Counselors
Cart
Parenting Press®News for Parents — December
Dear Friends of Parenting Press,
Welcome to the December issue of our electronic newsletter for parents. Our goal is to provide you with interesting and useful information in a format that’s quick and easy to read—and FREE. We welcome your comments, both about the newsletter content and its format. To get the newsletter delivered, you can sign up for an e-mail subscription.
December 2007
IN THIS ISSUE
- WHAT’S NEW?
- FEATURES
- POTPOURRI
- COMING ATTRACTIONS
- Be the Boss of Your Body
- How Playing Games Helps Stroke Patients
I. WHAT’S NEW?
-
Handmade for the Holidays
If you believe (as this newsletter editor does) that a gift needs to include a personal touch, here are some suggestions for handmade presents that we can almost guarantee will bring you heartfelt thanks. And there’s a bonus: creating these gifts may make wonderful family or parent-child projects. (Not a macaroni necklace or Popsicle picture frame among them, either!)
For a grandparent: frame a series of photos. Have your family cozy up on a bench or raised hearth, complete with pets, and set the remote. Tell everyone they’ve got to start out serious—and then let nature take its course. Keep snapping photos: who knows what you’ll get when one child tickles another or the cat and dog start wriggling.
If you have a good selection of old family photos, here’s another frame-up idea: photos of a grandparent, parent, yourself and your children at the same age, framed in sequence.
No photos? Frame all or part of a child’s drawing or painting. An inexpensive frame and a color mat can make even a kindergartner’s work worthy of showing off.
For the fashionista among family and friends, an older elementary and older child can work with you to create ribbon or fabric flowers to decorate a lapel, hat, headband, or tote bag. All you need is ribbon, matching thread, needle, pin back and an small piece of stiff fabric for the base (heavy interfacing and felt work well, too). You can simply gather the ribbon or fabric into a circle, tack it to the base and sew on a button for the center. Or use a fabric flower instruction book for the simple directions for creating “petals.” Check your library for a guide such as The Artful Ribbon: Beauties in Bloom by Candace Kling.
Courtesy of Dover PublicationsFor aunts, uncles, teachers and special friends: help your children pot up spring bulbs or an herb garden, or paint pretty envelopes for packaging seeds saved from your garden. If you gathered lavender from last summer’s crop, kids can break the dried blossoms into a circle of tulle that’s tied into a sachet with a few inches of pretty fabric ribbon.
For a young child: clean out your closet and the sewing room and create a dress-up collection. Fill your old wallet with play money and gather a yard or two of fabric into a skirt. Cut felt into a cowboy’s vest, or add a pin-striped vest from an old three-piece suit. Got a small old suitcase? Fill it with a couple of outdated ties, the strings of beads left from a Mardi Gras party and some of the dress-up clothes. Don’t forget the Groucho Marx-style eyeglasses and nose and a straw hat bought on a beach trip.
For outdoorsy types: if any of you knit, a simple stockinette stitch makes scarves and hats. A scarf requires only a long rectangle—maybe four or six inches wide by a yard or more long. For a hat, estimate the head circumference of the recipient and make your piece that wide. You’ll probably want it at least six inches long. Bind it off, seam the side and then gather the top. (For a child’s favorite doll or stuffed animal, make a matching hat after you measure the toy’s head.)
Other gifts to craft: your family as paper dolls, using the tips in our May issue [no longer in the archive], and sock dolls and trivets like those in our June issue [also no longer in the archive].
Finally, homemade gifts that you can ask for: an annotated family tree, with comments by grandparents or great-grandparents about their memories of people and places. Even more special: a album of photos copied from family favorites, with people identified and maps and other memorabilia tucked in.
-
Dollars and Sense
What do comic books have to do with money? For those of us who avidly collected Illustrated Classics, Archie and Mickey Mouse, comic books simply meant spending money. Today, however, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York uses the comic book format to create kid-friendly descriptions of such topics as how currency developed; saving and its importance in the U.S. economy; how banks operate; and what inflation is. Better yet, these comic books are free. Just click through to the New York Federal Reserve web site.
