My blog covers education and children’s books. When I cover parenting issues, it usually contains book recommendations. Parenting topics include academic subjects, summer learning, bullying, special needs, fitness and more.
In today’s increasingly multicultural world, many children hear two or more languages being spoken on a daily basis. Studies have shown that children that grow up with more than one language outperform their peers in verbal and non-verbal skills, and perform better on standardized tests.
From The Bowen Cookbook from 1994. There was one “recipe” included by a parent that I thought you might enjoy.
How to Really Love a Child *
Anyone who has organized their child’s team sports (ahem… me once and only once) knows the pain of keeping the team member’s parents informed about an endless list of things from who is bringing a nut-free snack to where is that game anyway?! It’s a lot of stuff to coordinate on top of practices. Last year, my oldest’s soccer team went electronic and our coach put everyone on Team Snap. It seemed to help with the day-to-day communication though it is only as good as the users who participate (i.e. if you are not going to make a game, you now have 3 options to tell people BUT you still have do something!). My husband and I are huge fans of Team Snap and should he decide to coach again, he’d definitely use it. Then I discovered Directra, which is another free electronic organization tool for teams but also large groups (think volunteer groups at the PTO/PTA). To avoid a brain cramp, I asked the nice folks at Directra to give me an unbiased feature by feature comparison. The upshot is this: electronic organization for groups is a godsend to organizers. Both of these platforms are FREE. TeamSnap is specifically for team sports and is great and very helpful for volunteer coaches/parents. Directra is great for team sports and group efforts such as volunteers. Since participants need to be entered into the system which is the most time consuming part, I’d suggest picking the platform that you’ll use the most over the long haul. PTO/PTA management types: use Directra. Coaches that will coach their child from cradle to college: TeamSnap is for you. But don’t take my word on this; read on to decide for yourself!
We are trying to stay active during the long, snowy winter and this is the list we came up with for our family. Here are some creative ideas we found: rock climbing, snow golf (carve out your own holes), spray bottles with colored water to spray on snow, snow tubing, lemon ice making, dance party, obstacle course building, and indoor fort building. More ideas listed in the post.
A Dad Friend sent me this article from the New York Times on ruthless decluttering, Mom, You’re One Tough Art Critic. The more I thought about posting on this, the more I remembered the piles of messy art that I have squirreled away throughout my house and realized that I was in no position to be giving advice on how to purge or store your child’s artwork.
My 5th grader is doing a Sharon Creech author study in class and she’s been reading and loving Ruby Holler, Heartbeat, and trying to get the group that gets to read Chasing Redbird. We tend to agree on books that we like but it’s strange that we haven’t when it comes to Sharon Creech. Don’t get me wrong; we both LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Sharon Creech, but we LOVE, LOVE, LOVE different books.
As for my second hand saturday, please leave a comment to win. I will email the winners to get their mailing addresses. I will chose the winner based on your comment of WHY YOU WANT and NEED THE BOOK. I just want to get the book into the right hands!