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Parenting Press®Welcome to the August 2010
“News for Parents”
Dear Friends of Parenting Press:
Books, info sheets, teaching plans, kids’ activities: we’re always in a whirl at Parenting Press with dozens of ideas that we hope you’ll enjoy and find helpful. Many are described in this issue; others will be published in later issues (see Coming Attractions).
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IN THIS ISSUE
- WHAT’S NEW?
- FEATURES
- POTPOURRI
- COMING ATTRACTIONS
- 101 Things Everyone Should Know about Math
- Gossip: Think Before You Speak
- Solutions for Bedtime Battles
I. WHAT’S NEW?
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Books You’ve Gotta Read with Your Kids
Fifty Fables for Children, The Emperor’s New Clothes, and Max and Moritz are among stories from the 1800s that open the chapter about books for children who are 5 and older in 1001 Children’s Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up, which we’ve been reviewing this summer. For the June comment about books for those from birth to 3, or the July comment about books for those 3 and older, see the “News for Parents” archives.
Other wonderful vintage stories in this chapter include The Magic Fishbone, one of the few children’s stories written by Charles Dickens, about an impoverished king and queen and their nineteen children being rescued by the fishbone given to Princess Alicia. Then there’s A Child’s Garden of Verse by Robert Louis Stevenson, published in 1885, The Jungle Book and Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling, and The Dutch Twins, one of twenty-six books about twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins, whose books started to be published prior to World War I. “The work ethic of the family across three generations dominates the story and informs the reader about the traditional rural Dutch lifestyle,” says the description.
Books new to the “News for Parents” editor and possibly new to you, too, are Ameliaranne and the Green Umbrella, Rupert the Bear, and Millions of Cats. The first in a series about a “resourceful” little girl, published in England in 1920, Ameliaranne shows her resourcefulness by hiding little cakes and cookies in the umbrella to take home to her brothers and sisters. Rupert was introduced in a British newspaper in 1920 and his stories published in book form a year later; with him your children can try out a flying carpet or visit one of Rupert’s relatives at the North Pole. A very old, very lonely couple become the owners of millions of cats when the husband goes to search for a cat for his wife—but cannot decide which one to select. Its text includes such lyrical refrains as “Cats here, cats there, Cats and kittens everywhere, Hundreds of cats, Thousands of cats, Millions and billions and trillions of cats. . .”
Of course, this chapter includes books well-known to many of us: The Velveteen Rabbit, Charlotte’s Web, Amelia Bedelia, more Winnie-the-Pooh tales by A. A. Milne, Mr. Popper’s Penguins, Pippi Longstocking, Blueberries for Sal, My Father’s Dragon, Flat Stanley, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Strega Nona, and Stone Soup.
Many of these are excellent choices for reluctant readers because they describe situations that kids can relate to. Because of their humor, they’ll also be fun for the adult who is helping with tough words or reading part of the book. A child with a pesky younger sibling will probably laugh through Ramona the Pest, and all of us can appreciate the problems that befall a little boy in Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.
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Selling Kids on Cell Phone Etiquette
If you have a child who has just received a cell phone, or if you’ve decided it’s time for a few ground rules about where the phone goes, when it’s in use and what it’s used for, Michelle Cimino shares her tips in a little book called Cell Phone Etiquette: Observations from a Mom. Your family will want to decide which of these make sense for it to adopt:
Even if you’ve been on the phone while browsing in a store, end your call when you get to the cashier.
Turn your phone off in restaurants and pay attention to the people you’re with.
Leave the phone in your bedroom when you sit down to dinner. This should be family time.
Excuse yourself if the phone rings when you’re in front of another person.
Don’t use the phone for anything, even texting, in class.
Don’t let anyone take revealing photos of you with a cell phone—and don’t photograph any of your friends in a way that might embarrass them or their families now or in the future.
Aside from etiquette and personal safety, Cimino has another suggestion for cell phone use. If you’re in an accident or you witness one, photograph the scene before people or vehicles are moved. These pictures may be important to the insurance company or police.
