Read together

Pick out one of your (or one of your parents’) favorite books from childhood and introduce it to your child at bedtime.

Go to the library

Spend some time at your local library.  Even a few minutes here and there in our busy schedule will help instill a lifelong love of books.

Get writing

Write a book! Sit down with your family and write a story together, taking time to illustrate it. Surely, this will become a family favorite.

Donate books

Pick out 5 books, either from your own collection or from a book store, to donate to literacy campaigns throughout the world–your bookstore can likely lead you to a place in need of books. And your school library and classroom will welcome your books.

Clean out your library

Take some time this week to sort your children’s book library in your home. Delight in some old favorites with your kids. Then select a few books to share with friends, your child’s classroom or a local doctor’s office or hospital.

Host a book swap

Ask each child to bring a few books that she is finished reading to trade with friends. Everyone goes home with exciting new stories to read.

Have a book party.

Invite your children’s friends over for a party of reading together. Everyone can bring a favorite book (or excerpt) to read to the group. Ask the children why they selected that story, what it means to them and lead the children in book conversations.

Children’s Book Week

While I truly believe every week should be Children’s Book Week, I do recognize the good that many organizations are putting efforts towards this week in that they are spreading the love of chlidren’s books and helping children to love reading. In honor of this special week:

• Better World Books is donating a book to someone who needs it (the vast majority of donations goes to Books for Africa and Feed the Children) for every book purchased at their site. They’re also reducing the price on a huge selection of used children’s books.  Shop their Children’s Book Week sale selection and get 3 used books for $9, and any additional used books for $3 each.
• Rusty & Rosy (disclosure: I write for their parenting & education blog) is sending everyone who “likes” their facebook page through this link a free copy of Henny Penny.
• Book Week Online, the official webpage of Children’s Book Week, hosts ideas and activities to celebrate reading.

Image: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

© 2012, Julie Meyers Pron. All rights reserved.

Everything served must be pre-approved by the schools. There is only one cake recipe that can be made–it includes black beans–in the cake. The district says the kids love it.

What?!

I am adamantly opposed to fundraisers held at fast food restaurants such as McDonalds. I would much rather write a check at the beginning of the year and opt out of these ridiculous fund raisers that encourage (and in some cases require) unhealthy eating.

But no sweets in schools? Ever? No holiday celebrations? No cultural eat-ins? No birthday cupcakes?

Greeley, Colorado (a town that was–until today–on my top list of places to consider relocating my family, someday) you are taking this too far.

If we allow our school systems to dictate our children’s menus, when will they have an opportunity to try new things? To celebrate a special time? To create something different?

I asked Jennifer from Savor the Thyme about a healthy black bean cake. She shared that she’ll work on it. In the meantime, her kids love Zucchini and Banana Muffins. So do I mine. They’re somewhat healthy. They have sugars, but they have fruit and vegetables, too. Muffins like these help our kids to learn that even vegetables taste good, right? But in Greeley, Colorado, you aren’t going to be permitted to make those for school, so your children won’t learn it at school.

As a teacher, I frowned when my students asked to bring Root Beer to a class party. I rolled my eyes when, instead of sending in homemade cupcakes or cookies for a birthday celebration, a mom sent grab bags of candies, worthy of the end of Halloween night. But banning these celebrations in lieu of pencils and erasers? Has the school board forgotten what it’s like to be a kid?

An overwhelming response in the comments notes that the biggest issue for parents is that the schools are now dictating their shopping lists and what they choose to pack for their children for lunch. I applaud schools who change their cafeteria menu to make it healthier. Goodness, I wish our’s would actually do it, rather than just talking about it and pretending they did. But to tell parents what they can and can’t feed their own children? That’s too far.

“They’re dictating what I can send with my child for lunch – what I can give them for a treat at a school party,” she said. “I don’t believe that’s right. It’s my child. I should be able to feed them whatever I want. They’re not raising my child. They’re not paying for their orthodontic bills. They’re not tucking them in at night telling them they love them. But yet they’re telling me what I can and can’t feed my child?” –parent comment from the FoxNews article

Once again, schools are taking the opportunity to teach about making healthy choices and stuffing the concept into the overfilling closet of forgotten lessons. The closet that sits behind the caution tape of “shhh! Don’t talk about it. Just don’t allow it and we can forget it’s important.”

