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Parenting Press®Welcome to the December 2011
“News for Parents”
Dear Friends of Parenting Press:
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Looking for a conference speaker? Check our list of authors available for speeches and interviews, and the online media kits. 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).
IN THIS ISSUE
- WHAT’S NEW?
- FEATURES
- POTPOURRI
- COMING ATTRACTIONS
- What Meds Make Sense?
- Think Small for New Year’s Fun
I. WHAT’S NEW?
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It’s A Wrap!
Go green with your holiday wrap this year by re-using what you find around the house or in the throwaways at local businesses. The Parenting Press crew has been combing craft books and “green living” guides for tips, and here are some of the ideas we have for you:
Crushed paper. Take those lightweight brown paper bags and crumple them. Crush them! Stomp on them! When you smooth the paper out, you’ll be surprised at the attractive texture. Older kids can add another touch by giving the paper a quick spray with gold paint when it’s still partially wrinkled. (The spraying is an outdoor task unless you have a large shop, and of course, it requires adult supervision. Otherwise everything and everybody might appear to have the Midas touch!)
Wallpaper samples. If your local home center or paint store discards its old wallpaper samples, use the larger pieces to wrap boxes and the coordinating borders for the “ribbon.” Or get scraps from friends who recently changed their wall coverings. The vinyl-coated “paper” will be too stiff for wrapping boxes, but you may be able to use it to create your own origami boxes, especially for odd-shaped gifts.
Maps. How many outdated maps are stuffed in the car glove box? Give them a new life as gift wrap. Decorate the packages even more with cut-outs from travel folders. Or stencil car and airplane shapes over a map’s fold marks.
Beads and buttons. Trim your packages with raffia, twine or ordinary string and the buttons, beads, old keys, puzzle pieces and other baubles from the toy box, sewing room and junk drawer. Spiff them up by spreading them on a sheet of cardboard and taking them outdoors for a touch of that gold paint, too!
Kids’ paintings. You can’t save every piece of art your kids create, and some will make fabulous gift wrap. If you cover the box top and bottom separately, the gift wrap itself becomes another gift, a place to corral coins, keys or cherished notes.
The gift IS the wrap. Wrap a cookbook or kitchen utensils in an apron or dish towel. Tuck a gift certificate (purchased or homemade) in a pair of socks that are pulled over each other. Fold a yard of fabric over needles, thread, scissors and pattern for an aspiring seamstress.
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Books That Make Great Gifts
It’s no surprise that some of our favorite gifts are books. This month we’re reviewing a wonderful new book for young children preparing for, or in their first years of school, a card deck for games or flashcards, a craft guide ideal for kids (and adults) who want to handle a crochet hook, and the how-to’s on gardening in the city (or on any small balcony).
Bailey, by Harry Bliss (Scholastic)
We love Bailey, a canine character who frequently appears in Harry Bliss’s daily comics (see harrybliss.com), and we especially love this book, about a cute little dog who goes off to (human) school. An ideal gift for a child who is soon to start preschool or kindergarten, Bailey shows a pooch brushing his hair, selecting attire (collar), and hurrying to the bus. Even better, it shows him enjoying the school day, from “show and tell” and math to lunch, art, recess and reading. (Well, maybe he’s not enjoying the trip to the nurse and being cleaned up after painting with his tail.) This gentle picture book concludes with Bailey again hurrying, this time to catch the bus home, and how eager he is to return the next day for more fun with his classmates and teachers.
Dogs: Best in Show card deck
Use these cards to guess what breed Bailey is, and to learn more about breeds and what they require in terms of grooming, exercise and training. Created by Emma Aguardo and Polly Horner, Dogs: Best in Show (Lawrence King) is intended as a game similar to “war,” but the well-illustrated cards are just as much fun for browsing, especially if there’s a pooch in your home—or you’re considering one. You’ll discover, for example, that a whippet is both very fast and very quiet, while a bull terrier is much slower—and much noisier. A toy poodle is near the top of the scale for grooming needed, and for being easy to train, while a westie and a wire fox terrier need almost as much grooming, and lots of training, too. Great as flash cards, too!
