Every parent wants their kid’s birthday party to be special, fun, and absolutely perfect. Throwing a party at home might make you feel like you have limited options, but that’s actually quite the opposite. A DIY party means having complete control over the preparations, decorations, and everything else in between.

Here are some awesome ideas for a memorable birthday party for your little one without leaving the house:

1. Put Every Surface To Work

A party at home doesn’t always have to be confined to the living room. Pepper your whole house with decorations and repurpose other rooms into snack corners or game areas. If you have a backyard or garden, consider having an outdoor cookout for an alfresco hang out with your child’s guests bored kids.

Your child and their friends will surely enjoy some barbecue or roasted marshmallows where you can set your grill. Moreover, you can cook and conduct some games simultaneously to avoid dead air during the party.

2. Let Your Child Make The Call

Your house, your rules – so you don’t have to stick to traditional party traditions. Whether your child wants to have a game day or a movie night, order pizza in place of home-cooked meals, get their opinion on anything and everything.

To add fun and excitement to the party, you can list some parlor games that your child wants to play for their party so that they won’t get bored during the celebration. After the activities or games, you can reward them with fun prizes.

Additionally, your child can also decide whatever they want to have for their birthday party.

3. Bring The Party Online

Arrange a virtual party for family members and friends who couldn’t make it to the party. Choose a specific activity that will be the focus of the event so it won’t be reduced to an awkward hi-hello with faces on a screen.

Furthermore, you can still have a theme and designs for your kid’s online virtual party. For example, you should select your kid’s favorite as a theme. Having backgrounds can make your child’s online party fun.

To make the virtual party even more exciting, you can also prepare online games that each virtual guest can play. You can also send cakes or food to them so that they can also enjoy themselves while virtually having a birthday party.

4. Create Some Do-It-Yourself Decorations For The Party Theme

If you’ve decided that you’ll conduct the party face-to-face, it can be more special if you can have do-it-yourself (DIY) party decorations with things you already have. You can even find free decorations online like printable decors that you can cut and paste to your walls. It may be a game-themed party where kids play a variety games or if your child loves cartoons, you can have a cartoon-themed birthday. You can print out cartoon characters to use as decorations for your walls.

Furthermore, you can also involve or let your children help decorate their party so that they feel that they’re part of the enjoyment.

5. Buy The Cake That Your Kid Wants

A birthday can’t be complete without a cake to blow. Your child shouldn’t miss the sweet and creative cake they can eat after singing happy birthday to them. You can always choose a theme your child wants and request it from professional bakers, and let your child enjoy it.

Moreover, you can also add sparkling candles to add more thrill to your child’s cake and ensure that it’s safe around the kids. The birthday cake can be the highlight of your kid’s stay-at-home birthday too.

6. Don’t Forget The Gift Opening And Giveaways

Of course, you shouldn’t skip the part where your birthday boy or girl will open the gifts that they received from their friends or the guests. Moreover, this can be an exciting part of the birthday party and see them open their birthday present. Opening gifts in front of the guests can provide an exciting feeling too.

Before ending the party, you can give out goody bags or small souvenirs as a token of appreciation to guests who attend or join your kid’s birthday party. Giving back to your guests means that you appreciate their time and effort to attend the birthday.

Conclusion

A stay-at-home birthday party can be a great option if you have enough space and want to customize the whole event that your child likes. Even if you’re just at home celebrating, the main point of throwing a party is that your kid likes the theme and having fun with their friends and guests.

Your child has been accepted for college and you couldn’t be prouder. However, if this is the first time you’ve had to wave a child off to college, there are probably many things going around in your head about how they are going to cope.  Apprehension, mixed with excitement for your teen, is natural for any parent.

Here are our top five tips for parents of new college students to help you and your child through the first year.

Encourage Your Child to Keep in Close Contact with Their Academic Advisor

Regularly checking in with their course advisor will help keep your child on track with their studies. It will also ensure that they don’t end up in a situation where they must take extra classes (at an extra cost) to catch up. Their advisor will help keep them on track with their credits and ensure they’re making the required progress towards their degree.

It’s always easier to nip any problems in the bud than to try and catch up later. These professionals can also help with things like creating a recommendation letter, finding clubs on campus, or offering valuable study tips so building and maintain a relationship with them is a great idea.

Investigate Local Scholarships or Those Offered by the University

Set up a meeting for you and your child with the university’s scholarship department to learn more about available scholarships. Quite often the university will hold general meetings to provide details of funding offered. Encourage your child to apply for scholarships and grants online. They can build a profile before they can be matched to eligible scholarships for college. If something suitable is available, they can then apply directly.

Note that funds from a scholarship can be added to the student finance account at any time during the school year, not just at financial check-in. So, if you haven’t already looked at scholarships, it’s not too late.