Greeley, Colorado, why not offer a lesson on sugar? On fats? On making healthy choices. Have your 2nd graders do a poll of favorite foods. Teach third graders about eating in moderation. Lead them to sample tastes from the world and learn the cultures of foods. Instruct Home Economics classes to create a healthy muffin that still tastes good.

Foods are a learning experience. So is fun. So is celebration.

© 2012, Julie Meyers Pron. All rights reserved.

Earth Day celebrates the Earth and all things natural. Depending on the ages of the children, party planners and goers can go deep with messages or stick to simple activities. Because Earth Day is about your surroundings, plan your party at a local park, an outdoor facility, or a backyard: one with an area for picnicking, whether it’s on picnic tables or by spreading out blankets.

Remind the parents to dress their kids to play in the dirt and mud and invite them to bring along a kid-friendly shovel (available at dollar stores) – though it’s not necessary, shovels make it all the more exciting.

Bring along small cups, a bag of soil, a thermos of water and a pouch of seeds – Zinnias and sunflowers work best because they’re nearly guaranteed to grow. Each child (even the toddlers) can dig her cup into the bag of soil, add three to five seeds and top with a little more soil. (Make sure the seeds are buried not more than a half inch below the surface.) Then add a little water from a thermos and set out the soon-to-be flowers on a flat surface while the kids play. Usually, within about a week, the flowers will start to bud — the kids will be so excited to watch them grow.

Complete the play date with Garden-friendly snacks like carrots and celery and, for the younger kids, Earth Day songs. When the kids leave, you can give them each a packet of tomato seeds to grow in their own gardens. (Tomato seeds are another nearly-guaranteed grower.)

Older play daters will love planting seeds using the activity above and children older than preschoolers can continue with even more activities. Host the activity at your house, work ahead and find a senior center that needs a little help in the garden or locate a local a park that will welcome a garden (just clear it with the parks department first and realize that you’re taking responsibility for upkeep.) This is a prime time to get children involved helping others and actively creating a garden of their own. Task the kids with cleaning up a garden that needs to be lifted from the winter by weeding, raking and re-seeding. (Make sure they’re wearing gloves, which can be purchased at the Dollar Store and make another great party favor).

Another Earth Day party option: take the kids on a scavenger hunt through a park or neighborhood. Give each child (or pair of children) a bucket to fill with all the nature items they find. If you’d rather not disturb nature, bring along a few cameras and task each group to take pictures of the items on the list. When the group returns home, print out the pictures and create an Earth Day Nature Memory Book.

Whatever you do for your Earth Day play date this month, remember that if it’s too frustrating, kids will shut down. So keep it light, sneaking in the lessons and every play date partier will be smiling.

What will you do for Earth Day this year?

This post has been edited and reprinted.
Image credit: photo  ©2009  AnneCN, Flickr http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ 

Hey bloggers! Have a recent Earth Day post? Link up with us and share your natural brilliance. (If you’re able, please add to your post that you linked up at the Julieverse at Just Precious so that everyone else can link up, too!)

© 2012, Julie Meyers Pron. All rights reserved.

It is often difficult to broach the subject of discussing safety and stranger danger with young children.  Finding the right balance of information can be a tricky discussion, one many parents dread.  Fortunately, there are books available to help you discuss this important issue.

Never Talk to Strangers by Irma Joyce

If you are hanging from a trapeze
And up sneaks a camel with bony knees,
Remember this rule, if you please—
Never talk to strangers.

I have mixed feelings about this book.  I love the rhymes since kids of all ages respond easily to rhymes and easily helps them remember important messages.  The illustrations are delightfully friendly, also.  Depending on the age of the child, I think this book is fine to read and gives them a message without being too informative and scary.  I would guess that above the age of 3, however, I wouldn’t recommend this book.  As a child gets older, they will realize that the characters in the book are animals and they are not likely to run into animals at the grocery store.  This idea may confuse them.

Learn about Strangers by Stan & Jan Berenstain

From Amazon.com: When Papa Bear tells the cubs why they should never talk to strangers, Sister begins to view all strangers as evil until Mama brings some common sense to the problem. “The Bears’ rules for safe conduct among strangers are listed on the last pages, including a rule about the privacy of a bear’s body. A good book to start awareness in young children.”–School Library Journal.

I have not read this book personally but it seems to hold true to the Berenstain Bears philosophy of turning a difficult situation into a teachable moment for a child.  Or a cub.  I recommend it for all ages.

