Parenting Press E-zine

Welcome to the July 2011
“News for Parents”

Dear Friends of Parenting Press:

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If you teach parenting education, conduct home visits or counsel parents and caregivers, click on through to our Parent Educator Corner and register for a complimentary information sheet. There’s one every month! Popular topics include how to get kids into bed, how to keep them there, and how to get them to sleep.

If you write for a newspaper or school, extension, or child care newsletter, you’re welcome to excerpt or reprint our information, as long as you credit us and send us a copy. Advance copies of selected stories from the next issue (see “Coming Attractions”) are available the last week of this month for excerpts in print publications. E-mail our media contact.

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
- Getting Ready for Back-to-School
- Fall Festivals

I. WHAT’S NEW?

Determining Kids’ Strengths—and Parents’, Too!

Questionnaires can be fun, and some provide important clues to our strengths. Psychologist Martin Seligman developed positive psychology, which focuses on positive emotions, strengths-based character and healthy social institutions, and he has created several questionnaires.

What these help us recognize are strengths such as creativity, curiosity, perseverance, love of learning and the tendency to help and understand other people. Some are brief, and others quite detailed. These may be especially valuable in helping your children understand which of their actions are prompted by which strengths and values. The child who’s sometimes accused of being snoopy may simply be curious about new acquaintances, for example, and if parents understand a child’s love of learning, they may be more tolerant about a child being so engrossed in a book that the school bus has been missed. For kids, especially those in middle and high school, who question why their interests or behavior may differ from classmates or even family members, these questionnaires can help with self-assessment and self-esteem. As a family, you may find the questionnaire results worthwhile as you all prepare for a new academic year.

No questionnaire can tell us everything we want to know, and none is completely accurate, either, but Seligman’s surveys have greater value because they recognize that people change. How any of us answer today may be significantly different next year, or the year after, when school, work, family structure and challenges have changed, too.

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Get the Scoop on Ice Cream

July is National Ice Cream Month! Introduce your kids to cool facts about one of our favorite desserts with “From the Cow to the Cone” and histories of both ice cream and the ice cream cone, all available at the web site of the International Dairy Foods Association.

People have been eating or drinking iced treats for centuries, but the ice cream cone is an American invention, dating from just after 1900. You’ll find more trivia, including Thomas Jefferson’s ice cream recipe, on the site—and, of course, it also has wonderful recipes like “Seven Layer Sundae” for an ice cream celebration!

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Summer Fun with Books about Letters and Words

Your kids may be tempted to chant, “No more pencils, no more books. . .” if you suggest they do a little writing this summer, but we’re betting they’ll smile all the way through a new children’s book, A Call for a New Alphabet. Created by Jef Czekaj, this 44-page hardback is the story of X, who is exasperated by always being near the end of every alphabet book.

Ideal for the read-aloud crowd and for elementary-age kids to read themselves, it’s full of alliteration and puns, with many valuable reminders of spelling rules:

“S was soaking up some sun, bearded B was bouncing a ball, R was roller-skating, and there was P in the pool,” is how the story begins with S in stripes, B in blue, R in red and P in pirate garb. When X begins to complain, Helpful H (in high heels AND hard hat) explains the alphabet, like grammar, must have rules.

Rules! That really sets X off. “Q, aren’t you bored to tears at being stuck next to U? You two have to share nearly every word that you’re in.” Three small images illustrate examples of the rule: quail, quiet, quarter. The next page shows a stop sign emblazoned “I Before E Except After C,” and the cowboy-boot clad C heading for vowels as X exclaims: “And I and E, aren’t you tired of having to switch places every time C comes into the picture?”

X’s dreams are even better for demonstrating how irregular our language is, and introducing (or reinforcing) its idiosyncrasies. X discovers how difficult it is to be the letter that makes a plural, like S. “Being S is too much work,” he declares, explaining he’s exhausted. By the time the character has tried out the jobs of several other consonants and of the vowel E (after all, it’s in a “bunch of words), X wakes up knowing he wants to stay X, even if it means he’s still at the end of the alphabet.

Why we like this book: vivid colors, simple shapes, and important messages about the value of rules and order, and the importance of the roles each of us play. Czekaj, who is a cartoonist and a linguist as well as an author, mixes in fairly sophisticated vocabulary (for example, unique, opinions, fainted, abstained, fantastic, complications), and he lets all of us, adults and children, enjoy rebellious X!

Spilling Ink: A Young Writer’s Handbook, written by Anne Mazer and Ellen Potter and illustrated by Matt Phelan

Kids who are starting to write (or need to be writing for school assignments) and any of us intimidated by getting information down on paper may be charmed by Anne Mazer and Ellen Potter’s Spilling Ink, which starts out with chatty reassurances that writing requires effort, whether you’re a novice or the author of a zillion published books. Mazer is the author of more than 45 books for children, and Potter writes the Olivia Kidney series as well as such YA books as Slob.

In her introduction, Potter compares writing to a wild ocean voyage. “You don’t know where you are going or what sort of storms you might sail into along the way. You might get shipwrecked by writer’s block. . .But don’t worry. Another ship is sure to sail into view, and it will whisk you right back out into those tumbling, unpredictable waters of your brilliant imagination!”

It won’t be easy, Potter warns us. . .and then we turn the page into the first chapter, written by Mazer, and it’s entitled “Is It Really This Simple?” (Of course, THEN there’s the second chapter, written by Potter, and it’s called “Ugly First Drafts.”)

In other words, what you and your children, or the children you teach, will find in this guide is encouragement, a strong dose of reality, and exercises that almost anyone can use. One example: the “I Dare You” boxes that appear throughout the book. The first one suggests you think of something that happened today, something that might have been downright mortifying, and then write it down the way you wish it had happened. That’s right: rewrite at least part of today! Another “I Dare You” requires that you use a metaphor or simile to describe how a girl feels when her parents announce they’re getting a divorce, and a third suggests you write a story in two different styles, one being the “less is more” with simple, clipped voice, and the other version expanded.