The Fed provides other materials for kids, home-schoolers, teachers, youth group leaders and us parents, too. The left menu, headed “Education,” has a tab that leads to materials for elementary and middle-school students, and another one for high school students. Many of the materials are oriented to kids who live close enough to Manhattan for a visit to the Fed. Those not planning such a trip will find publications such as the “Econ Explorers’ Journal” valuable. Especially appropriate for 10-14-year-old kids being home-schooled or in a youth group, this is a 24-page PDF with five projects that teach about personal finance.
For those of us adults who never took an economics course, the materials on this site (including the comic books on foreign trade, monetary policy, and the development of the Federal Reserve system) will be informative. “The Story of Money” includes a brief glossary that will help both adults and kids. Plus, there’s a downloadable brochure that suggests questions you should ask when buying gift cards.
Although the Fed claims these booklets were written in everyday language, the vocabulary will be unfamiliar to even some middle-schoolers and the type is small. Kids will get the most out of these if they go over them with parents.
-
Write into the New Year
There is no better gift than literacy, and as 2008 beckons, consider introducing your children to projects that showcase what kids write.
High school students have a chance to get published in “Surrounded,” an annual literary journal published by students at southern California Campbell Hall High School and their humanities instructor, Glen Hirshberg, himself the author of an adult novel and two collections. First published in 2006, “Surrounded” welcomes “the best and bravest new creative work” from teenagers across the country. There’s no charge to submit material and no payment for materials published. (But imagine being able to describe yourself as a published author on your college application or resume!) For submission guidelines, see www.surroundedmag.com.
Younger kids (8-14) can have their artwork and writing published in “Kids’ X-Press,” which is issued by a pro-literacy nonprofit. Its goal: to communicate from a child’s perspective. Kids can choose a subject (such as current events, sports, fashion, entertainment or personal experiences) and a genre (such as drawing, painting, poetry, reviews, interviews, recipes, essay or opinion). The only restrictions: nothing offensive or hurtful to the reader, such as profanity and material that promotes violence.
Send completed materials with a permission slip from a parent (see the Kids’ X-Press web site) to:
Kids X-Press, P. O. Box 374, White Plains NY 10603.
Remember that your originals may not be returned.
-
Trash into Toys
You’re frantic with holiday tasks? Trying to cook, wrap, address, sew, and decorate and now you have a tot begging for something new to do? Here’s some examples of how you can “re-purpose” recyclables into at least temporary toys:
Wrapping paper and paper towel tubes make great horns. Small kids are usually fascinated with how their voices sound coming out of the cardboard cylinders. (Your crew would rather use the tubes as swords? Then send them outdoors to do battle in the backyard.)
Bubble wrap can snap, snap, snap a little like firecrackers. Spread it out on the floor and let your preschooler jump on the bubbles or show kids how to pop each bubble with their hands.
Plastic soda bottles and milk cartons can be cut into wide-mounted funnels perfect for playing with corn meal or water (indoors) and sand (outdoors).
Kids old enough for scissors can cut armholes in paper grocery bags and play “paper bag princesses” and turn sheets of the comics into “grass” skirts. Or they can use old lunch bags for paper bag “gowns” for dolls and stuffed animals. For inspiration, see Robert Munsch’s book, “The Paper Bag Princess,” which shows how an ingenious young royal dresses herself when her wardrobe is destroyed. (Munsch’s web site tells all about how he created the story, too!)
Egg cartons and the plastic clam-shell packaging that big-box stores use for apples can be instant molds for snowballs. Kids can build snow forts with “bricks” shaped in shoe boxes. Trim the tops of snow structures with turrets and towers formed in cylinders like salt boxes and potato crisp containers.
Scraps of yarn and ribbon make colorful wigs for stuffed animals or a string of paper dolls that you or your child cut out of a grocery bag.
The worn out socks that you sort out of laundry can be instant puppets. Little kids can make faceless creatures “talk” for them, while older kids might use markers, buttons and more of the yarn and ribbon scraps for features.