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Advice for August’s New Dads
Did you know there are more babies more in August than any other month? That probably means that there are more new fathers in August than any other time of the year.
And that’s probably why we’ve got a copy of The New Dad from A to Z: Real Tips for a Surreal Time (Andrews McMeel) to tell you about. Each two-page spread has one page with a letter of the alphabet with advice, and each facing page has a photo with a comment: “A is for anxiety, B is for breastfeeding, C is for coffee.” The comments are flippant: “You say you love coffee? You have no idea what it’s like to love coffee. Not until you have kids. . .” “D is for diapers. Most pending parents (OK, fathers) fear the soiled nappy more than lack of sleep, college tuition, or colic. True, they don’t really even know what colic is, so what’s to worry about?” An upbeat little volume with photos contributed by other parents, probably most appropriate as a gift for the guy at a baby shower. (Perhaps presented with a homemade card that shows pictures of friends or family members who are parents of young children mimicking some of the pictures in the book! Say, cousin Cal holding a giant coffee mug, and brother Bob holding his nose with one hand while gingerly lifting a dirty diaper.)
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Prepping for School: Get Kids Ready for Kindergarten
If your family has someone starting kindergarten this school year, veteran preschool teacher Sandi Dexter has some suggestions for preparing your child. (Many of these tips apply to kids starting an academic preschool, too.) Dexter, a much beloved North Seattle teacher and the author of Joyful Play with Toddlers: Recipes for Fun with Odds and Ends, says that before children leave preschool, she hopes they learn:
- Self-restraint (in other words, they may want to hit or take someone else’s toy, but they don’t)
- Self-reliance (they will try a task on their own, and ask for help when necessary)
- Self-regulation (they can calm themselves)
- Self-care (they recognize when they need a break or snack, and they can say “no” when they don’t like how they’re being treated)
- Self-confidence (they are willing to try tasks, and they have confidence about those tasks they have mastered)
Her preschool rules are guidelines you may want to consider for your home, and for the children’s kindergarten:
- We respect ourselves, and we know how to tell others we need “our space.” Explain to your child that some people like to be hugged and they like to sit touching each other, and others do not. If your child is one of those who needs more personal space, role-play some ways of asking classmates to understand that.
- We respect each other, which means we can keep our hands to ourselves
- We respect our school supplies, our school facilities and our schoolmates; we keep ourselves, our friends and our building/playground safe.
It may be helpful to coach your prospective kindergartener on such behavior as:
- Following directions. For example, “Take off your coat,” “Hang up your coat,” “Wash your hands and sit down in the circle.”
- Paying attention when someone is speaking. Especially when kids are in their chairs or the circle, they need to be able to listen to the speaker and not disturb their seatmates.
- Waiting. They need to be able to wait for a turn at an activity, and wait to be called on before speaking to the group.
- Recognizing who owns what. Kids need to be able to identify what belongs to them, so that they stay out of others’ desks and cubbies and they need to ask permission before using someone else’s school supplies.
- Identifying what must go home with them each day: coat, lunchbox, schoolwork, messages for parents. Dexter suggests containers in the backpack that can serve as visual cues, such as a special colored folder or plastic envelope for mail for parents.
- Sitting quietly on the bus, and listening to the driver. Make sure your child understands where to get off the bus and what to do if the stop is missed. (This can be especially important the first week or two when routes or drivers have changed from the previous year and a driver will sometimes forget where to stop.)
Dexter also recommends that parents discuss strategies with children for handling such common playground issues as bullying and name calling. There are often not enough recess monitors to watch every group of children, and these monitors and teachers do sometimes ignore what they consider minor problems. You may want to talk about how you were bullied or the names you were called as a child. Books like My Name is Not Dummy, Heidi’s Irresistible Hat, Amy’s Disappearing Pickle and Bully on the Bus allow you and your child to try different ways of responding to problems like name-calling, teasing, petty theft and bullying.
