Today’s topic for teaching embellishments is giving meaning behind words you use when teaching your children. I hope today’s topic can be of use to youth ministries, family devotionals, family counselors, grandparents and family home evenings.
At church, today, a teacher talked about how we as adults need to watch out for what words we share with our children. When teaching kids about important safety tips, we may say phrases like “stay in the yard, ” but a child may not understand those words.
Many times we may tell a child to not run out in the street, but as the child may not know what the word ‘street’ means yet. They’ve learned a lot of words. Already the observation, but they haven’t been into many other areas outside the home. There may still be terms, the unfamiliar with. If they don’t understand the instruction to “stay out of the street “, than how would they know how to obey the rule? My encouragement is that when we teach children, new concepts, we need to give them a foundation of what different words mean. So I have an idea on how this can be done.
First of all, you could draw a map on a piece of paper of the house. You could draw a sketch of different rooms of the house. Name the different rooms such as the kitchen and the front room. You could then walk about the house have the children touch and see the real objects of the house and compare them against the sketch on the map. You may even compare your drawings to what’s actually exists in the room to give the child understanding of that a map illustrates reality.
Next, to teach such words as as street, block or sidewalk, you go outside walk to each of those locations and show them the meaning of the word. You can then follow up by showing them a sketch that you may have drawn of the neighborhood. You can illustrate what it means to stay within the yard by walking around the parameters that defines the yard.
When you want to teach a child what to do before crossing a street. Parent and child may walk down the sidewalk. You show them how to look left and right. You might even wait until a car drives by and have them wait on the sidewalk with you. You show them how to wait for the light changes from red to green.
Another example is of teaching kids safety is by defining who a stranger is. You might show photos of the family and photos of friends that you know and trust. Then you show photos of people that they don’t know. You might even create a pretend game of how they should respond, if strangers tried to engage them in some way and how they should respond
Parents may say “don’t burn yourself on the stove. ” One way to show this concept may be have a cooked potato. You let the child examined the boiled potato, to illustrate how nice and smooth the skin is. You might turn on the stove until a filament is bright and hot. Place the potato on the stove and let it burn the surface the potato. An alternative example might be to blow up a balloon and placed the balloon against the hot filament making a loud pop. The loud obnoxious noise may startle of the child, and they help engrave into their mind that experience that the hot filament causes damage. This example may engrave a sense of caution about the stove for the child.
My final example is how to teach the child to avoid climbing in dangerous places, such as on the top of the couch. You may place a ripe cantaloupe on the back couch. It falls away from the couch and bursts open. You may ask the child to put the cantaloupe back together again. They can’t, because it is broken. That might use a child a concept of balance in danger when they attempted to climb up on the couch.
These are just a few possibilities if he has some alternative suggestions, please feel free to share. Thank you