II. FEATURES
-
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 December are:
December 1 — Family Harmony During the Holidays
December 8 — Managing Feelings in December, Part I
December 15 — Managing Feelings in December, Part II
December 22 — Young Children and Family Spiritual Practices
December 29 — Time Spent with Young Children
-
Family Fun Ideas — Caroling through the Neighborhood
Introduce your children to the tradition of caroling by inviting friends, family, other parents from child care and school and co-workers to join you for a late afternoon or early evening walk through your neighborhood. Make sure every couple has lyrics for the songs you want to sing and if someone has an instrument—so much the better!
If you have snow, you can substitute greetings in writing. Gather a group of friends—kids or adults—and build snowmen in nearby front yards, especially where neighbors are ill or elderly. To each set of stick arms, attach a colorful sign facing the door or window that says “Holiday greetings!”
-
Community Service: Sharing the Holidays
Our usual goal with this column is to suggest ways that you can model the concept of sharing and giving back to your community. There are other 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.
In December, however, there’s no shortage of community service projects seeking your help. That’s why we typically suggest doing something for friends, neighbors or acquaintances, something more personal and individual. This month, what could be nicer than sharing part of your holiday time with someone who is alone, sad or ill? It could be the single woman down the street whose children are across the country this year or the cancer patient across the street—or the new widower you’ve met at the bus stop. Stop by on Christmas Eve with an invitation to candlelight services, or drop off a loaf of banana bread on Christmas morning.
Even simpler: have each person in your family make a holiday card or write a note, and mail them on different days so the recipient has several days of surprises in the mailbox.
-
Last Chance: “Reader Rewards” Program
Tell us how you use a Parenting Press publication and we’ll send you much more than a thank-you note. In fact, we’ll send you an entire book—your choice of anything Parenting Press publishes!
If you have a favorite Parenting Press publication you’d like to tell us about, please send us your comments and contact information. Be sure to describe the ages of the children with whom you’ve used the book and specific situations where a book’s tips were helpful. If we use your comment, you will receive a gift certificate redeemable on your choice of Parenting Press publication.
Please note that all submissions become the property of Parenting Press for use in promotional literature and activities and that we reserve the right to identify you by name, title and city of residence/place of business. However, you will be contacted for written permission prior to the use of your submission. All “Reader Rewards” submissions should be received by Parenting Press prior to Dec. 31, 2007.
-
Raise funds with a Parenting Press Book Fair
Would your school or group like a new fund-raiser?
For years Parenting Press has been offering its carefully written books on child guidance, problem-solving and dealing with feelings through preschool Book Fairs. Now our Book Fairs are being expanded to schools, churches, child-care programs, parenting groups—any organization that can use parenting and children’s books.
More information about our Book Fairs is posted online. We have posted a copy of the brochure, an explanation of how much you can earn with a Book Fair, a step-by-step guide to make Book Fairs easy and fun to organize and downloadable promotional materials.
III. POTPOURRI
-
Special of the month—Countdown to Christmas
This special has expired.
-
Does the newsletter work properly?
We would like this newsletter to be interactive—a place where we can ask for your opinion on what we are doing and what information people who live or work with children would like to see from Parenting Press. We would also like you to tell us what information and books you need and want.
We welcome your comments on the format and content on the feedback form. Thank you!
-
How to receive (or send) a no-cost subscription to this e-zine.
We hope you have enjoyed PARENTING PRESS NEWS FOR PARENTS.
Subscribing: If you were referred to this newsletter by a friend or colleague, you can have it delivered by signing up for an e-mail subscription (there’s no cost). If you received the e-mail edition from Parenting Press, you are already subscribed.
If you enjoyed the newsletter, don’t hesitate to tell your friends. If they wish to continue receiving the newsletter, they will need to subscribe.
If you are a parent educator, feel free to tell your colleagues, students, or friends who might be interested.
Thank you!
-
Reprinting e-zine articles in your newsletter.
If you publish a school, preschool, day care or parenting newsletter, you are welcome to reprint articles from this e-zine. Simply include our copyright notice with a phrase such as
Reprinted with permission from Parenting Press News for Parents, copyright © 2007. For a free subscription, see www.ParentingPress.com/signup.html.And please mail a copy of your newsletter to Publicity Department, P.O. Box 75267, Seattle WA 98175-0267.
Home · Special Services · Parenting Resources · Professional Resources · Subscribe to Newsletter · Contact Us