Bright-Kids

Copyright Jennifer Hull. Used with permission from EzineArticles.com. All rights reserved. http://www.growingafamily.com/

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So, the storm has hit and you’re stuck indoors with small children. They’re bouncing off the walls. You’re going bananas. You’d play Candyland but the pieces are missing. Anyway, the kids say they’d rather paint the mirror with your new lipstick.What to do? Here are some indoor kids games and activities to keep children entertained without plugging them into the TV.

1) Build a fort.

Face four chairs back to back forming a large, open square. Drape a sheet over them. Put toys and kitchenware for the kids to play with underneath. They can make a walkway to the structure with blocks.

2) Box them up.

Children love cartons. Add a rope to the box so they can pull each other around. Encourage the kids to decorate their “boat” with markers. Beats having them scribble on the walls every time.

3) Throw a party.

Announce it’s bear’s birthday and invite his stuffed friends. The kids can create invitations and decorate white paper plates by coloring them. Make slice and bake cookies or popcorn. Stretch out the preparation. The party will only last 10 minutes

4) Turn the bathroom into a science lab.

Fill plastic bottles with whatever is on the shelf to make potions. Toothpaste, ketchup, food coloring - the yuckier the better. Add baking soda and vinegar and watch your concoction fizz.

5) Make collages.

Keep everyone busy and clean out the magazine rack by having your children clip pictures and paste them on paper. Suggest a theme, such as animals. Toss any magazine older than your toddler.

6) Work them out.

The problem with bad weather is that children don’t get enough exercise. Play “freeze dance,” stopping in position when the music goes off. Pile up pillows and encourage the kids to gallop over them on hobbyhorses. Get out the tutus and do a dance show. Anything to tire them out!

7) Use a timer.

Finish each activity with a cleanup game, setting the timer and seeing how much everybody can pick up before it rings!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  Jennifer Bingham Hull’s award-winning book, Beyond One: Growing a Family and Getting a Life, looks at life after the second child. Visit her online at http://www.growingafamily.com where you can contact Jennifer to receive her “Life Beyond One” column regularly and sign up for her free newsletter.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jennifer_Hull

One of the gifts parents can give their children is teaching  and developing the character quality of self-discipline. With young children, in particular, bedtime is a good place to start. Children often don’t want to go to bed and the continual battle night after night is draining, causing many parents to just give up and allow children to stay up later.

A bedtime for children is good for them as well as for their parents. Enforcing it though, means extra work for a while. Here are some suggestions for working with young children to make bedtimes work more effectively:

1) Start the bedtime routine earlier so that it doesn’t all get crammed into the last few minutes. If bedtime is 8:00pm, then start the routine at 7:30 by getting on pajamas and completing a bathroom routine. Then enjoy some relaxed time with children, reading or playing or just talking together.

2) At bedtime, tuck each child in individually. Use this time to continue to debrief about the day in preparation for a good night’s sleep and pleasant dreams. You may pray, sing, and hug your child. Different families do different things to make it fun and meaningful.

3) Enforce quietness. A child may not feel tired so lying quietly is all you need to require. You may have to sit in the doorway or just outside the door to make sure the child doesn’t get up, turn the light on, or start playing.

4) If a child gets up or calls out. Quickly, calmly, and firmly, get the child back in bed with as little dialogue as possible. One dad was surprised to find that the first night he had to take his three-year-old son back to bed over 20 times. After a few days, though, he saw tremendous improvement. His son realized that bedtime was nonnegotiable.

5) Hang in there, be consistent, and invest in the self-discipline development of your child. You and your children will benefit from the work you put into the process.

Bedtimes are opportunities to build relationship, but there comes a point where building self-discipline takes priority. Young children are happier and more pleasant to work with once they’ve learned self-discipline in their lives. It’s work but it’s worth it in the end.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:  Dr. Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller, RN, BSN are authors of a large number of books and other resources on parenting and family life.  You can visit them online and subscribe to their free parenting email newsletter at: http://effectiveparenting.org/

You can order their books online at:

“Home Improvement: Eight Tools for Effective Parenting”
http://snurl.com/effectiveparenting

“Say Goodbye to Whining and Complaining … In You and Your Kids!”
http://snurl.com/goodbyewhining

I found this lesson plan for classrooms online just now and thought it might be something that parents could adapt to use at home with their children while the various autumn harvest vegetables are still in the local grocery stores.