The Granny Square Book
You’re all thumbs when it comes to crocheting? So are some of us. That’s why we were so pleased to receive a copy of The Granny Square Book: Timeless Techniques & Fresh Ideas for Crocheting Square by Square (Creative Publishing International). Author Margaret Hubert provides clear explanations of the different abbreviations used in patterns and the photographs of the stitches and how to create them. Lay-flat binding makes it easy to follow the instructions while crocheting, and each of the different granny square patterns is marked for a skill level, beginner to experienced.
These squares are excellent projects for novices, even primary school children, because the easiest require learning only a couple of stitches. Squares are quick to finish, too—and if kids don’t like how they turn out, it’s easy to unravel a mess and start over. A hat can be made with as few as five squares, and a doll blanket with one large square or six small ones. If you’re an experienced crocheter, a wonderful gift for friend or family member of almost any age would be this book, a skein of yarn, a crochet hook and a homemade gift certificate for a crochet lesson with you. If you too are a novice, substitute an invitation to “learn by doing” with you. (Optional: buy the book for yourself, and create holiday gifts with Hubert’s instructions for headbands, washcloths and hot pads or the more advanced sweaters, vests and bags.)
The Urban Farm Handbook
Winter isn’t when most of us think about gardening, but that’s when we have the time to read and reflect on what we might plant, point out the authors of The Urban Farm Handbook: City-Slicker Resources for Growing, Raising, Sourcing, Trading, and Preparing What You Eat, by Annette Cottrell and Joshua McNichols (Skipstone). It’s also when, if we’re so inclined, we can get started turning a small yard (or even a patio) into an organic garden. For yards with soil that need significant amending, or pavement removed, or those thinking about raised beds or worm bins, planning now is important, because for a summer crop, you’ll be doing construction (or demolition) whenever you can comfortably work outdoors.
Serious gardeners, and those who want to keep chickens, ducks, goats and rabbits, will find detailed and yet easy-to-understand instructions for what critters to buy, how to house, feed and slaughter them, and, of course, how to determine what your zoning regulations permit.
For those of us who are casual gardeners, Cottrell and McNichols provide dozens of recommendations on enriching soil with compost, worms, chicken manure, and cover crops. They describe how to start plants such as tomatoes (which are challenging to grow in western Washington, where both authors and the Parenting Press crew live and work) and they suggest varieties most suitable for certain climates. There are more than a dozen ideas for gardening with kids, including growing plants such as stevia that taste like candy, making spider web frames, and paying kids for harvesting vegetables (with cash or desired toys like Lego blocks).
And recipes! Oh, does this book provide recipes! A few examples: canned peaches in syrup, whole-wheat pizza crust, bread and butter cucumber slices, pickled pepper cornbread, pie crust, and even “Easy Liver Pate.” The “Going Whole Hog” chapter illustrates common cuts of beef and pork (ham, ribs, butt, short ribs, hanger steak and such) and will make you a wiser consumer even if you’re not raising livestock.
For those of you who are going very, very “green,” or whose children are researching opportunities for reducing household waste, there’s a chapter called “Soaps and Other Sundries,” which provides very detailed instructions for making soap with goat milk and quick how-to’s for household cleaners and air fresheners.
The Urban Farm Handbook concludes with an extensive directory of information and resources including how to use nonedible parts of plants, what plants attract pollinators, and wild foods with edible parts.
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How Kids Can Deck the Halls
Scissors + paper = holiday decorations kids can make. Add glue, glitter and paint and your home is guaranteed to have a festive look! A few ideas for projects kids can complete after homework’s done or when weather forces them indoors:
Angel chains. Use the paper doll concept to create chains of white paper angels that can be decorated with curled paper hair and doily wings.
Cookie cutter cut-outs. Santas, stars, gingerbread men and tree shapes won’t crumble if they’re cut from card stock using your cookie cutters as patterns. Jazz up the Santa shapes with pompons on the hats or cotton-ball beards and give the stars real shine with glitter. Use light brown paper or cardboard for the gingerbread people, gluing buttons down their fronts. Dress up trees with rick rack and sequins. Create more garlands with these or punch a hole in the top and hang each with ribbon.
