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Parenting Press®Welcome to the August 2009
“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
- Preschool’s Exciting and Exhausting!
- How Teachers Can Reach Both Boys and Girls
- Cut, Sew, Tape and Tie: Quick Costumes
I. WHAT’S NEW?
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What’s More Fun than the Funny Papers?
NANCY and SLUGGO: © United Feature Syndicate, Inc. Reprinted with permission.Funny papers? That’s what people used to call the comics. If you don’t read a daily paper with a comics section or if your paper doesn’t publish your favorite funnies, you and your children can read dozens of different comics online. The Internet is an especially great place for parents and grandparents to find the comics they loved as kids, which now may not be available in as many papers. At comics.com, for examples, you’ll find more than 90 comics, including such classics as “Li’l Abner” and “Nancy.” At creators.com, you’ll find “Archie” and “Heathcliff.” Like other web sites, both offer many newer comics.
Cartoons aren’t always the easiest for young children to read because the words are so often hand-lettered irregularly. Messages are short, however, and most kids will appreciate the humor of the simpler comics. Even kids reluctant to read can become addicted to comics and will make reading them part of a daily routine.
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A Foot in the Mouth: Poems to Speak, Sing and Shout
The third collaboration by poet Paul B. Janeczko and illustrator Chris Raschka, A Foot in the Mouth is a wonderful book for introducing children to poetry. Publisher Candlewick recommends the book for those 8 and older, and while younger children may not understand all of the humor or be interested in the longer poems, the vibrant water colors and satisfying rhythm will attract their attention. One example: the somewhat abstract calico with a satisfied grin resting among feathers that illustrates Max Fatchen’s “Pussycat, Pussycat”:
“Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been,
Licking your lips with your whiskers so clean?
Pussycat, pussycat, purring and pudgy,
Pussycat, pussycat, WHERE IS OUR BUDGY?”In his introduction, Janeczko explains that, “To hear the sound of a poem, really hear it, you need to read it aloud. Or have someone read it to you.” Or, as he suggests later, read it with someone. All of the 37 poems in this book are what he calls “terrific candidates” for reading aloud. They will introduce children to rhythm and to rhyme, both important as kids become readers and writers. You’ll find old favorites, like Edward Lear’s limericks and a Winnie the Pooh poem by A. A. Milne, “I Hear America Singing” by Walt Whitman, and newer poems in both English and Spanish.
If your family enjoys this book, ask your library or bookstore for A Poke in the I: A Collection of Concrete Poems and A Kick in the Head: An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms. Kids who wonder if poets are normal people will enjoy Janeczko’s stories (visit www.paulbjaneczko.com and click on “Biography” to learn how he set a fire with. . .well, you’ll have to read his bio!). For information on the illustrator, see the publisher’s web page on him.
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Script and Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting
In Script and Scribble (Melville House Publishing, 2009) Kitty Burns Florey leads us through the history of handwriting, along the way explaining the origin of words like cuneiform (from the wedge-shaped stylus used for drawing pictures on wet clay) and bible (from the Greek city of Byblos, where the first alphabet was worked out). She tucks in all sorts of information about monks’ haircuts, how quill pens were made from wing feathers, and that it was Charlemagne who introduced commas and question marks. Readers also learn that although reading the Bible was important in colonial America, only the wealthy learned to write, that metal pens were not manufactured in the U.S. until 1856, and that “printing,” the way children usually now start writing, has only been used for about a hundred years.
This is a book that middle- and high-school history buffs may enjoy. If you read aloud to kids of all ages, this book would be fun to share because of Florey’s chatty style and dry humor. If the “News for Parents” editor were reading it to her family, she would intersperse the text with her own comments: “Listen to this: ‘Between 1440 and 1500'—that’s only 60 years—‘about 40,000 books were produced on European presses.’” The result, Florey points out, was that professional scribes, no longer needed, faced a “job crisis,” and to ensure employment for themselves as handwriting instructors, began promoting the importance of excellent penmanship. Later chapters discuss left-handedness and left-eyedness (and how to tell which you are) and handwriting analysis.