Eat a Rainbow: The Autumn Harvest

From their website: 

This lesson gives kids a delicious, hands-on way to remember a simple phrase that will help boost their fruit and vegetable intake.

Objective: To introduce the importance of eating a rainbow of colors of fruits and vegetables while emphasizing and celebrating a seasonal harvest.

Deborah Taylor-Hough is the author of A Simple Choice: a practical guide for saving your time, money and sanity and editor of the Bright-Kids email newsletter. subscribe-bright-kids@hub.thedollarstretcher.com

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Nature Notebooks are artist sketchbooks where the children can draw whatever natural items strike their fancy.

The Nature Notebooks should be voluntary, by the way — not an assignment or a plea from the parent (”Now, draw the pretty bird for Mommy, honey. . . .”).

The more options you offer the child, the more likely they’ll find one or more ideas that spark their interest.  Here are some ideas to get you started:

1. Information from first-hand observation the child has done themselves (not things they’ve learned from “teaching” or in the classroom).
2. Drawings of leaves, flowers, birds, insects or anything else discovered by the child in it’s natural setting.
3. Labels for their drawings — both English and Latin names if applicable.
4. Notations on where the object was found.
5. Notations about the temperature or weather conditions, dates, etc.
6. Life cycles of plants. Draw the bare tree in Winter; the Spring buds; the Summer blooms; the Fall colors and seed pods. Or in a backyard garden you could draw a seed; draw the sprouting seedling; draw the full grown plant; draw the stem, leaves, flower, etc.; draw the fruit, vegetable or flower; draw the new seeds for starting the cycle again.
7. Draw and describe an ant hill or a bee’s nest.
8. Take out a hand-held high-power magnifying glass and draw the intricate details of a bee’s wing, or whatever else might be fascinating viewed through a magnifying lens.
9. Science experiments the child has actually performed. Set-up, observations, results, etc.
10. Pressing and mounting leaves or dried flowers.
11. Samples of different types of leaves: divided, heart-shaped, fluted, needles, etc.
12. Samples or drawings of different types of seeds: nuts; seed pods; seeds that fall to the ground; seeds that float through the air; etc.
13. Parts of the flower: petal, sepal, stamen, etc.
14. Sketches of animal tracks.
15. Sketches of the lifecycles of animals. Caterpillar to cocoon (or chrysalis) to moth (or butterfly); or egg to tadpole to frog (or salamander).
16. Nature-related poems or quotes. The poems can be ones found during the child’s reading time, or poems composed by the child.

For an outstanding example of a fully developed Nature Diary, take a look at the beautiful book The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady, 1906. This book is currently out of print, but you can have Amazon.com do an out-of-print book search for you.

I also highly recommend the book, Nature Journaling: Learning to Observe and Connect with the World Around You, by Clare Walker Leslie and Charles E. Roth. The book is written and illustrated by science educators who use Nature Journals as their primary way of teaching people to learn about nature firsthand. A beautiful book! It totally changed the way we approached Nature Journals — the first day we looked at the book, my 12-year-old daughter and I spent two hours at the local beaver pond sketching red-winged blackbirds, Canada geese, rough-skinned newts, turtles, and wildflowers.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  Deborah Taylor-Hough (mother of three) is the author of several popular books including Frugal Living For Dummies(r); Frozen Assets: How to Cook for a Day and Eat for a Month; and A Simple Choice: A Practical Guide for Saving Your Time, Money & Sanity. For more tips and ideas on cooking, parenting, saving money, educational ideas for families, and homemaking, visit Debi online and subscribe to one of her free email newsletters at:  http://thesimplemom.wordpress.com/about/

A great idea for the holidays is to set aside a special box or basket containing your family’s special Christmas or other holiday books. The Advent (or Holiday) Book Box only comes out during the Advent season, and is put away again with the decorations after the first of the year.

