Coast 2 Coast Mom

Getting Married at 9 - Similar to Getting Married at 4? Ridiculous, right?

This post is inspired by the Silicon Valley Moms Group book club choice, I am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced. It tells the story of Nujood Ali's childhood marriage to a man three times her age, and her courage in becoming the first child bride in Yemen to win a divorce. . .she went on to become a Glamour Woman of the Year in 2008. I received a copy of the book as a participant in the book club.

The saga of Li'l Boo and his preschool girlfriend continues . . .

At dinner last night we were talking about this being Li'l Boo's last week of preschool this year. I told him that the bigger kids in his class were going on to kindergarten, and he would stay with his teacher and a couple of the other younger kids next year. I let him know that his "girlfriend" wouldn't be in his class next year. Li'l Boo surprised us by saying that he'll see her when they get married. It appears that they already have their wedding all planned out. Here's what he told us:

Literally Learning To Read in Celebration of Dr. Seuss's Birthday

This post is inspired by the Yahoo! Mother Board's monthly community topic, discussing how we celebrate reading in our families.

Two years ago we celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday at Marche in Chicago for their annual "Seussville" celebration. It was a family-friendly (yet gourmet) meal and we were amused by the menu items all inspired by his books, or taken from the Dr. Seuss cookbook. The Cat in the Hat was there, and Thing 1 and Thing 2 visited tables and worked the room too while the kids each received goodie bags of Dr. Seuss trinkets and coloring and activity pages. We ate it up, and it's one of my last memories of us living in Chicago. I'm not sure if Marche is still hosting this annual dinner, but we had a wonderful experience celebrating reading and eating as a family at a nice French restaurant.

I've searched for restaurants in NYC that celebrate Dr. Seuss's birthday, but haven't come across any. (Fingers crossed that a local NYC restaurant sees this and makes plans to celebrate it next year - Marche was packed and you needed reservations to get in when we attended.)

Flipping for Phonics: Learn to Read with Word Families

Last fall I had the priviledge to attend a luncheon with Ellen Steiner to learn more about Flipping for Phonics. Flipping for Phonics is an affordable  learn-to-read system based on phonics. It features Flip the Monkey and has three components: a flip book allowing you to form different words up to six letters long, storybooks featuring popular rhyming word families, and a music cd to reinforce the phonetical learning.

Let Your Kids Play With Your Computer Worry-Free With Kidos FREE Beta

I was going to create a round-up posting of my favorite products and offerings at CES for kids and parents, etc. here on Coast to Coast Mom, but because I'm writing about some of these items for Techlicious and Write On! Online, I've decided the best thing to do is just share my faves one by one to more quickly tell ya'll about 'em. So, without further adieu . . .

I LOVED Kidos for the 3-7 year old set. It temporarily turns your adult computer into a kids computer with a secure operating system and customized interface. Kidos is a desktop client that takes over your computer screen so there is no way for your child to be able to get to your email, mess with your settings, or alter your documents or drive files, etc. - they stay within the framework of the Kidos platform. (Genius!)

A Little Boy's Dream: A Cartoon About Dinosaurs & Trains

I'm sure I had a huge grin on my face when I first read about the premiere of PBS Kids' Dinosaur Train, a new CGI show from The Jim Henson Company (the same company behind Sid the Science Kid) about a preschool-aged dinosaur named Buddy who rides a train and meets other dinosaurs from the Mesozoic Era. Uhm. . . Excuse me? I think this could be heaven on earth for Li'l Boo.

It would be an understatement to say that Li'l Boo is big into dinosaurs right now. He can name all 100 from the 100 Dinosaurs book,  and we even visited the Detroit Zoo on our summer roadtrip because they have a special exhibit of animatronic dinosaurs right now, called Dinosauria. We buy just about everything dinosaur these days (like the Kidorables dinosaur raincoat, a BBC Dinosaur DVD collection, t-shirts with dinosaurs on them - you name it). We sometimes even call him "Li'l Ross" from Friends. Though dinosaurs are all the rage for him right now, he still gets excited when I take him into NYC on the train or we ride the subway.

Dinosaur Train stars a young Tyranosaurus Rex named Buddy and his adoptive Pteranodon family as they travel by train through the different periods of the Mesozoic Era. It's aimed at three-to-six year olds and the objective of the show is to teach basic scientific thinking as kids learn about natural science and history, as well as paleontology. It seems as though the show celebrates and encourage curiousity and investigative skills, much like Sid the Science Kid. I love that PBS.org/parents has information on the show and suggested activities and lessons to do at home with your child, so we have some context for the show and can reinforce the themes throughout our day/week. I recommend getting on the computer with your little one and exploring the field guide, which features information on several different dinosaurs, and gives the kids the option of taking the dinosaur's x-ray, offering a modern size reference, explaining whether the dinosaur was an herbivore or carnivore and some updated news on the dinosaur. There are coloring pages and games to play, as well as videos clips to watch online.

