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Parenting Press®Welcome to the January 2010
“News for Parents”
This electronic newsletter has dozens of ideas that we at Parenting Press hope you’ll find helpful and interesting. To suggest a story topic or to comment on article content or format, please use the link after each article; we welcome your feedback.
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IN THIS ISSUE
- WHAT’S NEW?
- FEATURES
- POTPOURRI
- COMING ATTRACTIONS
- Beating the Winter Blahs, Part 2
- Community Service: Nothing Puzzling about It!
- Sip & Soak and Other Creative Valentines
- Staying Sane and Solvent through the College Search
I. WHAT’S NEW?
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What Families Need to Know about Pre-College Exams
If you are the parent of a college-bound high school sophomore or junior, get prepared: chances are that next month, after test scores from the October PSAT are sold to colleges, you’ll discover that recruiters are anxious to reach your child. (Yes, you read that right. Testing agencies sell kids’ contact information—but only to legitimate educational programs. The price is about 30 cents each.) Depending on how well your student has scored on this exam, there may be a brochure or two in the mailbox each day—or a deluge of letters, postcards, brochures, catalogs, CDs, e-mail and phone calls.
More than 1,700 of the 2,400 four-year American colleges and universities buy millions of PSAT, SAT and AP (Advanced Placement) scores from the College Board, and a similar number buy ACT scores. Other colleges and technical schools collect names from contact cards filled out at college fairs, from church congregations, youth groups, and sometimes even high school directories. Military recruiters use similar sources. Overall, your child could receive information from as many as 3,000 post-secondary programs.
For students and parents alike, this can be overwhelming, bewildering and misleading, especially if a student’s PSAT, SAT and ACT scores and GPA (grade point average) are unimpressive. For explanations, “News for Parents” turned to college admission counselors who work with western Washington families. Seattle’s Katherine Vaughan, Ph.D., pointed out that college “recruitment managers” watch demographics, and they know that the number of college-age students will begin to decline soon. Admissions officers are hoping that the promotion they do now will develop visibility for the period ahead when recruiting will become very competitive, she said.
“And there’s no question that schools are seeking to increase their perception of selectivity, especially schools that are well known in their regions but striving for national awareness.”
In other words, the more applications a college or university receives, the smaller the percentage of students it can accept (few schools significantly increase class size each year), and the choosier it appears to be when compared with other institutions. Of course, more applicants does also mean that a college has a better chance of improving its student body’s average test scores and GPAs, two other statistics used in rankings by such college directories as the U.S. News Ultimate College Guide and the Fiske Guide to Colleges.
Depending on which categories they select in the “Student Information” or “Preferences” sections on tests and college information web sites, some students may receive far more promotional messages than others with better academic records and test scores. An institution striving for greater gender or ethnic diversity, or introducing a new major, will buy different test-taker data than an college targeting possible National Merit Semi-finalists. Students’ contact information can be sorted in many ways, including by test score ranges (exact scores are not released), GPA, class rank, gender, geography (home town or college preference), ethnicity, religion, intended major, need for financial aid, sports, ROTC participation, activities and honors.
If your child has not already completed the student questionnaire portion of the registration for these pre-college exams, the two of you might want to discuss the selections that could be made based on family or student preferences. For example, because she did not indicate a religious preference when registering (and because neither the SAT or ACT testing agencies allow you to opt out of receiving information from church-affiliated colleges), the “News for Parents” editor’s daughter was swamped with mail and phone calls from schools affiliated with fundamentalist denominations. (She later joked that they apparently interpreted “no preference” as “potential convert” and said she wished she’d chosen “Buddhist” from the list of options, because there are so few colleges linked to that faith.) Of course, many college recruiters disregard such indicated preferences when buying lists; students who ask to receive information only from highly competitive colleges will probably continue to receive mail from schools with lower admission standards.