THE ADVENT BOOK BOX

This list of Favorite Christmas Books was compiled following a discussion between a group of home schooling mothers looking for twaddle-free holiday reading for their families.

A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens

Becky’s Christmas
by Tasha Tudor

(The) Best Christmas Pageant Ever!
by Barbara Robinson

Christmas at Long Pond
by William T. George

(The) Christmas Box
by Richard Paul Evans

(The) Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey
by Susan Wojciechowski

(The) Christmas Stories of George MacDonald
by George MacDonald (out of print)

(The) Christmas Tree
by Julie Salamon

(The) Crippled Lamb
by Max Lucado

(The) Donkey’s Dream
by Barbara Helen Berger

(The) First Christmas
by Marcia Williams (out of print)

(The) Glorious Impossible
by Madeleine L’Engle

Martin Luther’s Christmas Book
by Martin Luther

(The) Night Before Christmas
by Clement Moore, illustrated by Jan Brett

A Northern Nativity: Christmas Dreams of a Pairie Boy
by William Kurelek

One Wintry Night
by Ruth Bell Graham

Rembrandt: The Christmas Story

Seven Stories of Christmas Love
by Leo F. Buscaglia

(The) Story of Christmas: Words from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke
illustrated by Jane Ray

Tale of Three Trees
by Angela Elwell Hunt

This is the Star
by Joyce Dunbar

OTHER HOLIDAY-RELATED BOOKS (maybe to go into Mom’s personal holiday book box?)

Unplug the Christmas Machine, by Jo Robinson
Don’t wait until Christmas to read this book! The earlier you start thinking about the holidays, the easier it will be to make any necessary changes in your celebrations.

Debt Proof Your Holidays, by Mary Hunt
Whether you’re just looking for further frugal ideas for the upcoming holiday season, or you’re truly dreading another after-holidays debt hang-over, this book will be beneficial.

Frozen Assets: How to Cook for a Day and Eat for a Month, by Deborah Taylor-Hough
Less time in the kitchen means more time for activities you really enjoy. This book will show you a step-by-step plan to simplify and revolutionize the way you cook. Save time; save money; save your sanity! Contains a special Ten Day Holiday Meal Plan — perfect for simplifying your holiday meal preparation.

Simplify Your Christmas, by Elaine St James
Simple ideas for taking the complexity out of the holidays.

Hundred Dollar Holiday, by Bill McKibben
“What we need and long for now are the gifts of time, meaningful family connections, periods of silence, a relationship with the divine,” McKibben writes.

~Debi

Copyright 2007 Deborah Taylor-Hough.  Used with permission.  All rights reserved.

Do you find yourself sitting by helplessly while your very own little picky eater works her way through every ounce of spaghetti sauce, picking out the almost microscopic bits of cooked onion?

Do you wish there were a way to get little Johnny to eat more veggies than just the French fries at the local drive-thru?  (Do those even count as veggies, anyway?)

Well, relax.

While these tricks won’t necessarily help you win each of those out-right battles waged over plates of food with flagrant veggies and fruit, playing a little “Hide-and-Sneak” could be just what the doctor ordered for a simple way to help your child eat healthier … even if their picky little taste buds haven’t quite matured enough for a full serving of cooked Brussel sprouts.