Among the other advice that will help a third or fifth or eighth grader as well as someone writing for the high school newspaper or a college composition class, a graduate school application, a report on business analysis or a letter to Great-Aunt Gertrude:
- Use your embarrassing moments, the more humiliating the better, for scenes in your writing. Weave in the small moments that capture your attention: the goofy things your pets or little brother or the baby next door do. Write about subjects you know well (even if, as Mazer reassures us, you don’t know how to do them well). Mentally, or in a journal, describe what you observe about your family and friends.
- Stay alert for ideas. They may come from the news, from YouTube, from people or places you glimpse on a bus, or, as Mazer goes on, from conversations you overhear. Write down all your ideas, however incomplete they seem. And then, she suggests, “write them on scraps of paper, put them in a bowl, and randomly pick two or three. Then try to write a story from them.” (This technique will work with nonfiction, too: each paper scrap can have a different piece of information about your topic, and you can try different ways of starting or focusing a report or even a letter.)
Even if you or your children aren’t planning to do much writing, Spilling Ink provides valuable explanations of plot and subplot, narrative voice (first person, second person, third person objective, omniscient, or limited), back stories, settings, how suspense is created, dialogue and description. To help us understand what’s too much (someone’s life story in the first paragraph) or too little, the authors include lots of examples. Even better, they explain metaphors and similes, how to create them and why to use them.

Oh, yeah, and there’s the advice you want kids to hear about audience, voice, goal-setting (A.K.A. paying attention to the assignment if you’re in class), and both giving and receiving criticism. It’s all delivered with a generous dollop of humor, especially when Mazer and Potter describe typical days of writing. As Mazer writes, “To be a professional writer, you will need the following skills:
- Time wasting
- Daydreaming
- A knack for noticing things that annoy other people
- A delight in playing with words
- Stubbornness
- A slight touch of insanity
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31 Things to Do Now That School’s Out

