Learning about patterns is expected in kindergarten and is tons of fun in preschool. Children at Fremont Kid's Academy explore the art of lacing beads while instinctively creating patterns and sequences. 

All of this fun is helping their brains to build the step stools to reading. When children's brains learn to recognize patterns they are recognizing the precursors to letters in a word. When they begin to see patterns in letters, all of the sudden they are reading. They think it's just a game but they are learning everyday!

Serving high quality meals is very important at Fremont Kid's Academy. Parents know that their children are getting high quality, nutritional food everyday and the children love it because we serve it in fun and interesting ways. 

Here's a few ideas on making a great meal at home.

Separate ingredients - children love to have finger foods and they like to experience the texture of food. You can also encourage picky eaters by allowing them to use their food as art materials. Imagine a paper plate "painted" red with ketchup by a broccoli brush. 

Hide ingredients - if you know that your child would rather visit the dentist than consume a certain healthy food, hide it in something else yummy. Make a smoothie with bananas, milk, yogurt, orange juice, and (the dreaded) broccoli.

Dress up ingredients - put a cheese hat on your toddler's apple, or olive eyes and tomato smile on their sandwich and watch them disappear.

Keep trying new things (and old) - taste preferences change often for young food connoisseurs and something that was refused yesterday may be accepted today. Keep trying and you may find with just a little encouragement your little eater is not so picky.