1. Puree veggies and add to spaghetti sauce, soups, or soup stock. You can also use small baby food jars of pureed carrots or squash to thicken (and add some healthy veggies) to assorted sauces and soups.
2. Shred veggies and add to ground meat for healthier burgers, meatloaf, or meatballs.  You can also add some shredded veggies as you’re browning ground meat for tacos and other ground meat meals.
3. Hide those ”icky” onions in sauces, casseroles, or other recipes by sauteing the sliced onions in a small amount of margarine/butter or olive oil until soft.  Then blending completely in the blender.  You’ll get all of the delicious onion flavor but none of that yucky “slimy” texture picky kids tend to find so disgusting.
4. Thicken gravies and sauces with pureed vegetables (be sure to steam or cook the veggies first).  You can also use baby food veggies for this, too.
5. Add 1/2 cup of carrot puree (or a jar of those handy baby food carrots) to your favorite brownie mix or chocolate cake recipe.
6. Let your kids “dip” their various raw or cooked veggies in a dip:  Cheese dip, Ranch dressing, salsa, mayo, sour cream, or ketchup.  One mom reported to me that her daughter’s veggie-with-dip of choice is cooked green beans dipped in her favorite dip:  ketchup.  Yeah, I know.  Ick!  But at least she’s eating those green beans happily.
7. Make your own fruit-flavored breakfast “syrups” by blending fresh or thawed blueberries, strawberries, raspberries or whatever you child’s favorite berries might be with a small amount of honey.
8. Make popsicles with 100% fruit juice, pureed fruit mixed with a bit of honey and juice or milk, or flavored yogurt.

Be creative … invent your own version of “Hide-and-Sneak” with your picky child’s personal food arch-enemy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

–Deborah Taylor-Hough (mother of three) is the author of several popular books including Frugal Living For Dummies(r); Frozen Assets: How to Cook for a Day and Eat for a Month; and A Simple Choice: A Practical Guide for Saving Your Time, Money & Sanity. For more tips and ideas on cooking, parenting, saving money, and homemaking, visit Debi online and subscribe to one of her free email newsletters at:  http://thesimplemom.wordpress.com/

Debi’s also going to begin publishing a brand new email newsletter written for single moms and dads called “Solo Parents.”  To be one of the first subscribers to this upcoming free resource (the first issue should be going out right around the first of the year, 2008), send an email to:

join-solo-parents@hub.thedollarstretcher.com

Copyright Michelle Dudley.  Used with permission from EzineArticles.com. All rights reserved.

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Four o’clock has arrived, and you know what that means … it’s homework time. You’re ripping through the house looking for that pencil, you know you have one somewhere. Where’s that pencil sharpener at? Ten minutes have past and … yes, finally found one! Time to get back to that homework. Panic! I need a calculator! Where’s it at? Found it, only to discover that it needs batteries. Darn this house … I can’t find anything!

If your study sessions go anything like the one just described, then here are a few suggestions to help you finish your homework with as little pain as possible.

A lot of time can be wasted looking for homework supplies and making sure that you can use them. Or, light bulb moment, you can assemble a homework box or a supply kit of some kind and keep all the stuff you need together. Then, when it’s time to do your studying, you have all your supplies in one spot. No more running around the house like a chicken with your head cut off. Any kind of box works. You can use a storage tote, your old shoe box, or you can even have a special drawer. Keep everything you may need in there, ready to roll.

Make sure that the other members of your household know that this box is for homework and not for other activities. Your supplies should stay there and they should only be used for homework. If you want, you should label it “Homework Supplies” to avoid any confusion.

Pencils and crayons should be sharp, markers lids should be tightly closed, calculators should have fresh batteries. Always have the kit full and in working order. Keeping all your supplies handy and in one place will help make your study time go by more smoothly and maybe quicker.

And who doesn’t want to spend less time studying?

For more studying tips and tricks please visit http://www.squidoo.com/doyourhomework

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michelle_Dudley

Reprinted with permission from  http://www.SimpleLiving.org
All rights reserved.

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Community Pumpkin Patch

For Halloween, we have a community Pumpkin Patch. Our local social service agency has a volunteer-operated community garden. Garden plots for individual use are free, but all takers must help plant and harvest one crop in the community garden to provide fresh produce for the food pantry. These community gardens are located on city land used as a leaf dump, and we have found that pumpkins grow well in uncultivated leaf mounds.Just before Halloween our harvested pumpkins, supplemented by others we purchase, are placed in the Pumpkin Patch where customers trade cans of food for pumpkins — two food items for a small pumpkin, four for a medium pumpkin, etc. These canned goods are given to the local food pantry.