It’s rainy, it’s a screen-free day, or their friends are all gone: exactly when you’re likely to hear “I’m bored,” or “There’s nothing to do.” You’ll be ready to handle these whines and groans with the list that follows, and the ideas you add to it. Better yet, find an empty oatmeal box or an old cookie jar that you can fill with suggestions on separate slips of paper, discount coupons, recipes, library story-hour schedules, and craft how-to’s. Whenever boredom strikes, let your kids pull an idea out of the jar! (Want to get really fancy? Make each “withdrawal” from the jar a surprise by sealing every idea in unused business reply envelopes from direct mail solicitations.)
1. Who shares your birthday? Use a web site like famousbirthdays.net to find out! Bigger kids might want to continue the project by compiling photos and brief biographies of their birthday “friends” in a binder or homemade book.
2. Whose birthday is today? Famousbirthdays.net can also tell you whose birthday can be celebrated on any given day this month. On July 3, for example, you all can march around the house singing “Yankee Doodle Dandy” in honor of George M. Cohan. Or on July 4, make a Rube Goldberg contraption part of your Independence Day events! For the 12th, introduce your kids to Andrew Wyeth’s paintings, Buckminster Fuller’s domes, the music of Oscar Hammerstein, Thoreau’s writings and the importance of George Washington Carver. (No chance to be bored that day!)
3. Send a birthday greeting. Got a family member or friend with an upcoming birthday? Get out craft supplies and create one card, or several. If you’re each writing a note or drawing a picture, one of you might crease heavy paper into a folder that can hold everyone’s greetings. Punch a couple of holes on the side that opens, tie it closed with a ribbon bow and pop it into a large envelope.
4. Who shares your name? The Census Bureau’s Genealogy web page can tell you how common a surname is. (We joke about keeping up with the Joneses, but theirs is only the fifth most common last name in the U.S. More common: Smith, Johnson, Williams and Brown.) Among the Parenting Press staff, operations manager Homer Henderson has the 101st most common surname, and “News for Parents” editor Linda Carlson has the 225th most common. Eileen Kennedy-Moore, who wrote What About Me? 12 Ways to Get Your Parents’ Attention (Without Hitting Your Sister), is 130th with her maiden name, Kennedy, and Janan Cain, who created The Way I Act and the earlier The Way I Feel, ranks 516th. Other members of the crew and most of our authors have last names that rank outside the top 1,000. At whitepages.com, you can get an idea of how many people share your full name, although some combinations are very common: for Elizabeth Crary, Parenting Press founder, whitepages.com replies only that there are over a hundred people with similar first and last name.
5. Play charades. Each one of you can act out a word, phrase, song or book title, or a character for the rest of the family to guess. Especially if you’ve been reading The Little Engine That Could, someone can pantomime the wheels of a steam engine while chug, chug, chugging around the breakfast table. If you’ve been watching people fishing, one of you can “throw out” a line, feel a tug, and hastily reel it in.
6. Play cards. Play “Go Fish” or pull out pairs of cards and the joker to use if you don’t have an “Old Maid” deck. Tweens and teens can play cribbage, gin rummy, poker and maybe even bridge. For simple matching games, try the Parenting Press “Feeling Elf” cards.
7. Play checkers. An ideal way to reinforce the concepts of taking turns and being a gracious winner (and loser).
8. Blow bubbles. Use the little loops that come in bottles of bubble mix, or mix up your own bubble solution with dishwashing detergent and glycerin in a dishpan and then dip in large rings for soccer ball-size bubbles. (The recipe and all sorts of information about the importance of each ingredient are at Steve Spangler Science.)
9. Play “Hangman.” Appropriate for kids who can spell, this is great when you need to wait for a restaurant table, in a ferry line—wherever you may only have paper and pencil. You’ll find the how-to’s at wikipedia.org. (Want to practice a foreign language? You can play Hangman online in English, Norwegian or Dutch at www.hangman.no/.)
10. Capture bugs. Don’t let the crawlers creep you out! Use an inexpensive “bug box” with magnifying lens in its lid to catch and examine spiders and the other bugs you may find around the house. (Avoid bees, wasps and other stingers!)
11. Press flowers. Delicate blossoms and leaves (say, from ferns and such posies as lobelia) can be pressed between sheets of wax paper weighed down with heavy books. These make wonderful souvenirs from a trip around the block—or around the country. (The “News for Parents” editor, who hardly ever throws anything away, has autumn 1979 leaves from New England tucked between pages of a cookbook.)
12. Weave. Little kids can paint paper and the next day, cut slits in it to weave in strips of paper from another project, and bigger kids can make a simple loom with cardboard for yarn, strips cut from plastic grocery bags, leftover gift wrap ribbon. . .and who knows what else? How-to’s for creating simple looms and for weaving on a hand are at Montessori World’s “Handwork” page.
13. Play “Red Rover.” Remember the rules for this running game? If not, Wikipedia’s got ‘em.
14. Print with packing pellets, string or shoe inner soles. Introduce kids to the many possibilities for printing designs by showing them how to create designs on paper or lightweight smooth fabric (T-shirts, old sheets or muslin, for example) with packing pellets (dip one into paint and then press against the fabric). Or outline a design on stiff cardboard with heavy string or cord, brush the design with paint and then press it on paper or fabric. Another option: cut a simple design such as a heart or flower out of a new foam shoe inner sole, glue it to a heavy piece of corrugated paper or a chunk of wood and, voila, you have your own “rubber” stamp!
15. Print with fruits and vegetables. Slice citrus fruits in half so kids can use them to stamp designs (you can use lemons that have already been squeezed gently for their juice), or carve designs in root vegetables like potatoes and carrots. Kids too young to handle sharp knives can outline their designs and a teenager or adult can do the cutting. (A large russet potato can be used for several designs; cut off one end, carve a design, and when your kids are done with it, cut it off and create another one.)
16. Marble print with shaving cream. Fill a flat pan with almost an inch of shaving cream, and drip two or three colors of paint (such as water color) in different spots. Lay a half-sheet of paper on the foam and gently rub the surface of the paper to transfer the image. Complete how-to’s, with teacher comments, at Incredible Art Department.
17. Visit a museum. To find one near you, or near where you’re traveling, see web sites for such organizations as the Association of Children’s Museums, the Fire Museum Network and RailMuseums.com. About.com has a guide to doll shops and museums and many communities have history museums, with exhibits of early-day clothes, kitchen appliances, tools and weapons. Many have free days and children’s programs.
18. Plant carrots and radishes. Unless you live where frost comes early, you can probably get a small crop if you plant in July.
19. Photograph each other. Follow our illustrator Janan Cain’s example, and photograph your kids when they’re hanging upside down on the playground monkey bars or when each member of the family is making a “fish face.”
20. Bake cookies. Use the pre-molded refrigerated cookies, or the “slice and bake” rolls so kids can bake just a few a day. Or mix up a batch of homemade dough so you’ll have enough treats for dessert and to share with neighbors.
21. Eat like Grandma or Great-grandpa did. Ask them what they ate as children or explore old cookbooks to see what meals were like during World War II food rationing or in the 1950s, when TV dinners and many mixes were introduced.
22. Create your own trivia game. Kids can write questions on one side of index cards, and the answer on the reverse. Box them up, question side up, and use them for conversation-starters at the dinner table, or when you’re stuck in traffic. Besides family trivia (“When did Mom and Dad meet?” and “Did it rain the day I was born?”), consider questions like, “Who invited TV dinners?”, “What color were the original telephones?” and “Who was Howdy Doody?”
23. Run in the rain. If it’s warm but rainy, grab a slicker or a plastic poncho, rubber boots or old shoes, and take a rain walk. Run, skip and pounce in puddles. . .and then come home to a hot bath and clean clothes!
24. Have a jumping jack contest. Who can do the most in a minute? In two minutes? Kids can use a stopwatch or the second hand on a wristwatch to time each other, and you!
25. Make mudpies. Got dirt? Mix it with enough water to make a “batter,” and then press this into old dishes or plastic containers and let it dry in the sun. When solid, unmold them and decorate them with leaves, blossoms, a sprinkling of white sand or tiny rocks, and have a pretend feast.
26. Search the sky. On a clear night, take binoculars with you and walk together into a park or another place where you’re some distance from house and car lights. See how many stars you can count. Or how many jets you can see!
27. Transfer images. Show primary and older kids how to transfer a simple drawing by rubbing the reverse side of the lines with a soft pencil. Then put the drawing pencil side down on the paper, fabric or wood you want the image on, and retrace the original drawing. Kids can also try carbon paper, or they can transfer the image that’s been output on a transparency with an ink-jet printer by rubbing it onto a wet sheet of paper. (Instructions for many kinds of transfers are in Image Transfer Workshop: Mixed-Media Techniques for Successful Transfers, North Light Books, available at bookstores and libraries.)
28. Make a puppet. Use your hands to make shadow puppets at bedtime, or pull on stockings and “talk” to each other with impromptu sock puppets when you’re sorting laundry! Kids can also make paper bag puppets or simple marionettes with cardboard, brass fasteners and string.
29. Play Scrabble. Really little kids may prefer the junior version, or you can use the regular game board with your own rules. Play without keeping score, for example, or encourage kids to create words that extend into formerly open spots rather than using a letter or two on short words that fill in between existing words.
30. Set up a jigsaw puzzle. If it’s on a table or counter you don’t use every day, each of you can take quick breaks throughout your day to add a piece or two.
31. Visit a farmers’ market. Take your shopping list for vegetables, or give each child a scavenger-hunt style list of things to find: sunflower, strawberry, tomato, turnip, sourdough bread, bunnies, bees, chickens, cheese or honey, perhaps.
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Parents Magazine Interviews Eileen Kennedy-Moore

Watch for the August issue of Parents. It’s scheduled to have advice from our favorite psychologist/children’s author in response to a mother’s question regarding teaching caution around dogs. For more about Dr. Kennedy-Moore, author of What About Me? 12 Ways to Get Your Parents’ Attention (Without Hitting Your Sister), see her media kit.

