A Place For Your Valentines
These decorative boxes are perfect for storing all your valentines. Bring it to school to collect all your admirer’s notes and keep them safe for later. Materials: • Empty snack food box (such as breakfast bars or fruit snacks.) • Decorative paper, felt, beads, plastic jewels, or other decorations • Glue stick • Scissors • [...]
Potty Training
What to consider before starting We’ve all heard it before, “don’t worry she won’t go to kindergarten in diapers”…those words are little comfort to the toilet training parent. But when is the right time? My mother-in-law said her children were trained at 15 months. When I questioned her about it she said, yes they were [...]
Support Your Teen’s Relationships
Your daughter’s latest crush has a shock of thick black hair and a brown belt in Aikido. Enamored of his vegetarian lifestyle and Eastern interests, she’s talking tofu and downloading anime movies by the gigabyte. You? Not so impressed. Learning from Love Dating is an opportunity for adolescents to test out different identities, says Stephanie [...]
Kids, Animals….. And Volunteerism
Kids & Animals: Local Volunteer Opportunities Everybody can use a helping hand and few are more deserving than shelter animals. Heartland Humane Society in Corvallis and SafeHaven in Albany offer monthly volunteer training sessions for people who want to help with animals and animal-related community events. Applicants must be 16 years to volunteer on their [...]
Spelling and Success
How do you spell success? When it comes to academic achievement, there are all kinds of signs that spell success. Strong reading and mathematical skills are an obvious indicator, as are high test scores in core academic subjects ranging from English to history to the social studies. But another important factor is how well your [...]
Memo From a Team Mom
It’s the start of another season. Baseball, soccer, football, basketball – it doesn’t matter. I’m the mother of three sons, so some sport is always being played. I dust off my boys’ cleats, find their gloves and locate the air pump. A new season, a fresh start. And with the beginning of every sport comes [...]
Why Preschool is Important
“Got preschool?” Although the syntax may be irregular, the message is loud and clear: Children who attend preschool fare better as they enter kindergarten and have a better chance at success throughout their academic life. TV and print stories lately have been advocating the need for preschool education. Why the push for preschool? Ask any [...]
Teach Your Preschooler Math and Science
What is the right age to start learning about math and science? It might surprise parents to learn that recent research by the National Research Council (NRC) and National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) shows that there is a huge opportunity being missed when it comes to teaching math and science to preschoolers. “Kids [...]
Making Your House the Teen Hangout
When Teresa Bondora’s daughter was fifteen, she began inviting her daughter’s friends over, providing food for them and encouraging them to make themselves at home. Before long, her house became the place to hang out and the teens began calling Bondora their “Other Mother.” One of main benefits of having your teens and their friends [...]
Teens Balancing Life and Health and Yoga
Teen bodies are as malleable as their minds. The athletes hone specialized muscle sets, the musicians develop specialized postures, and the gamer cultivates a head-forward stance. These activity-driven postural habits can stay with them life; responding to them with yoga can help teens develop healthier and more balanced bodies. Yoga counters repetitive influences and helps [...]