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Prepping for School: Supplies for Military Kids
If yours is a military family, each of your children may be eligible for a backpack full of school supplies. Operation Homefront, a national nonprofit that provides emergency assistance to the families of service members, has 23 chapters across the country that are distributing the complimentary school supplies as part of its fourth annual Back-to-School Brigade. Most backpacks will go to the children of enlisted ranks. The chapters are shown on a map available at www.operationhomefront.net/map.aspx or you can locate your nearest chapter by entering your ZIP code at the Operation Homefront home page.
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Prepping for School: Sharpen Small Motor Skills
Because children today are less likely to play with Tinker Toys, Erector sets, paper dolls and other toys that encourage the development of the small motor skills important in handwriting, they’ll benefit from simple activities that do require eye-hand coordination and dexterity. As you think ahead to school in another few weeks, you might spend 10 or 15 minutes a day with your kids on such projects as:
Cutting chains of paper dolls and decorating them with pages cut from a catalog are easy ways of improving small motor skills.Origami. Most kindergarten and older children can fold paper airplanes or hats for Beanie Babies and similarly sized stuffed toys and dolls.
Stencils. Use soft pencils and stencils to outline cars, flowers, and other simple shapes.
Stitching. If you draw circles or hearts on muslin with a dark pencil, your kids can use a large needle and coarse thread to outline the shapes with a plain stitch (when you’re close enough to supervise, of course)
Cutting. Kids can cut on the lines of used notebook paper or cut freehand to make fringes for collages. Those with more scissors skill can make paper snowflakes or chains of people or critters, cutting freehand or with stencils.
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Prepping for Schools: For Kids Who Create Dioramas
The “News for Parents” editor loves vintage dollhouses, and she was charmed by the title of a recently published book, Mixed Media Dollhouses: Techniques and ideals for Doll-Size Assemblages. It didn’t take too many pages for her to realize that with their tips on assemblages, authors Tally Oliveau and Julie Molina have created an ideal how-to guide for school projects such as dioramas.
If you have children who’ll be creating scenes from stories for book reports, of savannas for geography, or the plant life cycle for science, you’ll want a copy of this 2010 publication from Quarry Books. It provides step-by-step directions for creating the bases for dioramas.
Better yet, you’ll find complete descriptions of adhesives, fasteners, furniture construction and materials with tips on which to use depending on the task, and which need careful adult supervision or assistance.
Best of all, Oliveau and Molina walk you through three levels of complexity for scenes and assemblages (which could be memory boxes, miniature houses or other collections). They start with cut-outs, which will require real tools and adult assistance, and if you (or your children) are looking for something less demanding, you can page ahead to mat board cut-outs, which require use of a kraft knife. Or flip to page 32 and “The No Cutting, Faux Cutting Method,” which is described as, “If you’re really not a fan of cutting, you can still create the illusion of windows, doors and other features without all the hard work.” In other words, ideal for kids who can handle scissors. (Or for students who wait until the night before to start a project.) To help with this level, the book includes templates that can be traced or photocopied.
Another advantage of this book: although many of the pictured projects use purchased materials, the authors are enthusiastic about do-it-yourself construction. This can keep costs down and keep your kids focused on creativity.
Tip: if you anticipate projects such as dioramas or assemblages in your students’ futures, consider saving materials that may be useful: magazine ads for windows, tourist literature showing scenic vistas and exotic animals, corks, Popsicle sticks, fabric scraps, wooden blocks, and tiny boxes.
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Prepping for Schools: Protecting Kids from Sexual Abuse
The first step in protecting your children from sexual abuse is understanding who the predators might be. Most of us grew up being warned about “stranger danger,” but the unfortunate reality is that most molesters don’t look like dirty old men.