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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.

Kids and chores! Struggling to get your children to pull their weight this summer? Or ready to introduce the concept of helping to your young children as you prepare for the busy back-to-school season? You’ll find lots of practical help in Elizabeth Crary’s new downloadable book, Children and Chores: The Surprising Impact of Chores on Kids’ Futures. These classic tips from our archive can also help:

July 2 — Teaching Our Children to Work, Part I
July 9 — Teaching Our Children to Work, Part II
July 16 — Chores and Our Youngest Children
July 23 — Building Responsibility in Children
July 30 — Helping Children Remember

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Family Fun Ideas — The History of Your Home

Do you live in a new house? An old one? A really, really old one? Maybe you live in a factory-built house, or an apartment. This month, when many families take advantage of summer weather to repair, remodel or redecorate, your family can play detective and research the history of your neighborhood or the building you live in. Here are some the things you may discover:
- Your house was built someplace else and moved to its current location. In fact, it may have had more than a couple of locations. Many structures were partially prefabricated during World War II, erected for military or defense worker housing, and then moved after the war. Other houses were relocated when freeways were constructed in the 1950s and 1960s.
- Your house used to face a different direction. Sometimes houses weren’t moved to a different location, but were raised up and turned around. Or they were completely remodeled to face another way.
- Your house used to be much smaller. Especially when houses were being relocated, it was common to have daylight basements constructed and the houses moved atop them, usually doubling the space.
- Your yard was once huge. In many old neighborhoods, the original large lots have been divided, sometimes many times, to create places for several additional houses.
- Your yard was once small. Sometimes new houses were built close to old structures, and then the old houses, garages or barns were demolished.
- You live in a former orchard, dairy, plant nursery, air field or golf course.
To delve into the history of your home, start with those neighbors who have lived nearby the longest. They may have interesting stories about when your house was built, and who previously lived there. Ask your neighborhood librarian what local histories, newspaper archives and old maps exist. Many are online, as are some city directories.

Some county assessors photographed every building for tax purposes, and those pictures may be available in government archives or at City Hall. As a Louisiana archivist reminds us in his How to Reseach the History of Your House (or Other Building) in New Orleans, your building may be shown next to, or behind, a house that was being documented. This is an especially valuable tip if your house or apartment house is next to a historically significant structure. For more information on these, see the National Register of Historic Places, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and your state and county lists of historic structures. Blueprints and photos of selected other notable structures can be found in a Library of Congress archive, American Memory. Search “Architecture, Landscape” and “Cities, Towns” for the best chance of finding information on places your family may have lived or worked.

Historic House Research in Maryland, a web site of the University of Maryland, provides additional guidelines that are helpful wherever you live. One hint: long-ago obituaries often included street addresses, so you might discover who lived in your house early in the 20th century.

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Community Service — Disaster Preparedness for Our Pets

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, as kids think about summer projects, it’s a good time to talk about disaster preparedness for everyone in the household. If you have no pets and your children are very young, this may be as simple as reviewing fire safety and basic procedures for whatever natural disasters are typical of your area. For example, on the Pacific coast, where News for Parents is published, every school class has earthquake drills.

For homes with pets of any kind—mice, hamsters, birds, snakes, cats, dogs—the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has a detailed list of recommendations on its web site. These include such precautions as having pets microchipped and putting an “Animals Inside” sticker in your window (available free from the ASPCA). Just as you may have emergency supplies for your family, you can put together an “Evac-Pack” for pets. How to protect animals might also be the topic for an article that your older kids write for the community newspaper, for posters they create for local storefronts, and for a display at the library.

If you have horses or farm animals, you’ll find more advice on The Humane Society web site.

Valuable information on how animals may act when they sense a storm or other disaster is on the web site of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which cautions us to keep pets inside and to keep cats and dogs separate from each other and from smaller critters.

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III. POTPOURRI

Special of the month — Important If Imperfect

This special has expired.