I Can Play it Safe by Alison Feigh

I have not read this book but have discovered that the author is an expert in the child safety arena.  I highly recommend the book due to its multicultural illustrations and the easy to understand themes of this and other similar books.  For further help discussing strangers and touch and body awareness, the author includes tips in the back of the book.

I Said No! by Kimberly King

I’m not sure if this book is appropriate for children younger than 5.  I have not read the book but the reviews make it seem helpful.

Your Body Belongs to You by Cornelia Spellman

Another book I’ve not read but seems like a good fit for teaching the little ones about body awareness.  Based on the reviews, the book encourages children to own their bodies and to decide who can touch them and how.  As a parent, I like giving children power over their own bodies.

For more information check out the complete amazon list I compiled.

Let us know what you think!

PammyPam, An Unconventional Librarian

© 2012, Julie Meyers Pron. All rights reserved.

For my second installment of this week’s #VlogMom topic, where we discussed our passions, I discuss state assessments and how they are hurting the education of our children.

What do you think? Share your opinion in the comments. And see what the other members of Vlogmom are passionate about by following the links below.

© 2012, Julie Meyers Pron. All rights reserved.

What are the other passions of other members of #VlogMom? Find out. And tell me what you think about NCLB… can’t wait to hear.

© 2012, Julie Meyers Pron. All rights reserved.

And, so, I researched. Expecting to find that school shootings started only in the 1980s or 90s, because times are said to be much harder now. After all, when we were in school we didn’t practice lockdowns. Our parents didn’t hide news coverage of high school massacre’s the way we do today, right?

I was shocked.

According to Wikipedia, the first reported school shooting was in The Pontiac’s Rebellion on July 26, 1764 where 4 Lenape Indians shot and killed the schoolmaster and 9 or 10 children.

1764. Wow. So much for the idea that times were simpler for parents way-back-when.

Wikipedia reports 11 school-related shootings in the 1800s and adds that the “majority of attacks during this time period by students on other students or teacher, usually involved stabbing with knives, or hitting with stones.”

I’m not even going to try counting the shootings and deaths in schools in the 20th century. The number is enormous.

My point? Perhaps it’s not so much that these shootings are new, it’s that the media shares them so much more, making them a greater part of our lives and bringing the discussion to our attention much more often than when we were young, and far more often than when our parents were young.

Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. Because of the attention brought to these horrible attacks, schools and communities are much more in tune to want to create and investigate tolerance policies and create emergency safety and management plans. Parents know to share their concern and to discuss safety with our children and our schools.

But to what extent do we discuss? In What is Lockdown? Melissa of Girlymama shared a recent story where her 1st grade child learned why her school was in lockdown. You see, when her daughter’s class was in lockdown, no one ever explained the reason. I wouldn’t either. There was a shooting nearby, not in the school. So why would anyone want to scare the children?

My kids practice lockdown at school but they have no idea why. It’s as normal as practicing a fire drill. When I was in the classroom we created our emergency plan for our school. We never told the children the reason for the practices, which began in the weeks following Columbine in 1999.

Of course, when I was in school, we also didn’t practice for attacks from Japanese, Vietnamese or other warships, as they did when our parents and Grandparents were in school.

Perhaps we lived in the simpler times: were the 1980s the simplest of times? Did the end of the Vietnam war lead to a time when people just wanted to forget the threats and live without scares? Perhaps we lived in a peace and the world glided, until Columbine and then 9/11.

Perhaps we were sheltered into believing we were safe. I’d almost rather raise my kids to be naive and believe they were safe, too. Because, you know, life was easy then.

© 2012, Julie Meyers Pron. All rights reserved.

Books included in this vlog:

• Yummy Yucky (Leslie Patricelli board books)
• Snuggle Puppy (Boynton on Board)
• My Truck is Stuck!
• Tickle Monster
• A Light in the Attic

This week’s #VlogMoms question, What makes you giggle? came from Rajean Blomquist from Because I Said So. Find out what makes other #VlogMoms giggle by following the links and join us!

This post includes affiliate links.

© 2012, Julie Meyers Pron. All rights reserved.

A lot of things can cause a Breaking News alert but each time I see one, my heart skips. A bombing? A shooting?

Yes, as you well know, today’s breaking news was a shooting. A horrifying episode that leaves so many questions. I watched and read the latest update on the monitor.

I was heartbroken.

