I'm wondering though about EMF exposure from ipad's or cell-phones.

I'm not a painter, but i painted a very large tree on the wall of our child's room. I looked at youtube for some ideas and then I got stickers of leaves and other wildlife, and stuck them to the branches.

We recently had an eye doctors appointment for our 4 year-old boy, and she said that we needed to have our child take at least a short break every half-hour from electronic displays.

Our four year-old loves the wonder pets, fireman Sam, Diego, Curious George and Harold and the purple crayon. We dont have cable but we have netflix, and all these shows are on it.

I asked my pediatric chiropractor this very question.  She said it's better not to introduce a pillow, and when HER kids started noticing they didn't have one, she gave them a very thin pillow. 

Wow, I'm been waiting for this since my 18 month old was born!  I have 10 years experience as a piano/keyboard teacher, many of my students were small children which helped me to come up with a unique method of keeping their short attention spans engaged!  I used this method for my older son who learned to play the violin at the age of 3, and won some awards for his playing when he was 4.   When  was 10 he was assessed at his school and the psychologist said that he could be a concert pianist as the part of his brain for musical ability was in the 99 percentile. He is now also a wonderful piano player. I'm convinced this was from exposure to music at such a young age, as I am also convinced at the importance of music at the earliest possible age for children.  I also have another child who plays the cello.

I do have definite ideas of what I think works well for children.  Looking forward to seeing all your ideas!

The box idea definitely was a hit.  I also would wrap a little present in the box, he loved the surprises.  I have all boys so the name of any game is action.  I would set up cards and have them pick the right one by pushing their cars and knocking over the right one, or when they answered the right questions they ran across the room and jumped onto pillow, or the couch.  If I played a high note they would jump up very high, if it was a low note they would crouch on the floor.  And of course lots of clapping and jumping up and down when they got it right!  Puppets are great too, they are more likely to follow the instruction from a puppet sometimes! I found that it was easiest to get them to do most anything until they were 6, that is when they got their own ideas on what they wanted to do!!  Also when as soon as he learned about 4 notes I would find a song and had him play his 4 notes one at a time, at the beginning of each bar, and play for some people and he would see their reaction and praise. Like Bach prelude in C, the music is very predictable and he could play a new note at the beginning of each bar. I guess you would have to have some musical background to figure it out.  My older son couldn't learn violin, he only wanted to bang on things, so I would have him bang on keyboard or xylophone type instrument to music, he could only do up to 4 notes though, and for him the crazier the music the better, a pretty prelude would have bored him!  

I found too that when I made his lessons all about the violin he seemed less inclined to want to do it, when I made it seem like only part of the lesson was about the violin he did much better. The lessons were about surprises!  And then eventually it became about the violin. And I made the lesson only 20min, with a washroom break.  I find this works for kids with Adhd also, I use to teach piano and I had a very musical but extremely hyper kid who was about 7, his lesson was 10min and then all games.  I think the box thing would have worked really well for him.

Hi,
I have a 13 who was learned to play the violin at 3.  I took him to a teacher (as I can only play piano) but I had a fancy box that I had a hole in it for him to reach in and grab a piece of paper with an instruction.  One paper would say, pluck an A, and then he would reach for another and it would say, do 5 jumping jacks, and another one would say to play and E with the bow, and then have a drink of juice, etc. etc.  He learned to pluck twinkle twinkle and play Ode to joy, in just 3 months of lessons.   Got an award too. He really enjoyed the lessons, as long as it wasn't just before nap time!  Actually when he was around 8 he was tested for, not  sure what it is called but the school does it to see if there are disabilities etc, and they found that his part of the brain that is responsible for learning music was in the 99 percentile-they said he could very well be a concert pianist if he wanted.  I'm trying to think what I did with him.  I played music constantly, not just classical, actually it was mostly not classical. I would play little tunes on the piano and have him repeat them, just a few notes at a time.   And we sang in the car with music all the time.  When he was eating I would sing with him.  Did a lot of clapping rhythm to music. He also did one year of 'music for young children', but that didn't really work out for us.   

I have a one year old now, and every time we go by the piano I play C or D, E and sing the note, and playing lots of Bach and other music, I'm hoping to get a repeat.  He doesn't seem as musical so far as the other one, not sure what the difference is.