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Books by Topic New Books NEW! Feelings Child Guidance Problem Solving Development & Issues Temperament & Values Quick Help Personal Safety Spanish Translations Other Resources Books by Author Books by Title Instant Help NEW! Qwik Books Qwik Sheets Special Services Book Fairs Pre-Pub Club Gift Certificates Our Catalog Parenting Resources Weekly Parenting Tips Downloadable Brochures News for Parents Parenting Quizzes Professional Resources PEP Talk Activity Plans Leader’s Guides Curriculum Adoptions Links About Parenting Press Frequent Questions Mission and History What’s New NEW! Our Authors Manuscript Submissions Advisory Group Contact Us Subscribe to Newsletter	Parenting Press® Welcome to the July 2011 “News for Parents” Dear Friends of Parenting Press: Looking for project ideas? Books to read? Downloads for home, school, or youth group? At Parenting Press, we’re always creating material for you! “News for Parents” is available in two formats: by e-mail and, complete with color and photos, online. We appreciate your comments; use the “feedback” link after each article to reach us. Want to make sure you receive every issue? Subscribe now, and this newsletter will be in your e-mail box the beginning of every month. To keep up with Parenting Press’s other news, e-mail marketing@ParentingPress.com and we’ll put you on our “all press releases” list. You’ll hear about authors coming to your area and new books—and we promise not to overwhelm you. You can also contact us via Facebook and get almost daily news from us via Twitter.com/parentingpress. Got a story idea? Use any of the “feedback” links to contact us. Although “News for Parents” is created by the Parenting Press staff, your suggestions for topics are appreciated. Want to advertise in “News for Parents?” Sorry: this is an advertising-free zone! If you teach parenting education, conduct home visits or counsel parents and caregivers, click on through to our Parent Educator Corner and register for a complimentary information sheet. There’s one every month! Popular topics include how to get kids into bed, how to keep them there, and how to get them to sleep. If you write for a newspaper or school, extension, or child care newsletter, you’re welcome to excerpt or reprint our information, as long as you credit us and send us a copy. Advance copies of selected stories from the next issue (see “Coming Attractions”) are available the last week of this month for excerpts in print publications. E-mail our media contact. 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? Determining Kids’ Strengths—and Parents’, Too! Get the Scoop on Ice Cream Summer Fun with Books about Letters and Words 31 Things to Do Now That School’s Out “Parents Magazine” Interviews Eileen Kennedy-Moore FEATURES Tips for the month Family fun ideas—The History of Your Home Community service—Disaster Preparedness for Our Pets POTPOURRI Special of the month—Important If Imperfect How to receive your complimentary subscription to this e-zine Reprinting articles in your newsletter COMING ATTRACTIONS Getting Ready for Back-to-School Fall Festivals I. WHAT’S NEW? Determining Kids’ Strengths—and Parents’, Too! Questionnaires can be fun, and some provide important clues to our strengths. Psychologist Martin Seligman developed positive psychology, which focuses on positive emotions, strengths-based character and healthy social institutions, and he has created several questionnaires. What these help us recognize are strengths such as creativity, curiosity, perseverance, love of learning and the tendency to help and understand other people. Some are brief, and others quite detailed. These may be especially valuable in helping your children understand which of their actions are prompted by which strengths and values. The child who’s sometimes accused of being snoopy may simply be curious about new acquaintances, for example, and if parents understand a child’s love of learning, they may be more tolerant about a child being so engrossed in a book that the school bus has been missed. For kids, especially those in middle and high school, who question why their interests or behavior may differ from classmates or even family members, these questionnaires can help with self-assessment and self-esteem. As a family, you may find the questionnaire results worthwhile as you all prepare for a new academic year. No questionnaire can tell us everything we want to know, and none is completely accurate, either, but Seligman’s surveys have greater value because they recognize that people change. How any of us answer today may be significantly different next year, or the year after, when school, work, family structure and challenges have changed, too. Comment on this story Top of page Get the Scoop on Ice Cream July is National Ice Cream Month! Introduce your kids to cool facts about one of our favorite desserts with “From the Cow to the Cone” and histories of both ice cream and the ice cream cone, all available at the web site of the International Dairy Foods Association. People have been eating or drinking iced treats for centuries, but the ice cream cone is an American invention, dating from just after 1900. You’ll find more trivia, including Thomas Jefferson’s ice cream recipe, on the site—and, of course, it also has wonderful recipes like “Seven Layer Sundae” for an ice cream celebration! Comment on this story Top of page Summer Fun with Books about Letters and Words Your kids may be tempted to chant, “No more pencils, no more books. . .” if you suggest they do a little writing this summer, but we’re betting they’ll smile all the way through a new children’s book, A Call for a New Alphabet. Created by Jef Czekaj, this 44-page hardback is the story of X, who is exasperated by always being near the end of every alphabet book. Ideal for the read-aloud crowd and for elementary-age kids to read themselves, it’s full of alliteration and puns, with many valuable reminders of spelling rules: “S was soaking up some sun, bearded B was bouncing a ball, R was roller-skating, and there was P in the pool,” is how the story begins with S in stripes, B in blue, R in red and P in pirate garb. When X begins to complain, Helpful H (in high heels AND hard hat) explains the alphabet, like grammar, must have rules. Rules! That really sets X off. “Q, aren’t you bored to tears at being stuck next to U? You two have to share nearly every word that you’re in.” Three small images illustrate examples of the rule: quail, quiet, quarter. The next page shows a stop sign emblazoned “I Before E Except After C,” and the cowboy-boot clad C heading for vowels as X exclaims: “And I and E, aren’t you tired of having to switch places every time C comes into the picture?” X’s dreams are even better for demonstrating how irregular our language is, and introducing (or reinforcing) its idiosyncrasies. X discovers how difficult it is to be the letter that makes a plural, like S. “Being S is too much work,” he declares, explaining he’s exhausted. By the time the character has tried out the jobs of several other consonants and of the vowel E (after all, it’s in a “bunch of words), X wakes up knowing he wants to stay X, even if it means he’s still at the end of the alphabet. Why we like this book: vivid colors, simple shapes, and important messages about the value of rules and order, and the importance of the roles each of us play. Czekaj, who