There’s a dose of etiquette with “Sympathy Notes, Thank-You Notes and Wedding Invitations.” Although Florey acknowledges that many of us now keyboard, call or e-mail rather than write the wonderful-to-receive “friendly letters” (as they were called in elementary schools as late as the 1960s), she insists that sympathy notes be handwritten. (She provides no tips on writing these often challenging letters, but many guides quote Emily Post, who said we should write what we feel and only that: for example, “My thoughts are with you in this time of terrible loss” or, when a child has lost a classmate, “Lee was a very special friend of mine. She was the first person I met when I came to Lowell School, and she introduced me to all her friends.”) Florey is almost equally insistent that thank-you notes be hand-written, and she emphasizes the importance of hand-addressed wedding invitations.
The final chapter, “Is Handwriting Important?” gives parents reasons for requiring their children to write legibly, if not beautifully. When young children write, they:
- Focus on the letter and what it represents, an important pre-reading skill
- Match symbols to sounds, thus “cracking the code” of the alphabet
- Learn which letters are commonly associated with each other, a necessity for good spelling
Florey also quotes college professors who believe that students who hand-write their notes (rather than keying them into a laptop) process the information better and stay more engaged in class discussion.
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Common Errors in English Usage
Is it “affect” or “effect”? “Scotch free” or “scot free”?
You’ll find answers to questions like this at Common Errors in English, a web site created by a Washington State University college professor with the mistakes he saw in students’ work. Ideal for kids as young as fourth or fifth grade and especially valuable for those in middle and high school, this site is extremely easy to use.
Besides an introduction which discusses the difference between usage and grammar, the site is simply a list of thousands of words and phrases. Click on each and you’ll reach an explanation in everyday language from Paul Brians: for example, for “Reap What You Sew,” he clarifies: “When you plant seeds you sow them. Galatians 6:7 says ‘A man reaps what he sows’ (harvests what he plants, gets what he deserves). This agricultural metaphor gets mangled frequently into ‘you reap what you sew.’ At best, you might rip what you sew; but you probably wouldn’t want to tell people about it.”
To explain “Tenant/Tenet,” he writes, “These two words come from the same Latin root, tenere, meaning ‘to hold’ but they have very different meanings. ‘Tenet’ is the rarer of the two, meaning a belief that a person holds: ‘Avoiding pork is a tenet of the Muslim faith.’ In contrast, the person leasing an apartment from you is your tenant. (She holds the lease.)”
The web site serves as the basis for a book, Common Errors in English Usage, now in its second edition, and a daily calendar by the same name.
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Visit the Internet Library
You can find books, magazines, newspapers and so much more in the Internet Public Library, an online reference service created by the University of Michigan and Drexel University.
Soon to be re-named as a result of the merger of the Internet Public Library (IPL) and the Librarians’ Internet Index (LII), this tremendous resource is at www.ipl.org. Rather than a collection of material online at this site, the library founders created indexes of web sites where you can read or listen to the information you seek.
When she visited the “regional and country” magazine section, the “News for Parents” editor found
- Daily News From Iceland, icelandreview.com
- NewsRoom Finland, finland.fi/news
- Scandinavia Now, www.scandinavianow.com
Under “performing arts,” she discovered
- 8notes.com, www.8notes.com, free, downloadable sheet music and lessons
- Folk Alley, www.folkalley.com, an online radio station which plays only folk, world, and acoustic music.
- Huapala: Hawaiian Music and Hula Archive, www.huapala.org, with traditional Hawaiian songs, dances, and traditions.
- Max Hunter Folk Song Collection, maxhunter.missouristate.edu, a collection of Ozark Mountain folk songs recorded between 1956 and 1976, available as printed lyrics and in audio format
In the “math” section of “Kidspace,” the editor DID find ‘rithmetic: everything from worksheets for kids who need to practice addition and subtraction to a link to “Math for Morons Like Us.” The “sports and recreation” section explains how balloons are made and describes hot air balloon races, while “leisure” explains where you and your kids can read about magic, card tricks, kites, gem cutting, puppets, unicycles, woodworking. . .and that’s just a sample!
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31 Ways to Have Fun in August
School has started, or will be starting soon, for many of you, but for those families not yet burdened with homework, here is a month-full of ideas for hot afternoons, rainy mornings or lonely days when kids are apt to moan, “We’re bored.”