Especially important to know in this economy: students who are eligible for free or reduced-price meals through the National School Lunch Act are usually eligible for significantly reduced fees on the PSAT, SAT, ACT and AP exams, which can otherwise cost as much as $86 each (which means that a student paying regular fees for AP exams will be charged $86 multiplied by the number of exams, sometimes as many as five). So even if your child does not want to eat school lunches or breakfasts, contact your school district for more information if your household income is considered low for your area (in Seattle, for 2009, the income ceiling was about $40,000 for a family of four). Foster children can also apply for these fee waivers regardless of the income of the foster family. School guidance counselors can also identify other reasons that students may qualify for fee waivers.
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Beat the Blahs
The holidays are over and spring is months away for most of us. If dreary dark days are giving your family the blahs, here are more than a dozen ideas for fun on rainy afternoons or for impromptu gatherings on Saturday mornings with neighbors and cousins. Many of these would make ideal projects for at-home birthday parties, too. (Packing the kids off to the grandparents? You might want to send these suggestions along!)
We started at the library for how-to’s and inspiration, and here are some of the books we used.
- Martha Stewart’s Encyclopedia of Crafts (Potter Craft, 2009)
- Plus It: How to Easily Turn Everyday Activities into Learning Adventures for Kids (Morgan James Publishing, 2009)
- Wiggles, Tickles and Rhymes (Pierce County Library System Early Learning Department)
- Norma Toraya’s Paper Puppet Palooza (Quayside Publishing Group, 2009)
- GrandLoving: Making Memories with Your Grandchildren, by Sue Johnson and Julie Carlson (Heartstrings Press)
We also surfed the ‘net for help, and here are web sites you may find useful.
Some of these projects will delight toddlers through teens; others are better for kids with some small motor control. Of course, adult supervision is important with younger children and when knives, sharp scissors and trips outside the yard are involved.
Dig out the cookie cutters and large russet potatoes for potato printing. Even old potatoes work well; cut them with such simple shapes as tulip, star or heart. Stamp your designs with tempera or fabric paint on paper, cloth scraps or T-shirts.
Want a more detailed stamp? Copy a coloring book image or create your own on a shoe innersole, cut it out and then mount it on a small wood scrap.
If you’d rather have your kids create prints without paint or ink, put a sheet of brightly colored construction paper in a sunny window and arrange objects on it (maybe that tulip-shaped cookie cutter). In a few days, you’ll have a sun print! (You can also buy special paper for sunprinting.)
Dump a couple of inches of sand in a shallow box or dishpan, add enough water to dampen it, and then make a hand or foot print that can be filled with plaster of paris. What could be a more special paperweight for your home desk than a plaster cast of your toddler’s tootsies?
Use the leftover sand, gelatin molds, yogurt containers and little boxes to shape tiny sand castles. (Put a tarp down in the kitchen or move this project to a carport or patio.)
Practice tying knots with lightweight nylon rope: slip knots, half-hitches and bowlines.
Want to try the same knots with cotton or silk cord? You can make friendship bracelets, 70s style macrame, or bookmarks.
Another idea for bookmarks: ribbon tied to old keys, charms or other found objects.
Cut out paper dolls that can be downloaded for free from the Internet. You’ll find “Berenstain Bears Dress-Up Dolls” on about.com and all sorts of other dolls, including a cat with several historic costumes, at www.familycrafts.about.com. Older kids may like the “Twilight” character dolls.
Let your imaginations run wild (or goofy, as the case might be) with the paper dolls, paper puppets and other cut-outs. Trim clothes with glitter and paper doilies, add arms, legs, yarn hair, bead jewelry or. . .you name it! (The “News for Parents” editor, experiencing a little cabin fever one day, used brass fasteners to give a cut-out extra arms and legs that move.)
Play “I Spy with My Little Eye.” The rules are simple: the person who is “it” selects an object that everyone can see and says, “I spy with my little eye something that is red,” or something that starts with “p,” or “s” or “a.” Or whatever. The family member who guesses correctly gets to make the next selection.
Play tag with your shadows. Even if it’s really, really cold, you can probably bundle up enough for ten minutes in the sunshine chasing each other’s shadows.
Stretch your baby’s imagination with fingerplays like “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” and “Five Little Monkeys.” Another one that the Pierce County (Washington) Library System suggests in its “Wiggles, Tickles and Rhymes” booklet: “Here Are Grandma’s Glasses.”