is a cartoonist and a linguist as well as an author, mixes in fairly sophisticated vocabulary (for example, unique, opinions, fainted, abstained, fantastic, complications), and he lets all of us, adults and children, enjoy rebellious X! Spilling Ink: A Young Writer’s Handbook, written by Anne Mazer and Ellen Potter and illustrated by Matt Phelan Kids who are starting to write (or need to be writing for school assignments) and any of us intimidated by getting information down on paper may be charmed by Anne Mazer and Ellen Potter’s Spilling Ink, which starts out with chatty reassurances that writing requires effort, whether you’re a novice or the author of a zillion published books. Mazer is the author of more than 45 books for children, and Potter writes the Olivia Kidney series as well as such YA books as Slob. In her introduction, Potter compares writing to a wild ocean voyage. “You don’t know where you are going or what sort of storms you might sail into along the way. You might get shipwrecked by writer’s block. . .But don’t worry. Another ship is sure to sail into view, and it will whisk you right back out into those tumbling, unpredictable waters of your brilliant imagination!” It won’t be easy, Potter warns us. . .and then we turn the page into the first chapter, written by Mazer, and it’s entitled “Is It Really This Simple?” (Of course, THEN there’s the second chapter, written by Potter, and it’s called “Ugly First Drafts.”) In other words, what you and your children, or the children you teach, will find in this guide is encouragement, a strong dose of reality, and exercises that almost anyone can use. One example: the “I Dare You” boxes that appear throughout the book. The first one suggests you think of something that happened today, something that might have been downright mortifying, and then write it down the way you wish it had happened. That’s right: rewrite at least part of today! Another “I Dare You” requires that you use a metaphor or simile to describe how a girl feels when her parents announce they’re getting a divorce, and a third suggests you write a story in two different styles, one being the “less is more” with simple, clipped voice, and the other version expanded. Among the other advice that will help a third or fifth or eighth grader as well as someone writing for the high school newspaper or a college composition class, a graduate school application, a report on business analysis or a letter to Great-Aunt Gertrude: Use your embarrassing moments, the more humiliating the better, for scenes in your writing. Weave in the small moments that capture your attention: the goofy things your pets or little brother or the baby next door do. Write about subjects you know well (even if, as Mazer reassures us, you don’t know how to do them well). Mentally, or in a journal, describe what you observe about your family and friends. Stay alert for ideas. They may come from the news, from YouTube, from people or places you glimpse on a bus, or, as Mazer goes on, from conversations you overhear. Write down all your ideas, however incomplete they seem. And then, she suggests, “write them on scraps of paper, put them in a bowl, and randomly pick two or three. Then try to write a story from them.” (This technique will work with nonfiction, too: each paper scrap can have a different piece of information about your topic, and you can try different ways of starting or focusing a report or even a letter.) Even if you or your children aren’t planning to do much writing, Spilling Ink provides valuable explanations of plot and subplot, narrative voice (first person, second person, third person objective, omniscient, or limited), back stories, settings, how suspense is created, dialogue and description. To help us understand what’s too much (someone’s life story in the first paragraph) or too little, the authors include lots of examples. Even better, they explain metaphors and similes, how to create them and why to use them. Oh, yeah, and there’s the advice you want kids to hear about audience, voice, goal-setting (A.K.A. paying attention to the assignment if you’re in class), and both giving and receiving criticism. It’s all delivered with a generous dollop of humor, especially when Mazer and Potter describe typical days of writing. As Mazer writes, “To be a professional writer, you will need the following skills: Time wasting Daydreaming A knack for noticing things that annoy other people A delight in playing with words Stubbornness A slight touch of insanity Comment on this story Top of page 31 Things to Do Now That School’s Out It’s rainy, it’s a screen-free day, or their friends are all gone: exactly when you’re likely to hear “I’m bored,” or “There’s nothing to do.” You’ll be ready to handle these whines and groans with the list that follows, and the ideas you add to it. Better yet, find an empty oatmeal box or an old cookie jar that you can fill with suggestions on separate slips of paper, discount coupons, recipes, library story-hour schedules, and craft how-to’s. Whenever boredom strikes, let your kids pull an idea out of the jar! (Want to get really fancy? Make each “withdrawal” from the jar a surprise by sealing every idea in unused business reply envelopes from direct mail solicitations.) Who shares your birthday? Use a web site like famousbirthdays.net to find out! Bigger kids might want to continue the project by compiling photos and brief biographies of their birthday “friends” in a binder or homemade book. Whose birthday is today? Famousbirthdays.net can also tell you whose birthday can be celebrated on any given day this month. On July 3, for example, you all can march around the house singing “Yankee Doodle Dandy” in honor of George M. Cohan. Or on July 4, make a Rube Goldberg contraption part of your Independence Day events! For the 12th, introduce your kids to Andrew Wyeth’s paintings, Buckminster Fuller’s domes, the music of Oscar Hammerstein, Thoreau’s writings and the importance of George Washington Carver. (No chance to be bored that day!) Send a birthday greeting. Got a family member or friend with an upcoming birthday? Get out craft supplies and create one card, or several. If you’re each writing a note or drawing a picture, one of you might crease heavy paper into a folder that can hold everyone’s greetings. Punch a couple of holes on the side that opens, tie it closed with a ribbon bow and pop it into a large envelope. Who shares your name? The Census Bureau’s Genealogy web page can tell you how common a surname is. (We joke about keeping up with the Joneses, but theirs is only the fifth most common last name in the U.S. More common: Smith, Johnson, Williams and Brown.) Among the Parenting Press staff, operations manager Homer Henderson has the 101st most common surname, and “News for Parents” editor Linda Carlson has the 225th most common. Eileen Kennedy-Moore, who wrote What About Me? 12 Ways to Get Your Parents’ Attention (Without Hitting Your Sister), is 130th with her maiden name, Kennedy, and Janan Cain, who created The Way I Act and the earlier The Way I Feel, ranks 516th. Other members of the crew and most of our authors have last names that rank outside the top 1,000. At whitepages.com, you can get an idea of how many people share your full name, although some combinations are very common: for Elizabeth Crary, Parenting Press founder, whitepages.com replies only that there are over a hundred