Flop on your backs in the yard and watch the clouds. Do it after dark and you can watch the stars.
Flop on your tummies on the ground and watch the bugs.
Fly a kite. To build one from scratch, start at the PBS web site for tips on how to create a Ben Franklin-style kite. Or visit your library (online or bricks-and-mortar) for a how-to book.
Walk to the water and skip rocks.
Visit your local historical museum or landmark house. Your kids may be fascinated by the crank telephone, the wood cookstove, the Atwater-Kent radio and the photographs of downtown as it used to be.
Read old papers and magazines. Some are online, others are on microfilm or in the historic documents rooms of large public or college libraries. You’ll find articles about people you’ve known only as the names of buildings and parks, and quaintly written ads for products that still exist.
Create a quiz “show.” Gather up flash cards, the “Word Power” pages from old Reader’s Digest issues and even old SAT prep books to see what questions stump which child. (Wendy Reid Crisp, writing in a recent Grand magazine, said she always has “prizes” on hand for her quiz winners: orphaned earrings, old napkin rings, hotel shampoos and soaps, decks of cards, and cosmetic samples.)
Quiz on the run. Or more accurately, when you’re waiting for someone or stuck in traffic. That’s a great time to pull a box of questions from an old Trivial Pursuit game out of the glove box and see how many questions your carload can answer before you’re free to go.
Quilt with paper or cloth. Cut strips, squares and triangles from scraps of wrapping paper, catalogs and the insides of envelopes to create quilt patterns on a cardboard base. Kids can paste them down or, with a lightweight base, actually sew. Turn old scarves, hankies, hand towels and worn out jeans into squares to stitch together on a machine or by hand. In a day’s time the doll bed will have a new coverlet, the treehouse will have a new curtain or you’ll have a runner for your kitchen table.
Polish the pots, the pans and Great-Aunt Pearl’s silver pitcher. Take the copper pots outside to scour with cleanser and the hose, and use silver polish and a soft cloth on the silver at the sink. Kids can “draw” a face in the tarnish or “write” their initials while they’re polishing.
Paint! Even a three-legged chair, a discarded trellis, or a dead branch from a tree will make garden art if your kids splash it with color. Go pink, go purple, go periwinkle—or paint each part of the chair a different color.
Go sample the samples at the supermarket. Fridays and Saturdays are the days when stores more often offer samples.
Go sample fruits, honey and homemade cheese at a farmer’s market.
Get goofy: sing silly songs or make up your own and tell silly jokes.
String something: cut up straws to string with Cheerios or buttons or even nuts rescued from the toolbox and spray-painted. Kids can make garlands for their rooms or treehouses or necklaces.
“Tie-dye” by dripping food coloring or water color paint on coffee filters or tissue paper. Remember, there are “neon” food colors and “glitter” water colors now!
Do a crossword puzzle together. ‘Tweens and teens will probably get the pop culture clues, while they’ll need Mom and Dad (and maybe the grandparents) for names of ‘60s hits and iconic muscle cars.
Create your own crossword puzzle with family-specific clues: Dad’s first dog, Mom’s hometown, the kids’ preschool teacher, where you vacationed in 2005. . .
Press leaves and flowers between sheets of white paper and under your heaviest dictionary or phone book. Glue the dried leaves and blossoms to stiff paper for a picture or to note cards.
Get goofy for the camera. Let each child photograph everyone else as they look through an empty picture frame, try on Groucho Marx glasses or hang upside down. Put the photos together in a card to send someone, in an album to keep yourself or to send a friend as a screensaver.
Go dancing! Turn on the music you loved when you were 16, and get everyone on their feet to wriggle and whirl for at least 10 minutes. Or start a conga line and dance your way down the sidewalk, adding neighbors as you go. Guaranteed to change everyone’s mood!
Go Fish. Or play rummy or cribbage or Old Maid.
Make soapy water. Give a preschooler the eggbeater, a bucket of water and a couple of tablespoons of dish detergent and wait for a bucket of bubbles. Bottle up the suds in a sprayer bottle and squirt the aphids on your roses.
