Besides loving entrepreneurship and STEAM, I am also extremely passionate about self-development. So passionate in fact, that I constantly love to share and pass on what I learn to others.
Naturally, I can’t help but want to share my love for self-development to my child. I don’t think you have to wait till your kid starts thinking about college before you start teaching them to develop their own dreams and to think bigger than themselves.
If you are a passionate teacher, family member or caregiver reading this, you may also believe it’s important to help shape the kids in your care to become the future leaders and game changers of tomorrow.
At the end of the day, we all have similar goals; to develop our kids into useful leaders and members of society, who can contribute to a better world for all.
Not only is it wonderful to help your toddler and preschooler (age 3-5 years) to start thinking bigger but in the short-term, I believe that focusing on positive pursuits can also help kids reduce behavioral problems. Don’t we all want that?
Introducing the Dream Journal Activity Book for Preschoolers
These goals are what drove me to create a Dream Journal Activity Book for Preschoolers.
I wanted something that I could use to inspire my toddler to understand herself better including her strengths and weakness, while also teaching her basic things like her name and where she lived. I also wanted to inspire her to start dreaming about the future she wanted to create. And last but not least, I wanted to share this with parents all over the world so that they could inspire their own kids too.
Bonding with Your Child
The Dream Journal Activity Book for Preschoolers is meant to be a shared activity between an adult and a child; be it a parent, grandparent, caregiver or teacher. I believe that when it comes to toddlers, doing things together is important for bonding as well as engagement. Having said this, if you have more than one toddler (perhaps, a classroom of toddlers), you can do this as a group activity too.
The main point is that you are physically present in doing this activity together with your toddler or preschooler.
Adjust the Level of Difficulty
There are 16 activities in total in this Activity Book. Some of these activities will be challenging for your kid but they are specifically designed to encourage your kid to grow their fine motor skills. With an adult’s help and supervision, your kid will be able to complete them.
These activities are created to give you flexibility to adjust the level of challenge that you want to set for your toddler or preschooler. You can also make it more sensory-oriented or creative by adding materials to the activities.
For example, let’s take the first activity entitled, My name is on page 3.
This activity aims to teach your child to learn and recognize what their name looks like. If your kid is just learning their ABCs, you can write out their name for them. If you are teaching them phonics, you can sound each letter out as you write it down.
If your toddler is ready to learn how to write, you can put a crayon, pencil, marker or paint brush in their palm and guide their hands to write out their name.
If your toddler is ready to use scissors and glue, you can assist them to cut out the Alphabet & Numbers template provided in this Activity Book.
Alternatively, you can make the activity even more sensory by using things like playdough, washable paint on fingers, pipe cleaners, string or Wikki Stix to write out their name.
Finally, if you wish, you can ask your child to draw a picture of themselves or add a photo instead. They can do this on the opposite or back page if you have blank pages in between each activity.
As you can see, you can adjust the level of difficulty that you want to introduce to your toddler, to suit their level of development.
This is the same for the other 15 activities listed in the Dream Journal Activity Book for Preschoolers.
Identifying Activities That Bring Happiness
Now, let’s talk about the activity on page 16, I like to.
This activity was created specifically to help your child understand what they like doing. It may be jumping, coloring, playing dress up or maybe, all of these!
For example, if your child loves running and playing with others, soccer may be a good activity to consider. If your child loves coloring, then she will probably be enthusiastic about art or craft activities.
By finding out what your child likes to do, you have the chance to create more opportunities for them to engage in their favorite activities. I believe in encouraging our kid’s interest in activities that they are already enthusiastic about.
This does not mean that they should not learn to do other activities that they don’t have interest in. For example, I consider activities like reading and swimming as life skills, and I believe that every child should learn how to read and swim.
But another important reason to find out what they like to do is that you can help them identify what brings them happiness and joy.
As adults, we are ultimately responsible for our own happiness. Some adults are better at identifying what makes them happy; be it exercise, hanging out with family, video game time, or a Netflix movie. It’s our responsibility to incorporate activities that create joy and happiness for us into our week in a responsible manner. But if you have never sat down to think about what makes you happy, you should do so now.
This activity helps your kid to start thinking about what makes them happy so that as they grow up and their interests change, they too can continue to include happiness into their week.
Discovering Talent
The activity I am good at on page 17 helps your kid to figure out what they are good at, while building their self-confidence.
It’s often hard for a young kid to see themselves as being good at anything. But as a parent, you may already notice certain things that they seem to excel in. It may be physical activities like swimming, or performance-oriented ones like singing and dancing, science-oriented ones like counting and remembering dinosaur names, or artistic pursuits like painting and coloring.
How can you tell if your kid excels in something? It may not necessarily be that he or she is better than others in the activity. However, you may notice that your child picks up that skill very quickly, compared to other skills that he or she may take longer to learn. Your child may be really good with a soccer ball. Or he or she picks up reading without you even teaching them. These little insights often help you to identify what their strengths may be. Once you discover what they are, encourage them. Give them more opportunities to grow in their strengths.
Finding Personal Goals
The last activity that I want to talk about is When I grow up I want to, on page 18.
Your child may not be ready for this activity yet but you can use it to help them consider what they want to do with their lives when they grow up.
Tiger Woods picked up a golf club at two, Mozart started composing music at five and Michael Jackson started singing lead vocals at seven.
These people may be child prodigies, but you could also argue that they were heavily influenced or even, groomed by their parents at a young age. While I don’t believe in forcing your kids into activities that they hate, I do believe that there is a lot of benefit in exposing your child to role models, occupations or activities that you think would be beneficial for their future.
Of course, your kid may give you answers like “I want to be a princess”, or “I want to be a fireman” or “I want to drive trains”, or other such cute answers. That’s fine.
The point of this activity is to help them consider the range of options open to them. You can even talk about what you and others do at work.
We have friends who are doctors and dentists and I would often tell them about these friends’ work during our scheduled doctor and dental visits. Similarly, when we go to a bank, farm or visit the post office, I would also point out what these people were doing as part of their daily responsibilities.
Again, I strongly believe that we should not force or make our kid’s life decisions for them but we certainly can expose them to positive role models, broaden their minds and provide information and guidance in a loving and insightful way.
At the end of the day, if you parent in a loving and respectful manner, I think that there’s no harm in helping your child to discover what they may want to be when they grow up.
There’s nothing like taking action on what you believe is good for your child. If you love what you are reading about, then we invite you to get your kid started with their own Dream Journal Activity Book for Preschoolers.
