However, unless children know their full identity as digital citizens and leaders, and are aware of digital safety and security issues, they will be vulnerable to various digital risks. These 8 aspects are: 1. Digital Citizen Identity

5. Digital Empathy

2. Screen Time Management

6. Critical Thinking

3. Digital Footprint Management

7. Privacy Management

4. Cyber Bullying Management

8. Cyber Security Management

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Character Story to share with your children

​Ophelia, the responsible otter braved the cold river water to help her sister. Do you think Rosie was a naughty little sister?

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