people with similar first and last name. Play charades. Each one of you can act out a word, phrase, song or book title, or a character for the rest of the family to guess. Especially if you’ve been reading The Little Engine That Could, someone can pantomime the wheels of a steam engine while chug, chug, chugging around the breakfast table. If you’ve been watching people fishing, one of you can “throw out” a line, feel a tug, and hastily reel it in. Play cards. Play “Go Fish” or pull out pairs of cards and the joker to use if you don’t have an “Old Maid” deck. Tweens and teens can play cribbage, gin rummy, poker and maybe even bridge. For simple matching games, try the Parenting Press “Feeling Elf” cards. Play checkers. An ideal way to reinforce the concepts of taking turns and being a gracious winner (and loser). Blow bubbles. Use the little loops that come in bottles of bubble mix, or mix up your own bubble solution with dishwashing detergent and glycerin in a dishpan and then dip in large rings for soccer ball-size bubbles. (The recipe and all sorts of information about the importance of each ingredient are at Steve Spangler Science.) Play “Hangman.” Appropriate for kids who can spell, this is great when you need to wait for a restaurant table, in a ferry line—wherever you may only have paper and pencil. You’ll find the how-to’s at wikipedia.org. (Want to practice a foreign language? You can play Hangman online in English, Norwegian or Dutch at www.hangman.no/.) Capture bugs. Don’t let the crawlers creep you out! Use an inexpensive “bug box” with magnifying lens in its lid to catch and examine spiders and the other bugs you may find around the house. (Avoid bees, wasps and other stingers!) Press flowers. Delicate blossoms and leaves (say, from ferns and such posies as lobelia) can be pressed between sheets of wax paper weighed down with heavy books. These make wonderful souvenirs from a trip around the block—or around the country. (The “News for Parents” editor, who hardly ever throws anything away, has autumn 1979 leaves from New England tucked between pages of a cookbook.) Weave. Little kids can paint paper and the next day, cut slits in it to weave in strips of paper from another project, and bigger kids can make a simple loom with cardboard for yarn, strips cut from plastic grocery bags, leftover gift wrap ribbon. . .and who knows what else? How-to’s for creating simple looms and for weaving on a hand are at Montessori World’s “Handwork” page. Play “Red Rover.” Remember the rules for this running game? If not, Wikipedia’s got ‘em. Print with packing pellets, string or shoe inner soles. Introduce kids to the many possibilities for printing designs by showing them how to create designs on paper or lightweight smooth fabric (T-shirts, old sheets or muslin, for example) with packing pellets (dip one into paint and then press against the fabric). Or outline a design on stiff cardboard with heavy string or cord, brush the design with paint and then press it on paper or fabric. Another option: cut a simple design such as a heart or flower out of a new foam shoe inner sole, glue it to a heavy piece of corrugated paper or a chunk of wood and, voila, you have your own “rubber” stamp! Print with fruits and vegetables. Slice citrus fruits in half so kids can use them to stamp designs (you can use lemons that have already been squeezed gently for their juice), or carve designs in root vegetables like potatoes and carrots. Kids too young to handle sharp knives can outline their designs and a teenager or adult can do the cutting. (A large russet potato can be used for several designs; cut off one end, carve a design, and when your kids are done with it, cut it off and create another one.) Marble print with shaving cream. Fill a flat pan with almost an inch of shaving cream, and drip two or three colors of paint (such as water color) in different spots. Lay a half-sheet of paper on the foam and gently rub the surface of the paper to transfer the image. Complete how-to’s, with teacher comments, at Incredible Art Department. Visit a museum. To find one near you, or near where you’re traveling, see web sites for such organizations as the Association of Children’s Museums, the Fire Museum Network and RailMuseums.com. About.com has a guide to doll shops and museums and many communities have history museums, with exhibits of early-day clothes, kitchen appliances, tools and weapons. Many have free days and children’s programs. Plant carrots and radishes. Unless you live where frost comes early, you can probably get a small crop if you plant in July. Photograph each other. Follow our illustrator Janan Cain’s example, and photograph your kids when they’re hanging upside down on the playground monkey bars or when each member of the family is making a “fish face.” Bake cookies. Use the pre-molded refrigerated cookies, or the “slice and bake” rolls so kids can bake just a few a day. Or mix up a batch of homemade dough so you’ll have enough treats for dessert and to share with neighbors. Eat like Grandma or Great-grandpa did. Ask them what they ate as children or explore old cookbooks to see what meals were like during World War II food rationing or in the 1950s, when TV dinners and many mixes were introduced. Create your own trivia game. Kids can write questions on one side of index cards, and the answer on the reverse. Box them up, question side up, and use them for conversation-starters at the dinner table, or when you’re stuck in traffic. Besides family trivia (“When did Mom and Dad meet?” and “Did it rain the day I was born?”), consider questions like, “Who invited TV dinners?”, “What color were the original telephones?” and “Who was Howdy Doody?” Run in the rain. If it’s warm but rainy, grab a slicker or a plastic poncho, rubber boots or old shoes, and take a rain walk. Run, skip and pounce in puddles. . .and then come home to a hot bath and clean clothes! Have a jumping jack contest. Who can do the most in a minute? In two minutes? Kids can use a stopwatch or the second hand on a wristwatch to time each other, and you! Make mudpies. Got dirt? Mix it with enough water to make a “batter,” and then press this into old dishes or plastic containers and let it dry in the sun. When solid, unmold them and decorate them with leaves, blossoms, a sprinkling of white sand or tiny rocks, and have a pretend feast. Search the sky. On a clear night, take binoculars with you and walk together into a park or another place where you’re some distance from house and car lights. See how many stars you can count. Or how many jets you can see! Transfer images. Show primary and older kids how to transfer a simple drawing by rubbing the reverse side of the lines with a soft pencil. Then put the drawing pencil side down on the paper, fabric or wood you want the image on, and retrace the original drawing. Kids can also try carbon paper, or they can transfer the image that’s been output on a transparency with an ink-jet printer by rubbing it onto a wet sheet of paper. (Instructions for many kinds of transfers are in Image Transfer Workshop: Mixed-Media Techniques for Successful Transfers, North Light Books, available at bookstores and libraries.) Make a puppet. Use your hands to make shadow puppets at bedtime, or pull on stockings and “talk” to each other with impromptu sock puppets when you’re sorting laundry! Kids can also make paper bag puppets or simple marionettes with cardboard, brass