How do you develop your children? (no age limits)
My little one will be 2 years old soon. I would like to develop his abilities for music and painting. Is there any creativity schools or schools for early development in Zurich?
My daughter, soon to be 4, has a pile of musical instruments she plays with, and paints, sculpts, and does crafts on practically a daily basis. It never occured to us to send her to a school to learn something that comes so naturally to little children.
Ipad can do all you need without the wastefullness and expenses of an unwanted instrument, and mess and destruction of paint.
If they like it, excel, get the real thing.
There's a place for an iPad, but there's an equally, if not more, important place for banging on a real drum, squishing clay between your fingers, and smearing paint all over stuff!
Yup! Especially in daddys new car. I have promised myself that my grandkids are gonna get the loudest drums the most tinnitus inducing whistles the stickiest sweets and the most colorful beverage in my arsenal when mummy and daddy drive 400 kilometers back to Augsburg.
Payback is a bitch
Expose your children to all sorts of activities, sports, music, etc.
If you are also playing a music instrument, it helps to demonstrate to your child.
I have a guitar, a ukelele, a piano in our LIVING ROOM. They are both exposed to my "jamming" and now both of them are taking Piano lessons (I am not a Tiger mum BTW).
Also, you can take them to concerts, museums, buy them music CDs, etc.
The options are endless.
Nobody can tell you how to develop YOUR children. They will most likely follow in your footsteps.
My neighbour brings his whole family to the Kart races, and now his son is Swiss Junior champion driver.
Good luck.
Don't forget the staples such as lego, plasticine, stickle-bricks, finger paints. Making potato prints is great fun.
And what about doing things in the kitchen? Simplest thing is cookie dough from the supermarket which you can roll out and get different shaped cookie cutters. Or make up some pizza dough and rollout mini pizzas which your kid can put the toppings on.
All great for developing creativity and manual dexterity and the wish to experiment.
Cheers,
Nick
No, I don't develop my children. I try to give them the room and opportunities they need to develop themselves.
Oh it's tooooo easy.....
To develop children, you start with the negative!
Snappy, eh?
Every day, smile at least once (with the Children)
GREG
My daughter and I share a love of good music, because we enjoy it together. At 2 she could already sing some Adele, Nina Simone and others! We paint, myself with oils her with pastels, crayola hand paint etc No art or music school will make your child creative, but enjoying it with mummy and daddy might just give her a creative output in our existence! Good luck and enjoy!
At this age children really respond to singing. This is something you can easily do at home, with an instrument if you play, or with percussion instruments or without; it really doesn't matter!
Kids love repetition and songs with actions. I made up lots of songs with my daughter to go with lots of our daily activities, and now (she's just turned eight), we still sing lots of them. For example, a song for cleaning teeth or for getting dressed etc. It doesn't matter how silly it sounds, or how you sound. What matters is that your child has the chance to both hear and make music.
If you're not familiar with any songs, you could easily find some on the internet or find a class for toddlers and parents. But if you decide to do this, look for a class that involves lots of singing and rhythm activities, and which doesn't rely too much on recorded music. It's far better, in my opinion, for the parents and kids to be making the music together.
Recorded music does have it's place, though, and playing lots of different kinds of music at home is also great. Kids love dancing to different rhythms or hearing different instruments.
But at this age, I don't recommend doing it with a view to education; it's more about exposure to different sounds, rhythms etc, about experimentation and about just having fun.
There is plenty of time for formal music lessons later on.
I totally agree that children develop themselves...
But if you'd like to get togehter with other moms and kids and have fun with singing and making music, why not join a "Eltern-Kind-Singen" Group?
See here: http://www.kirchgemeinde-albisrieden.ch/ and then go to "Veranstaltungen" and "Eltern-Kind-Singen". I know the teacher and she's doing really well. It's german speaking and not far from Schlieren. As far as I remember, the teacher is quite fluent in english.Enjoy!
The best way to encourage your child to play a musical instrument is to play one yourself. Of course, it's usually kind of late if you haven't already learned one yourself as a child.
I understand what you mean!
For craft ideas.....
http://www.netmums.com/activities/arts-and-crafts
http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/kids_crafts.htm
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/
For cooking....
http://www.netmums.com/family-food/f...king-with-kids
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/content/r...s/kids-baking/
For other ideas for crafts, cooking, online games and programs...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/
Out and about...
Take them out, let them experience things.
The zoo
Jucker Farmart
Transport museum in lucern
Science museum in winterthur
Kindercity in volketswil
Music....
http://www.miniminstrels.ch/Welcome.html
Find toddler groups or parent groups....
English forum has a few threads about meet ups with kids if you search for them
Google a group called ziwa, they do get togethers
Www.meetup.com - lots of different activity groups for you on there
Gymboree does classees--- music & art
It's not just music and painting. How about manual dexterity and a sense of structure and the mechanical, too? Our dad also provided us with a Mechano building set and a house-building set with little steel poles and plastic bricks (which I loved) - other than books, a piano, a guitar and painting supplies. And my brother eventually became -- a dentist.
At 2 years old?????
Think 2 years is much too young. At they age they can happily play the drums with saucepans and practise finger painting with you at home.
We never developed our children, we let them develop themselves. We just made sure they had the necessary opportunities, tools, encouragement and exposure to work out for themselves what they wanted to do.
Thankfully, none have followed in my footsteps. I can do without the competition!
At 2 years old I’d think it was difficult to tell if any child had a particular talent, unless they’re a genius or something. Let him have fun, provide a variety of play things and don’t push him in one direction. If the talent is there it’ll show in a few more years; if not then you haven’t made your child hate music/painting because you pushed too early. Above all enjoy play time with your child. Bang on a drum, have a singalong and get your fingers messy in the paint along with him; they’re children for such a short time these days.
Thank you, a lot of useful info.