We make money for the food pantry by selling homemade pumpkin baked goods and apple cider. Two local residents set up their apple press and make fresh cider, stimulating sales by giving out free samples.

In addition, volunteer artists paint a cute or scary face on pumpkins for 25 cents. For entertainment the zoo brings animals to pet, and the recreation center provides clowns for face painting.

The Pumpkin Patch has become quite a tradition in our community. It raises several hundred dollars for our food pantry and contributes many canned goods. This project requires little work and lasts one Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

–Mary and Bill Merrill, Columbus, Ohio
 

 All Hallow’s Eve

We celebrate All Hallow’s Eve with a hot dog roast and bonfire. Everyone is encouraged to dress as a saint, but no Draculas are turned away. We play games such as “Pin the Crown on the Saint,” and sing I Sing a Song of the Saints of God (Episcopal hymnal). We end with the service for All Hallow’s Eve around the bonfire.

–Ed, Andrea, Nathanael and Rebekah Wills, Memphis, Tennessee

Fall Festival

We hosted a family party encouraging everyone (not just children!) to come dressed as Bible characters or saints. As folks gathered, we sang fun, campfire-type songs. Then we all told who we were and were given the prize of a bookmark.

Afterward, the adults played table games (and they must have really enjoyed it, staying as late as they did!) while the kids had their choice of face painting, guessing the number of pieces of candy in a jar, bobbing for apples, bean bag toss, ping-pong, ball toss, or drawing faces on balloons. We had trouble getting people to leave, so perhaps we’ll have another celebration next year!

–Susan Landis, Cheshire, Connecticut

Family Halloween Celebration

Dress the whole family in costume and visit a pediatric ward. Get permission for your visit in advance, making sure your planned gifts to the children there are appropriate. Balloons, coloring books, or comics may make better gifts than candy or gum. Or, if the hospital has no objections, bake cookies together and take them. Visit a few rooms briefly. The joy you bring to the patients and their parents
is a real gift.

–Joel E. Shirk, Cheshire, Connecticut

Ideas reprinted with permission from http://www.SimpleLiving.org

Copyright Kadence Buchanan. Used with permission from EzineArticles.com. All rights reserved.

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Homework has been a perennial headache for kids and teens as well as for their parents. Following are some tips to make homework time more effective and enjoyable for all concerned.

1) No TV.

As a general rule, kids should not watch TV while doing their homework. It might be a good policy to have the television turned off any time it’s time to do homework, depending, of course, where the television is located.

2) The radio is OK.

Contrary to what many so-called experts recommend, actual studies have shown that having the radio on a child’s or teenager’s favorite music station can actually help him learn better.

3) Set fixed hours.

There should be a set schedule for homework. This way, the youngsters can arrange their schedules and make sure they get their homework done every day. It’s also a great way for answering those comments. “I’ll do it later, after I’ve finished whatever,” which is a standard line among kids when asked if they’ve finished their homework.

You may want to set a standard time for supper and family discussions, followed by study time. If the student doesn’t have other commitments and gets home reasonably early from school, some homework can be done before supper.

4) Set telephone rules.

As a general rule, kids should not be allowed to use the telephone during those hours when they are supposed to be doing their homework. However, sometimes it becomes necessary to use the phone, say, for confirming homework and the like. In these cases, the parents should set a fixed number of minutes for discussing school-related matters so the kids can get back to their homework right away.

5) Create a good study area.

First, designate an area where it would be ideal for your children to do their homework, usually in their rooms. Set up this area to make it conducive for studying by putting proper lighting, an area for studying supplies such as pencils, pens, paper, books, and other essentials and make the area free from distractions. It might be a good idea to set up a bulletin board there, as well.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  Kadence Buchanan writes articles on many topics including kids and teens, relationships, and computers.  Visit Kadence online at: http://4kidsandteens.com/Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kadence_Buchanan