fasteners and string. Play Scrabble. Really little kids may prefer the junior version, or you can use the regular game board with your own rules. Play without keeping score, for example, or encourage kids to create words that extend into formerly open spots rather than using a letter or two on short words that fill in between existing words. Set up a jigsaw puzzle. If it’s on a table or counter you don’t use every day, each of you can take quick breaks throughout your day to add a piece or two. Visit a farmers’ market. Take your shopping list for vegetables, or give each child a scavenger-hunt style list of things to find: sunflower, strawberry, tomato, turnip, sourdough bread, bunnies, bees, chickens, cheese or honey, perhaps. Comment on this story Top of page Parents Magazine Interviews Eileen Kennedy-Moore Watch for the August issue of Parents. It’s scheduled to have advice from our favorite psychologist/children’s author in response to a mother’s question regarding teaching caution around dogs. For more about Dr. Kennedy-Moore, author of What About Me? 12 Ways to Get Your Parents’ Attention (Without Hitting Your Sister), see her media kit. Comment on this story Top of page 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. Kids and chores! Struggling to get your children to pull their weight this summer? Or ready to introduce the concept of helping to your young children as you prepare for the busy back-to-school season? You’ll find lots of practical help in Elizabeth Crary’s new downloadable book, Children and Chores: The Surprising Impact of Chores on Kids’ Futures. These classic tips from our archive can also help: July 2 — Teaching Our Children to Work, Part I July 9 — Teaching Our Children to Work, Part II July 16 — Chores and Our Youngest Children July 23 — Building Responsibility in Children July 30 — Helping Children Remember Top of page Family Fun Ideas — The History of Your Home Do you live in a new house? An old one? A really, really old one? Maybe you live in a factory-built house, or an apartment. This month, when many families take advantage of summer weather to repair, remodel or redecorate, your family can play detective and research the history of your neighborhood or the building you live in. Here are some the things you may discover: Your house was built someplace else and moved to its current location. In fact, it may have had more than a couple of locations. Many structures were partially prefabricated during World War II, erected for military or defense worker housing, and then moved after the war. Other houses were relocated when freeways were constructed in the 1950s and 1960s. Your house used to face a different direction. Sometimes houses weren’t moved to a different location, but were raised up and turned around. Or they were completely remodeled to face another way. Your house used to be much smaller. Especially when houses were being relocated, it was common to have daylight basements constructed and the houses moved atop them, usually doubling the space. Your yard was once huge. In many old neighborhoods, the original large lots have been divided, sometimes many times, to create places for several additional houses. Your yard was once small. Sometimes new houses were built close to old structures, and then the old houses, garages or barns were demolished. You live in a former orchard, dairy, plant nursery, air field or golf course. To delve into the history of your home, start with those neighbors who have lived nearby the longest. They may have interesting stories about when your house was built, and who previously lived there. Ask your neighborhood librarian what local histories, newspaper archives and old maps exist. Many are online, as are some city directories. Some county assessors photographed every building for tax purposes, and those pictures may be available in government archives or at City Hall. As a Louisiana archivist reminds us in his How to Reseach the History of Your House (or Other Building) in New Orleans, your building may be shown next to, or behind, a house that was being documented. This is an especially valuable tip if your house or apartment house is next to a historically significant structure. For more information on these, see the National Register of Historic Places, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and your state and county lists of historic structures. Blueprints and photos of selected other notable structures can be found in a Library of Congress archive, American Memory. Search “Architecture, Landscape” and “Cities, Towns” for the best chance of finding information on places your family may have lived or worked. Historic House Research in Maryland, a web site of the University of Maryland, provides additional guidelines that are helpful wherever you live. One hint: long-ago obituaries often included street addresses, so you might discover who lived in your house early in the 20th century. Comment on this story Top of page Community Service — Disaster Preparedness for Our Pets 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, as kids think about summer projects, it’s a good time to talk about disaster preparedness for everyone in the household. If you have no pets and your children are very young, this may be as simple as reviewing fire safety and basic procedures for whatever natural disasters are typical of your area. For example, on the Pacific coast, where News for Parents is published, every school class has earthquake drills. For homes with pets of any kind—mice, hamsters, birds, snakes, cats, dogs—the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has a detailed list of recommendations on its web site. These include such precautions as having pets microchipped and putting an “Animals Inside” sticker in your window (available free from the ASPCA). Just as you may have emergency supplies for your family, you can put together an “Evac-Pack” for pets. How to protect animals might also be the topic for an article that your older kids write for the community newspaper, for posters they create for local storefronts, and for a display at the library. If you have horses or farm animals, you’ll find more advice on The Humane Society web site. Valuable information on how animals may act when they sense a storm or other disaster is on the web site of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which cautions us to keep pets inside and to keep cats and dogs separate from each other and from smaller critters. Comment on this story Top of page III. POTPOURRI Special of the month — Important If Imperfect This special has expired. Top of page Subscriptions to this newsletter If you received this newsletter as a forward from 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. Like to tell friends, students or colleagues about “News for Parents?” Simply email them a link to this page. Thank you! Top of page 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. Include our copyright notice with a phrase such as Reprinted with permission from Parenting Press News for Parents, copyright © 2011. For a complimentary subscription, see www.ParentingPress.com/signup.html. And please mail or email a copy of your newsletter to Publicity Department, P.O. Box 75267, Seattle WA 98175-0267. Top of page E-mail this page to a friend Visit our web site Browse our CATALOG on-line or order a copy.
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