As Sandy K. Wurtele points out in her new book, Out of Harm’s Way: A Parent’s Guide to Protecting Young Children from Sexual Abuse, most abusers aren’t strangers and most aren’t old. They aren’t dirty, or creepy, or homeless bums, either. In 90 percent of the cases, kids are abused by someone they know. These abusers are usually in their 30s, and they can be as young as teenagers, either kids just a little older than the victim, older siblings or baby-sitters. “People who ‘sexploit’ children often lead two lives,” says Wurtele, “a respected public life and a hidden private life.” Recent examples include priests, politicians and teachers arrested for sexually abusing children.
The most important point to remember: most abusers have power and authority over their targets. “Being an authority figure doesn’t depend on the person’s age or gender, but is based on the child’s perception that the person is ‘in charge of’, or more powerful than, the child,” continues Wurtele, a psychology professor in Colorado who has spent her career working on prevention of child sexual abuse.
How can we spot a molester? Be concerned, says Wurtele, about anyone, male or female, who:
Insists on touching a child even when the child does not want to be hugged, kissed, tickled, held or wrestled with
Seems obsessed with being with children or touching them
Does not respect your child’s personal boundaries (for example, walks in on kids when they’re dressing or bathing)
Lavishes inappropriate attention and expensive gifts on your child
Seeks opportunities to be alone with your child by offering to baby-sit, have your child sleep over or drive your child somewhere
Shares inappropriate personal information and asks for similar information about your family
Makes comments about sexuality, especially about your child
How you can “molester-proof” your child, monitor whether your child is being “groomed” for abuse by anyone and be a vigilant parent is covered in objective, straightforward language in Wurtele’s book. Like all Parenting Press titles, it was extensively field tested, and “no scare tactics” was one of the most common comments by those parents and professionals who read the manuscript. “A must-read,” said many.
II. FEATURES
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Tips for the month
Each Saturday, Parenting Press posts a new parenting tip and the previous week’s tip is moved to the archive. The topics planned for August are:
August 7 — Helping Kids Living In Volatile Homes
August 14 — Ways to Help Children Experiencing Abandonment
August 21 — Unkind Comments from Teens & Tweens, Part I
August 28 — Unkind Comments from Teens & Tweens, Part II
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Family Fun Ideas — Summer’s Not Over Yet!
Some kids are already back in the classroom, and others are watching their vacation days slip away. For fun on the last days of summer break and on upcoming long weekends, here’s some ideas for home and away.
Where to Go
The Santa Fe Cathedral, courtesy of GozaicIf you have time for a road trip, even a short one, click through to www.gozaic.com for historic destinations. Described as an online community for people seeking heritage- and culture-rich experiences, Gozaic was created by a for-profit subsidiary of the nonprofit National Trust for Historic Preservation. On this site you can research heritage destinations, sites and events, read and write reviews, create photo galleries and join special interest groups called Circles.
To give this a try, we clicked on “Heritage Areas” in the menu. They’re described as “landscapes with nationally distinctive natural, cultural, historic, and scenic resources.” For example: the path Andrew Jackson traced with his troops during the Civil War, the Oregon Trail, and the Anasazi Indian cliff dwellings in Colorado. To narrow our search, we typed “fire engines” in the search box, and up came such suggestions as:
Farnumsville Fire Station in the John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor in Grafton, Massachusetts, where the c. 1853 Blackstone Engine House #3 houses The Emperor, a restored antique fire engine.
Texas Trail Museum in the Tracks Across Wyoming area, which preserves the heritage of the frontier crossroads area (eastern Laramie County, Wyoming). Displays include generators, diesel engines, a 1938 fire engine, the first school house in the area, a restored Catholic church, the Brodine-Walker Boarding House and Union Pacific caboose 25276.
Firehouse Museum, the oldest firehouse in San Diego, with displays of old fire engines, including “The Lancaster,” an 1841 hand-pulled steam engine.
Keep Kids Happy
If you’ll be in the car for more than an hour, here are more ideas for keeping kids busy in the back seat. (See the June and July issues for other tips.)
Foil wrap. It can be shaped into critters, masks, jewelry or used as an impromptu mirror.