Keep Records of All College Expenses That Are Tax Deductible

If you are supporting your child financially, the college will send you a tax form at the end of the year. Ask your child to keep and send you receipts for purchases that are related to their coursework such as books, supplies and equipment. You can then use these as tax deductibles.

Find Out if There is a Parent Program at the College

We all know how our children forget to keep us informed about what’s going on. Joining a parent program will help to keep you in the loop about any opportunities and events for parents and families on campus. The program may include activities such as family sports days, barbecues, and tailgate parties. Ask about the possibility of joining at move-in or orientation day and sign up for any newsletters that may be available.

Find Out What Books They Will Actually Need

Don’t rush out and buy all the books on the reading list. You may find yourself paying for books that are never used. Most textbooks can be found at used book sites online or can be loaned from a library. If a student emails the teacher in advance, they can ask if a particular textbook is needed. Sometimes they are not. Students can also access books via online forums from prior students of the course either for free or a very low cost.

Nurture Independence

As a parent, your instinct can be to help your kid as much as possible. The problem with this well-meaning impulse is that it can result in a child growing toward adulthood who is unprepared to solve problems on their own. It can feel good when your kid needs you, but it’s to their detriment if you prize this over letting them be independent. It’s important to let them feel proportionate consequences for their actions; if they don’t study for a test or complete an assignment, they won’t get a good grade on it.

Dealing with the Change in Your Life

The academic life of a child is a time of nearly constant change.  It can be often be tough to cope with, especially if they no longer want to do the same activities with you that they used to or seem to be pulling away from you. It’s important to remind yourself that as long as they aren’t moving toward something harmful, this pulling away is a sign you’ve been successful. Of course, you can continue to be a support to your child while preparing them to be their own person and to take on the world with confidence.

Resources for University and College Prep

• Should your child go to trade school or college?

If you have a child with a speech disorder or impairment, speech therapy involves assessing and treating all types of speech disorders and communication problems.  Speech therapists use a variety of techniques like language intervention and articulation therapy activities.

Speech conditions range from articulation delays to complex disorders like down syndrome, autism, motor speech disorders, hearing impairment, and other developmental problems that affect children.

Speech-language pathology meets the child where they are according to their individual issues.  While the main goals of a speech therapist is to improve communication, there are other benefits that help children in a number of ways.

If you’re unsure whether speech therapy is suitable for your kid, here are five benefits you should to know:

1. Enhanced Articulation Skills

One of the benefits speech therapy offers kids who need it is enhanced articulation skills. In speech, articulation refers to a child’s ability to move their lips, tongue, palate, and jaw to produce speech sounds or phonemes.

Speech issues have a lifelong negative effect and should be addressed immediately. If you have a kid that has a speech disorder, his articulation skills may be compromised due to decreased intelligibility if no speech therapy is offered. Intelligibility refers to people’s understanding of your child’s speech.

Getting a speech therapist to help your child develop articulation skills can ensure that he produces sound patterns or speech sounds in a way that increases intelligibility in the future.

2. Improved Expressive Language

Although speech is primarily involved in developing a person’s motor ability to speak, language is more symbolic of rules used to pass a message. Symbols can include words that are either written or spoken. They may also include the use of gestures like waving to mean ‘bye bye’, shoulder shrugging to mean ‘I don’t know,’ or raising eyebrows to communicate surprise.

Hiring a speech therapist can help children with speech disorders learn new words, and combine them to form sentences and phrases. This enables children to communicate better with you and other people.

3. Develop Receptive Skills

Another benefit of speech therapy for kids is the development of receptive or listening skills. Speech therapists work with kids to improve their receptive language to listen and understand better. In many cases, kids have a strong sense of what they understand but struggle with expressive language.

If your child struggles with receptive and expressive language, a speech therapist can help him overcome this challenge. Speech therapists do this by teaching them new vocabulary and showing them how to apply it when answering questions, following directions, and engaging in simple conversations.

4. Reduced Stuttering

Some kids develop stuttering during childhood. Stuttering is a common speech disorder that affects kids’ speech fluency. Often, this disorder is characterized by a broken speech flow known as disfluencies. Although every person experience disfluency in speech at one time or another, too many disfluencies can affect one’s ability to communicate effectively.

Primary indicators of stuttering that may require the help of a speech therapist include prolongations, repetitions, blocks, and interjections. Some secondary behaviors may also be present in severe stuttering cases. These include tension in the face, chest, jaw, neck, and shoulders.

People with severe stuttering conditions may also flare their nose, blink their eyes and perform odd facial movements. Further, they may experience extraordinary motor movement with their upper and lower limbs, like stomping their feet and clenching their fists.

Whether your kid shows mild or severe stuttering behavior, working with a speech therapist can help them develop strategies for controlling such behavior in a way that enhances speech intelligibility and fluency.