Here are Grandma’s glasses (circle eyes with thumbs touching index fingers)
Here is Grandma’s cap (hands on head)
This is how she folds her hands and puts them in her lap (fold hands in lap)
Here are Grandpa’s glasses (circle eyes with thumbs touching index fingers)
Here is Grandpa’s hat (hands make big hat)
And this is how he folds his arms (fold arms)
Just like that! (nod head decisively)Snap photos of each other in motion against the bright sky or another light background and turn the pictures into silhouettes. Go low-tech by cutting out each figure, coloring it black, and photocopying it with a white background, or use software for a high-tech approach.
Learn the names of the trees in your neighborhood. Some parks and arboretums label trees, and you’ll find names at plant nurseries, in books and online. If you have difficulty remembering what’s a fir, what’s a pine, and how apple trees differ from cherry trees and dogwoods, make a simple map with tree locations, names and maybe even little photos.
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Swap Trash and Treasures
In keeping with New Year’s resolutions and the general 2010 focus on going green, get together with friends and family to swap things you no longer want or can use (maybe even including the white elephants that arrived as holiday gifts). Take over a large room in someone’s house or the meeting room in an apartment complex and consider setting up “stations” by kind of item (sports equipment, clothing, craft supplies, toys, books, furniture) or by size (little kids, grade school kids, teenagers, adults). Be sure to create a space for odds and ends: the incomplete puzzles, fruitcake tins, jars of buttons, fabric remnants, old magazines. Chances are, what you consider trash is ideal for a neighbor’s next craft project—or Cousin Kyle’s science fair entry!
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 January are:
January 2 — Teaching Children to Control Impulses, Part I
January 9 — Teaching Children to Control Impulses, Part II
January 16 — Parenting Highly Active Children
January 23 — Highly Active Children in Winter Weather
January 30 — Keeping Consequences Reasonable and Effective
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Family Fun Ideas — Rain, Rain, Go. . .
Overwhelmed by seemingly nonstop rain or snow? Keep track of how wet your world really is with a homemade rain gauge and a calendar. Attach a plastic ruler to a bucket and place it in an open space, where no building overhang or tree will shelter your gauge. At the same time each day, your kids can measure the rain or melted snow, empty the bucket and record the total precipitation. Your family’s record can be compared to your area’s “official” moisture figures as published in the local paper or on a web site such as The Weather Channel.
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Community Service — Five R’s for the New Year
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 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.
Lightweight catalog covers can be cut into colorful postcards.This month, the column is all about R: resolve, repair, re-use, re-purpose, recycle. Resolve to model environmentally conscious behavior at home, and help your children do so in the community, too. Let preschoolers watch you as you repair their belongings and yours, and show older kids what you’re doing, and let them help as much as possible.
Get the whole family involved in donating reusable items to preschool or school, to a charity or for a fund-raising rummage sale, and consider visiting a garage sale, thrift store or consignment shop when something is needed at your house. (Craigslist also has a “free” category in the “For Sale” column, for items you need or would like to pass on.)
Add two pair of knee socks with holey heels and a pair of gym socks with equally holey heels and what do you have? A sock doll duo!Visit the library and point out magazines, how-to books, and videos that describe how to transform found objects, old clothes and worn-out tools into useful items. If you’re a family that watches television, sit down together for one or more of the programs that demonstrate how to recycle, repair or reupholster household goods. Show kids how to re-purpose items—an orphan sock becomes a puppet, old fence boards become a planter box, a plastic soda bottle gets cut into a funnel, broken crayons are melted down and molded into new ones.
Parts for the sock dollsClick through to your community’s recycling information web site, and let the kids who can read tell you how to set up your home recycling “center.” Better yet, encourage your older kids and their friends to organize an R-R-R-R exhibit at your local library or community center. (P.S.: Tell us about your favorite R-R-R-R project and you may find it mentioned in a spring issue! Simply click on the “Comment on this story” link below.)
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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. You’ll find 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
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Special of the month — 3/2/1
This special has expired.
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