Pennant garlands. Fold scraps of shiny paper over a couple of yards of narrow ribbon for garlands that can be suspended across the mantel or a window frame.
If you have scraps from sewing or knitting projects, here are other ideas:
Button chains. Open up the button box or a bag of buttons from a thrift store for another easy-to-make garland that also helps kids develop hand-eye coordination. Tie a button on ordinary string or perle cotton and then, every inch or so, loosely knot another button. (Use huge buttons for children younger than 3, and even with older preschoolers and primary age kids, make sure the buttons are going on the string and not in mouth, nose or ears.)
Pompon “sugar plums.” Years ago, a Tacoma Art Museum fund-raiser auctioned off trees decorated by local celebrities. One was covered with silver-dollar-sized pompons of bright yarn, with “leaves” of green felt. Grade school kids can make their own pompons or use the smaller ones sold in fabric and craft stores. (Never made a pompon? Fiber Images, a commercial web site, has illustrated how-to’s for a homemade pompon maker (and ads for purchased devices).
Felt garland. Circles of bright felt can be strung together by hand or stitched into a garland on the machine. Leftover sequins can be added here and there to add shine.
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Turn Your Family into Coloring Pages
Create inexpensive party favors and party entertainment for the kids with coloring pages made from family photos. It’s easy with photo-editing software and digital images of people, pets, and places (your house, for example, and the kids’ schools). Select pictures that aren’t too detailed or erase part of the image (the pattern on a shirt, perhaps) with the software.
To see how this works, we used one of Janan Cain’s illustrations from The Way I Act and the how-to tips at How to Create Coloring Book Pages Using Your Very Own Photos!
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Counseling Help for Military Families
Pro bono counseling is available for families struggling with a loved one’s deployment to a war zone, and to troops who have returned from deployment. As the web site of the Soldiers Project explains, therapy is offered for those who are
feeling overwhelmed or angry at being left with increased responsibilities
tearful and worried about deployed loved one to the point where it’s difficult to follow normal routines
feeling alone or lost with no one to talk to and nowhere to turn
nervous, distant or awkward with a returning troop and with each other
“feeling hurt and resentful that returning family member isn’t as involved with you and the family as before deployment
Help is also available at no charge for the children in military families (sons, daughters, sisters and brothers of troops) who are angry, experiencing behavior or learning problems at school, and suffering such physical symptoms as stomach aches, headaches, and troubled sleep.
For more information about counselors who can help your family or a family you know, see The Soldiers Project.
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.
In many homes, December means shopping trips. To help you through shopping for holiday attire, meals and gifts—and through events of the season, here are some suggestions from our archive.
December 3 — The Kid Who Hates to Shop
December 10 — Offering Children with Strong Personalities Choices
December 17 — Managing LOUD Voices in Inappropriate Places
December 24 — Ideas for Managing Holiday Over-Excitement in Children, Part I
December 31 — Ideas for Managing Holiday Over-Excitement in Children, Part II
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Family Fun Ideas — Gingerbread and a Garlic Press
Cookies are a holiday tradition in many American homes, and few things are more festive than gingerbread boys and girls. These are easy to make, especially with a mix. Even more fun: decorate your guys and girls with hair and beards! The “News for Parents” editor has a garlic press reserved for extruding strings of dough that can be shaped into pigtails, topknots, moustaches and Santa-shaped beards. Your kids may also want to create special characters like the Star Wars Chewbacca (a favorite of the editor’s daughter). (Needless to say, anything that doesn’t turn out quite right simply has to be eaten ASAP!)
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Community Service — Surprise Someone
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.
As always in December, we focus on remembering others, especially those who may be alone or ill. As a family or a neighborhood group, consider caroling outside the homes of the elderly or surprising everyone on your street with a decorated bag of homemade cookies or muffins. Encourage your children to create greeting cards or notes that can be mailed to distant relatives or delivered to nearby acquaintances. Even young children can create a picture and dictate a message for you to attach. This may be an ideal project after dinner, when your older children are doing homework, or right before bed, when everyone is ready for a creative outlet.
III. POTPOURRI
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Special of the month — New Year’s Resolutions
This special has expired.
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