Pipe cleaners. Real pipe cleaners from the tobacco section of your neighborhood store are white; combine them with the chenille stems made for crafting, and your kids can twist these wiry sticks into people, animals, miniature sports equipment and posies.
Magazines. Hand each child a magazine and a marker to circle certain kinds of words: those with three of a certain vowel, those that start with Z, those with both an X and a Y, and for older kids, those with a certain number of syllables.
Maps. For trips of at least several hours, give each child a map of your route. The kids can keep track of your progress toward the destination, and use stickers or markers to mark interesting spots: the concrete dinosaurs, the lavender fields, a waterfall, or the city park where you picnicked for lunch.
A story that never ends. Give one family member a word or phrase to prompt the creation of a story, and let that person talk until an hourglass fills. Then, even if your storyteller is mid-sentence!—it’s time for the next person to continue the tale. Go through each family member, with the last one obligated to wrap it all up—or continue to the next rest stop.
Commemorate the Trip
Save your admission tickets, bus passes, and guide books for a future project, like an illustrated journal of your trip for that “How I spent my summer vacation” essay or a holiday newsletter. Or maybe even laminate these souvenirs into place mats or coasters!
Stay-cation Crafting
The fashionistas in your house can create felted beads from the wool roving used for felting and spinning, or use bread dough clay for beads or brooches. They can run simple stitches through grosgrain to make ribbon flowers for lapels or hats or add buckles to wide ribbons and turn them into belts reminiscent of preppie garb. (Instructions at How to Make Your Own Pants Belt.)
Almost as much fun: salvaging summer clothes by sewing appliques or buttons over the stains and snags so that the shirts and shorts are ready to go back to school. (You can cut simple stencils with images in coloring books or use precut stencils like Dover’s “Fun with Trucks Stencils.”)
For homemade fun, cut pictures of each other or photographs from magazine, mount them on lightweight cardboard, cut the heads from the bodies, and then assemble the pictures into new combinations.
Very young children can also play with the textures of fabric scraps: drop them in a box, stitch them together for a simple book or use them to make patchwork blocks: fuzzy wool on one side, lace on another, corduroy on a third, and pique, satin, velvet or canvas on the others.
Create together: gather everyone around the table, pass out art supplies (possibly supplemented with found objects) and each of you draw or paint or collage. Maybe you have a project—birthday cards for Grandma—and maybe people just want to experiment with materials and color.
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Community Service — Quilts to Comfort Kids
Our goal with this column is to suggest ways that you can model the concept of sharing and giving back to your community. There are practical advantages to community service, too. Kids can use these projects to meet school or youth group requirements for community service and to start building resumes that they’ll use when applying for first jobs or college.
This month our focus is quilts that comfort kids who are ill or victims of abuse or violence. Across the country there are many volunteer groups that create quilts—for cancer patients, for kids in shelters, for kids in refugee camps. One such organization is Quilts for Kids, a Pennsylvania nonprofit which has two goals: one is to keep unwanted fabric out of landfills, and the other very important goal is to provide something tangible for those who need to be reminded how many people care for them.
Quilts for Kids, like many similar groups, has size, material and style specifications for individuals and groups who’d like to make a quilt; many guidelines are to ensure that the quilts stand up to repeated machine washing and drying. See www.quiltsforkids.org/patterns/. For more information, select “Pattern Gallery” from the web site home page. Although the organization’s first quilts were made with discarded fabric, you’re not limited to that: you can use new fabric or remnants from another project.
To get started on a quilt, check the web site to see if there is a Quilts for Kids chapter near you. If there isn’t, and your kids belong to a youth group that wants to start a chapter, you’ll find tips on the web site. If you have a local chapter, the quilts you and your family create with the chapter members will stay in your community. Your family or youth group can also make quilts as an individual project and send them to Pennsylvania.
III. POTPOURRI
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Special of the month — Out of Harm’s Way
This special has expired.
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