Well, heartbroken puts it mildly. I shook. Tears welled. A shooting is, likely, the the most terrifying fear of any teacher. As I searched my iPhone for news I dreaded reading I my heart melted for the families, the victims, the students and the staff. Oh. The staff. The adults who became teachers to have a positive impact in children’s lives were being looked to to protect, to answer questions they won’t have answers to and, eventually, to feel the pressure of their community. The staff had a plan in place, but now would be analyzed time and again: was this plan effective? Were they prepared? What went wrong? (These plans are customary for schools now, but they weren’t when I first started teaching).

Every time I hear of a school shooting this happens. I cry. I cry for hours. Today I sat at our gym cafe for 20 minutes, frozen. Unable to talk, to read, to do anything than stare straight ahead and think through the tears that quietly crept down my cheeks. It’s now eight hours after I first heard of the shooting and, still, I’ve thought of little else all day. My mind keeps going to the images on CNN. Just as they did after Seung-Hui Cho destroyed Virginia Tech.

Each time it gets worse. I have children. What if, I wonder, some day, my children are sitting in a cafeteria enjoying breakfast before the day begins and another student pulls out a gun? What if it’s my friend’s child? My child’s friend? My child?

I cried for the parents. I cried for the students. I cried for their friends and their community.

And then I cried for the teachers. Were there warning signs? Was the lockdown policy followed properly? Should the “stampede” that was reported have been what it was? Could anything have been done differently?

And I cried more as I thought of everything that the teachers had to bear this morning. Keeping students in dark corners of their classrooms quiet and calm, while internally freaking out with concern.

And then, I did something funny. I picked up my Kindle and started thinking of the novel that I’m currently reading: Stephen King’s 11-22-63, a story of a man who goes back in time to make a few changes including the assassination of President Kennedy, unsure of how those changes will impact the future. In my state of concern, I became angry at the author. Why is the goal to save the president, when the character could go back in time to change Columbine or Kent State or Virginia Tech or another school shooting? Wouldn’t that have been better than saving one person? Wouldn’t saving a school community do so much more?

I sound ridiculous, I’m sure. But my train of thought didn’t stop there.

What if we could change outcomes? What if we had the ability to go back in time and save a shooting from happening? I’m certain that every teacher, every parent, every student and every community member of every school that’s ever suffered anything as serious as a school shooting has had the same thought.

What if? they wonder.

What if I’d noticed the pain the child was suffering? What if I’d acted on that random tweet? What if I’d gone on a date with the boy two years ago when he asked me out, instead of blowing him off? What if I paid attention when he stopped hanging out with his friends? What if I hadn’t assigned him that F on his English paper? Did he really deserve detention last week?

What if?

What if?

What if?

But, we all know that we can’t change things. What we can do is snap out of our low feelings and look to the future, which I’m trying to do now. But snapping isn’t as easy for me today as it usually is. I’m stuck. I’m stuck in this realm of feeling so very badly for everyone involved; for everyone in our world because we have to live in a world where kids find no other response but to bring a gun to school and use it.

Damn it.

I’m a parent. I’m a teacher. What can I do? I can’t stuff my children in a chamber for their entire lives to keep them safe, can I?

I can’t tell them that this will never happen again.

Do I tell the kids? Is it time to let them know what a horrible place this world can be? Do I need to tell them that there are people in this world that will bring guns into schools and fill them with a fear that I didn’t know existed when I was in school?

Certainly not. But sooner or later they’re going to learn this.

And I want to be there when they do. I want to be a part of that conversation, no matter how difficult.

For now? I can cry. I can pray. I can hope beyond hope that history stops repeating itself and that children and adults will stop doing senseless things.

I can hope.

© 2012, Julie Meyers Pron. All rights reserved.

the jello fishbowl after setting

While Big and I quickly prepared the Jello for this recipe (after all, Jello’s a pretty easy thing to make) we took a break while letting it firm and extended our learning of fish by researching a few on the internet that were mentioned in his book.

fishbowl after mixing--we thought this was more authentic

Cooking a treat related to books is a simple way to extend learning, especially when there’s wait time to summarize the story and discuss concepts. When a setting is in a foreign land, look for simple foods from that area to cook with your child. When a story involves a scene with a field trip, search for fun foods that can be created around the trip.

It’s Monday! Looking for the Meal Plan Calendar? I keep it easy to find in the menu bar up top.

© 2012, Julie Meyers Pron. All rights reserved.