Make magic! Start with the free instructions for card tricks at www.blifaloo.com/magic/card_tricks.php.
Make marshmallows. Ideal for kids who can use the stove, this project requires a candy thermometer. See the detailed and carefully illustrated instructions at www.wikihow.com/Make-Marshmallows.
Make s’mores! Toast those homemade marshmallows and combine them with squares of chocolate and graham crackers for the traditional camp fire treat.
Make a cake—in a cardboard oven! Ask any Boy Scout, Girl Scout or Camp Fire member: there are lots of ways to cook in a box. You’ll find several ideas at www.astoriatroop105.us/BoxOven.pdf, which explains how to use charcoal briquettes and a wood fire.
Cut out paper dolls and give them clothes and hair or make a chain of paper monsters or spiders or cars or horses or. . .
Ride the rails. Take a “real” train ride (see www.amtrak.com for the routes that serve your community) or climb on one of the vintage steam engines that choo-choo on tourist tracks. (www.touristrailways.com lists dozens, from Alabama’s Heart of Dixie railway museum to Hawaii’s Sugar Cane Train.)
Peer at the planes. Find a parking place near an airport and watch the Cessnas or the super-jets take off and land. In some airports you don’t have to clear security to be able to sit at windows and watch.
Plan for the future: fill a time capsule with examples of what you want people to know about 2009 in 10, 20 or 30 years. Maybe pictures of yourselves, a grocery store receipt that shows prices, the cover of yesterday’s newspaper. . .? Pack it in a coffee can and bury it in your backyard or hide it in the attic.
Ready to start thinking about school? You won’t find much ‘rithmetic in this issue of News for Parents, but here are ideas for getting kids enthused about reading and writing. We’re identifying useful resources for all of us, too!
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 1 — Creative Use of Rewards
August 8 — The Use of Rewards While Potty Training Your Child
August 15 — Noticing a Baby’s Emotions
August 22 — Each Thinking Style Manages Stress Differently
August 29 — Recognizing the Signs of a Serious Anger Problem
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Family Fun Ideas — Scavenger Hunt Hike
In most parts of the country, August is a wonderful month for an evening stroll—or something more ambitious. To keep you all thinking about what you’re experiencing in nature, in the people you meet or in the built environment, make your walk a “scavenger hunt.” Instead of looking for rocks, leaves or shells or making rubbings, challenge your family members to “scavenge” for experiences: a chirping bird, a red flower, a holly bush, a man with a beard, a fire engine, a church steeple. You can make up a single list specific to your family’s interests and your area and have one family member carry it on a clipboard, or each one of you can have your own clipboard and a list that’s a little different. For example, if you have a 4-year-old who is fascinated with garbage trucks, add that to his list, and add “pug” and “terrier” to the list of the 7-year-old who loves dogs.
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Community Service — Saving Soles
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. This month, as we think about the transition from summer to school, and the shopping that is usually involved, here’s a project that allows us to pass on outgrown (and even some worn-out) soles. Shoes that you no longer wear can be put on other people’s feet or recycled with programs such as:
Heart and Sole, www.com.msu.edu/pub-rel/heartandsole/index.html, is a charitable project of the Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine. It provides new and gently used shoes to the poorest of the world’s people. Since the project began in 1999 through 2006, more than 7,000 pairs of shoes have been shipped around the world. It welcomes donations of cash (raised with a shoeshine service or by selling hand-knit slippers, perhaps?) to pay shipping charges as well as of shoes.
Soles 4 Souls, www.soles4souls.org, collects shoes for people in need both in the U.S. and abroad: people in homeless shelters, refugee camps, in Third World slums. If your family is cleaning out shoes it’s never used, use the “by zip code” locator on the Soles 4 Souls web site to find a donation point near your home. If you’re organizing a shoe drive, check the web site for procedures for getting large donations to the charity. (Checks of any size are welcome here, too.)
If all the shoes you have are worn out, check out recycling programs like Nike’s ReUSE A SHOE, www.nikereuseashoe.com. It works with groups that can commit to gathering at least 200 pairs of athletic shoes for processing into sports surfaces such as basketball courts in areas of need.
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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 — Birthday Wishes for the Bedtime Expert
This special has expired.
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