I'm planning to do the hypothesis activity and make the herbivore collage with Li'l Boo over the weekend before the show debuts on Monday. He is going to go crazy (I mean stomp and roar) when the premiere of Dinosaur Train the Labor Day Monday Marathon begins at 10:30 a.m. (running until 12:30 p.m.) on your local PBS station.

One for the Wish List from Mattel's Blogger Play Date

When I received the email invitation to attend a blogger "Play Date" for Mattel, I didn't have to think twice about if I wanted to attend with Li'l Boo. I purposefully left the month of August open for us to enjoy the dog days of summer, recoup from the July travel, and relax before the new school year began. Those non-plans quickly turned to boredom on both of our parts after a day of nothing planned. We're adventurers, explorers, talkers, do-ers . . . so I began scrambling for activities to do and places to visit to spend our days. Coming from a larger family, I can see how Li'l Boo gets bored so easily when left to himself and me. The opportunity to head into the city and check out some new toys and games for us to play was a no-brainer.

The highlight of the play date for me was watching Li'l Boo try out each of the toys. Our FAVORITE game was Uno Moo!, a preschool rendition of Uno, for kids three and older.  Having tried to play Uno with Li'l Boo before, I can tell you that 1) it was difficult for him to hold the cards, so we had to lay them all out on the floor around us; 2) the rules of the game, though easy for older kids and adults, are actually quite complicated for a preschool mind - what with all of the numbers OR color matching. As I chatted with one of Mattel's R&D folks, Sheila, I noticed that Uno Moo! replaced the numbers with animals, and the cards with balls. Brilliant! Li'l Boo picked up on this game quickly and played several rounds with Sheila and me. If you have a toddler or preschooler, check out Uno Moo! to add to your holiday wish list. It retails for $20, so you can start looking for sales and discounts now.

Another favorite was the game Saucer Scramble, that reminds me of Elefun, but for young kids (it's geared to the five and older crowd). Li'l Boo loved racing and trying to catch the flying saucers with the netted cups. In fact, he tried to chase the flying saucers down and catch 'em with his bare hands too! I was surprised to see the classic arcade game "Whac-a-Mole" brought to life for kids, which was directed at kids four and older, but didn't seem to need any instruction for any of the preschoolers I saw checking it out. They each sat down and promptly began bopping the moles with the mallets.

These games were fine and dandy for Li'l Boo, but the true highlight for him was a screening of the new Hot Wheels Battle Force 5 cartoon, complete with popcorn. The series premiered this week, and airs on The Cartoon Network at 9:30 a.m. on Saturdays (9:00 a.m. by us). The show is aimed at the seven-year-old and up crowd, but I knew that Li'l Boo would not want to miss an opportunity to see race cars! Battle Force 5 was all he spoke about on the train ride home, and while the series is too old for him to watch on a regular basis now, it'll be fun for him to look forward to watching as he gets older. Corresponding Battle Force 5 toys will appear in store shelves in October.

What are some of your favorite games to play with your three-to-five year old? Some that we play on a weekly basis:

1. Chutes and Ladders
2. Cariboo
3. Candy Land
4. Five Little Monkeys Jumping On The Bed
5. Memory

Battling the Bug

Did you know that some experts estimate that parents miss more than 125 million workdays a year to stay home with a sick child? Or estimate that children miss school more than 189 million days a year due to colds? Ick! Thinking about these things are among the worst parts about preparing to return to school: the runny noses, sneezing, close quarters and sharing of toys, locker rooms and equipment among kids. The local news too has been doing its part to keep this in the forefront of our minds, touting the threat of the H1N1 flu spreading once school resumes nationwide in the coming weeks. Most of the coverage has focused around the Center for Disease Control's reccomendation for the H1N1 flu vaccination series and that the vaccine is being rushed into production with little testing, so there's questions about the safety of vaccinating our children against H1N1 swine flu. These things were on my mind when I received an invitation to join a blogger meet-up hosted by Kleenex Anti-Viral Tissues at the Bronx Zoo last week. What perfect timing to discuss basic cold and flu prevention methods, right? Good hygiene, sleep, exercise and nutrition may not save us from getting sick, but it is still the best defense we have.

My son and I arrived at the Battle the Bug event to find a variety of interactive games for children and parents to learn about how germs spread. Li'l Boo enjoyed playing Whack-a-Bug, and playing a video quiz game that ended with the machine "sneezing" on him. We had the pleasure of  meeting and discussing cold and flu prevention tips from Jean Grabeel, executive committee member for the National Association of School Nurses.

Perhaps the most interesting thing that I learned was that 70% of all childrens' illnesses in 2008 did not occur during the "typical" winter months - cold and flu bugs live all year round. So it's critical to discuss and instill good hygiene and cold/flu prevention practices even now in the summertime, and a good reminder to make sure such practices are second nature when school begins. Grabeel (Does the name ring a bell? She's also the mother of Lucas Grabeel of High School Musical fame.) encouraged all of us parents to work closely with our children's school nurses, and if we did not have one at our child's school, to propose hiring one. She explained that a school nurse is on the front lines of detecting colds and the flu within the school, and something as simple as informing the school nurse if our child was "off" that day/night - but without a fever or other symptoms - then the nurse can check in on our child later in the day to monitor for symptoms, which can be a big help in identifying children with communicable germs early.