5. Reduce Voice Hoarseness

The other benefit that speech therapy could offer kids is reducing voice hoarseness caused by voice disorders. In most cases, kids experience hoarseness, a voice disorder that results from vocal abuses that damage or strain their vocal folds.

Vocal abuse includes habits like yelling, coughing, excessive talking, and throat clearing. Speech therapy enables kids to repair damaged or weakened vocal folds while helping them reduce practices relating to vocal abuse. Moreover, speech therapy can help kids improve voice quality by addressing sound vibration in the nasal, oral, and pharyngeal cavities.

Final Thoughts and Resources

Speech therapy is an effective way of treating speech disorders in children. Everyday speech disorders that affect kids in their childhood include poor articulation, hoarseness of voice, stuttering, and receptive language. This will more than likely bring increased anxiety.

If these disorders are left unaddressed, the ability of your child to communicate effectively in the future may be affected. If you think your kid suffers from a speech disorder or impairment, engaging a speech therapist can help him overcome the challenge and communicate better as he grows up.

Explore this guide on speech pronunciation for kids, provided by Maryville University.  The guide provides detailed insights and resources on the following topics:

• Types of Speech Disorders
• Activities Parents Can Use to Teach Pronunciation
• Helpful Tools and Professional Speech Therapy
• Meeting Speech Pronunciation Goals for Kids and more

Explore Additional Resources on this website:

• The pros and cons of online speech therapy for kids
• The benefits of text to speech readers

More so than ever before, today’s kids are a generation of digital learners. Technology such as videos and smartphone apps are revolutionizing the way parents teach their kids the basics, such as their ABC’s and 123’s. And among the wide variety of options, parents need programs they know they can trust.

Kids Academy is an educational platform that offers both parents and schools a wide range of interactive learning materials to supplement early learning for kids in preschool through the third grade. Not only do they offer a website jam packed with free learning resources, but the Talented and Gifted app also provides a structured and individualized curriculum that utilizes AI technology to score worksheets and deliver feedback for standards-aligned activities. What’s more is that all content on the app is safe and age-appropriate, and there are no ads or in-app purchases.

As mentioned above, there are two main hubs for Kids Academy content: their website, and their Talented and Gifted app. Let’s take a more detailed look at what each offers to families.

Free Educational Games, Worksheets, and Videos

The Kids Academy website boasts of a huge collection of worksheets that cover subjects across different curricula to meet the educational needs of preschoolers and early elementary students. These worksheets can be downloaded, printed, or played online in a browser; and for all the options there’s auto-checking that can deliver immediate feedback. In all, there are over 3,000 worksheets on a variety of topics that include catchy graphics and engaging voiceovers to help struggling readers and pre-readers.

In addition to worksheets, Kids Academy is also compiling a fun collection of interactive learning games that children can play for free from their web browser. Parents can find a little bit of everything in their collection of games, including foundational skills for preschoolers, such as letter tracing or sorting games, as well as more advanced games to help older kids master concepts like skip counting or using decimals.

Another exciting resource on the Kids Academy website is engaging learning videos and songs that serve to teach learners about the very concepts they are already working on using the worksheets. Many times, the videos are hosted by real educators who directly teach the concept and walk children through a connected worksheet available on the website. In fact, the site offers parents an option to select complete lessons in which worksheets, quizzes, games, and videos are bundled together to make cohesive lessons without needing to compile the materials separately. It’s never been easier for parents to find exactly what their child needs, all in one place!  Discover additional online learning resources for kids of all ages.

The Talented and Gifted App from Kids Academy

While many of the same resources included in the Talented and Gifted app are also available on the website, the app has a multitude of unique features that make for a richer, more individualized learning experience. Worksheets, videos, and games are all included in the app, but parents and students will also benefit from the following:

• Structured curricula that take children along a learning pathway via chapters and lessons. Parents choose the starting grade or skill level, and children progress gradually as they learn and gain skills.

• Quizzes that recap what’s been learned and assess a student’s progress; in addition to that, parents receive a weekly progress report via email that details their child’s performance.

• The app contains different choices for how content is displayed; for instance, there is an Adventure Land section where activities are grouped around small, digestible topics and always include game to make for a more engaging experience for struggling learners.

• There is a motivational game called Dress-Up Eddie, which is an exciting element that gives children the ability to spend the earned points to customize a cute character with funny costumes.

In all, there are over 4,000 activities contained within this educational app to keep kids motivated and learning. Just like the content included on the website, all materials in the app are age-appropriate, cover all major subjects, and are created in partnership with expert educators who have curated high-quality learning content in a way that learners will love.

In just the past couple of decades, the way that children learn has drastically changed. Parents and their children now have the option to supplement learning with innovative technology that can boost early learning skills like never before! Kids Academy helps families in this endeavor by providing the highest quality learning materials on both their website and mobile app.

Find out even more about Kids Academy and look for their app on Google Play or on the App Store!