Here are some of the tips Grabeel and Kleenex shared with us to help prevent the spread of typical colds/flu and battle the bug:

1) Wash hands after going into a bathroom, before meals, after playing outside or playing with "equipment" in stores, gyms and classrooms. It's important to wash between the fingers.

2) Teach children to sneeze into a tissue (like the Kleenex Anti-Viral Tissues which says it can kill 99.9% of cold and flu viruses in/on the tissue within 15 minutes!) or cough into their inner elbow/arm. Grabeel suggested playing a timed tissue/sneeze game to time how long a child can get to a tissue before a "sneeze" or alarm goes off.

3) Ask teachers if hand sanitizer is available in the classroom (donate some if it is not).

4) Make sure children get plenty of sleep as sleep helps to boost one's immunity.

5) Dispose of used tissues immediately, don't let them linger on a table or countertop.

6) Make sure kids are up-to-date on their immunizations.

Li'l Boo's favorite parts of the morning were the two "bugs": one was a germ, the other, a car. Here's a photo of some of the other NYC-area bloggers and us with Jean Grabeel after the event:

 

Super WHY! Experiment - Day 1 Resources & Assessment

I specifically held out on trying the PBSKids SuperWHY resources until Li'l Boo was done with preschool for the year so we could do the activities when we had nothing scheduled for these summer days. It turned out be a brilliant idea considering how much rain we've gotten in New Jersey this past month, and I was relieved to have guided educational activities to do with him while we were stuck inside for most of this past month. 

I mentioned before that PBS has a wealth of resources and ideas available for not only kids, but for parents to use to assist with educating our children. What I was most impressed with was the depth of the information. There’s an entire section on www.pbs.org/parents called the Child Development Tracker which outlines the skills most children in a given age-range (ages one - eight years old) develop at that time. This section includes examples of the skills, and tips on how to build those skills in several different areas of growth and development including:

Approaches to Learning,
Creative Arts,
Literacy,
Mathematics,
Science,
Physical Health,
Language,
and Social and Emotional Growth.  

There’s also a section on the PBS Parents site, “Mornings on PBS,” that highlights the preschool theme of the day. Here you’ll find suggested activities and books to reinforce and explore the theme of the day. For example, one day the theme was "All About Me," or "Space Day." In case you were wondering what shows to introduce at what age, there are lists of shows appropriate for each age and development level too. It’s like having a teaching plan at my fingertips!

What I’ve mentioned so far are features of just ONE of the PBS sub-sites - have you discovered and fully explored all of these sites yet?

PBS Kids

 Come play with all of your favorite preschool characters

PBS Kids Go!

 Get ready to GO in their place for big kids

PBS Parents

 Find games, activities and advice for raising your PBS Kid

PBS Kids Play!

 Their fun new way for kids to learn through play

PBS Kids Island

 A national literacy campaign, and part of the Ready To Learn initiative, focused on building reading skills at home, at school, in child care, and in the community

PBS Teachers

 Resources for teaching and learning

Now back to our first day of SuperWHY resource experimentation. If you want to participate and try out the materials on your own li'l ones, these are the SuperWHY assessment documents to complete before you begin the trial to establish a baseline of literacy knowledge. I used these to assess Li'l Boo's literacy development level. 

When I asked him if he knew the story of the Three Little Pigs, he said:

“Yes, it's about pigs who run away from the wolf and hide in a friend pigs brick house and then nothing else bad happens.”

Li’l Boo correctly identified the letters W-O-L-F on the next sheet. Then, on the –all sheet, he knew “Wall,” thought “Fall” was “Fox,” and when I pointed out the –all in Wall, and asked him again what “Fall” spelled, he corrected himself with “Fall.” He said “Ball” on his own before I even pointed and asked the third word!

When asking him the opposite of “big,” he said “tiny.” For the opposite of “bad,” he said “glad.” (Must have been the rhymes on the sheet before that led him to this, but it kind of works on a simplistic level. ;-))

On the last sheet, he correctly pointed to “good,” then pointed to and said correctly “red,” and “small.” So it appears that he's showing signs of pre-reading! Wondering how much advancing will take place these next five days. . .

Who's Afraid of Pumpkin Goo?

This week while I co-op’d at Li’l Boo’s morning preschool, the class worked together to carve a pumpkin. As their teacher went around the table allowing each kid to reach their hand inside and grab some of the seeds and guts to pull out, I was surprised that each of the girls readily reached in - but four of the boys fearfully declined! As in emphatically shook their heads "No! I don't want to!" with some whining and one even turned and ran from the table! Li’l Boo was one of those who recoiled in horror at the prospect of touching the insides of the pumpkin. Not sure where this is coming from . . . he always likes "getting messy" helping me mix things up when I'm baking or cooking. Gonna have to warn B for when they carve our pumpkin tomorrow night. . .