Children’s Education Site

Ruth Klein asked:


Many parents eagerly sign their kids up for extracurricular activities without stopping to ask if this is best for the health and well being of their children. Consider giving your time-starved kids and yourself a break.

A new poll by the National Association of Health Education Centers and its federal and university partners reports that 77% of kids ages 9 to 13 wish they had more free time. The trademarked KidsHealth KidsPoll also reports that having too much to do was leaving a substantial 41% of children surveyed feeling stressed “most of the time or always.”

Allowing children to skip after-school and weekend activities to spend more time in front of a computer, playing video games, or watching TV just for fun isn’t the answer either. These kids were nearly three times more likely to want free time than those who spend less than an hour in front of computers, video games or television sets, according to the poll.

Are your kids pressuring you to sign them up for extracurricular activities because they feel peer pressure? Are you driving your children from one activity to the next because you want to offer all those extras that other parents (your peers) are providing to their children?

Children of every age who are trying to cope with self-imposed or parent-imposed schedules that don’t allow them the free time they want can produce chronic fatigue, sour moods and poor eating and sleeping habits that will set them up for high blood pressure, heart disease, depression, obesity and other stress-induced conditions as adults.

Five Common-Sense Tips Toward Creating a Break for Your Time-Starved Kids:

One: Give Yourself a Break. Kids learn by example. If you’re over-stressed from too much work and too many responsibilities, start by achieving a better balance between your job and home life. You’ll need exercise, plenty of fresh food, solid sleep and some free time.

Two: Become a De-Stress Role Model. If you are rushing from work to home to drop-off and pick-up duties for your children without quality time for your family, you are a poor role model. If the health and well being of your kids is important to you, prove it by scheduling quality time for your kids each day.

Three: Listen to Your Kids. Forcing children to take extracurricular classes or participate in sports can backfire if they don’t want to become involved. If they are complaining about their hectic days and not showing up for activities you scheduled for them, pay attention to these important signs of stress.

Four: Let Your Kids Participate in De-Stress Decisions. Let your kids play an active role in determining how to set priorities for what they want to do, incorporating what they reasonably can accomplish. You can create a Pro or Con list for every activity together with your children. If you admit that you, too, experience peer pressure, you will inspire honesty so they can admit they let their peers push them into activities, too.

Five: Enforce Stress-Free Time. Have times during the day when there’s nothing in particular to do and you’re unplugged from computers, their cell phones, video games and the television. Read, walk, write, play. Free time allows you to become more creative, and also to refresh and re-energize your mind and body for the next day.

Food and Drink Direct

Alison White asked:


A convenient location, supervised children’s programs, a swimming pool, and an on-site restaurant are some of the top features parents look for when booking a kids holiday.

As the USA’s top destination for families, Florida takes its responsibility seriously - creating fun for the whole family.

A Florida holiday is heaven with outstanding kids’ programs and facilities. Kids’ programs have made a major mark on the standards of top Florida resorts during the past few decades. Many resorts design activities to give parents time with their kids and time alone as a couple. Florida resorts have worthy kids programs, along with accommodations that feature family friendly amenities.

Florida has long held the title of “Most Kid Friendly Holiday Destination” due to an abundance of theme parks and miles of sandy beaches. Ranging from the large theme parks around Orlando, to nature oriented kid programs in the Everglades, there is so much to see and do that the children will love!

There’s always the Disney option. Walt Disney World in the Orlando area is much more than the Magic Kingdom, the first of the Disney theme parks. The resort encompasses three other parks - Epcot, Disney-MGM Studios and Animal Kingdom - as well as hotels (both luxury and affordable), campgrounds, water parks, golf courses, shopping centre, dining and entertainment district.

But if you don’t want a theme park on land, head to the high seas. Disney cruises are especially well-suited for families travelling with young children. Without being overpowering to parents, it is just enough for the kids to be at ease.

Florida is a magnet for families, with its double whammy of theme parks and popular beaches; but beyond the best-known spots, other great Florida family holidays await. The legendary Everglades are a wonderful place to visit, and can easily include education-as-fun as kids learn about this unique ecosystem.

The best kids holiday might be a tried-and-true theme park destinations, like Orlando; as well as educational destinations, like Washington DC with its wealth of free museums; or nature’s classroom, the Grand Canyon and other national parks.

In Orlando, it’s all about the kids. Hotels, theme parks, restaurants, and attractions abound for the young - and the young at heart. Most visitors are familiar with Disney World, Universal Studios and SeaWorld, but in this round-up of smaller attractions, some might discover venues that are often more affordable and convenient than their mega-theme park counterparts, making it easy for families to slip in and out for half-day or full-day visits.

Aside from water parks and Disney-centered Orlando, Florida has many other attractions that children of all ages will enjoy. Older children and teenagers can make a stop in Tampa for Busch Gardens Tampa Bay. This park is full of wild roller coasters, exciting water rides, and shows. The draw for younger children, however, is the zoo-like experience with their exotic animals. The Kennedy Space Center is a way for children and adults to have fun while learning about the past, present, and future of space exploration. At Crystal River and Homosassa between November and March kids can swim with the manatees and learn about these prehistoric creatures.

Italian Handbags Direct

Frank Ho asked:


How to Buy a Specialty Math Learning Center Franchise

 

Frank Ho

 

Ho Math and Chess Learning Center, Canada

 

The future trend of learning center industry is to go specialty, the competition is so fierce among learning centers, new comers would have hard time to survive if the after-school learning center is not specialized, much like many customers now go to shoe store to only buy shoes now. To buy a math specialty learning center, the first important thing to do is to look around and find out what types of math learning centers are available.

 

The most traditional way of teaching math is to use drill system, although this type of learning center is much against by the modern math scholars, they are many still around especially in the North America due to the reason the homework is not as heavy when compared the other parts of the world, especially in Asian countries. So many of these types of “drill” learning centers are called themselves self-learning centers since they virtually do not teach kids math or help school math work. They are not doing well in Asia. Why? Asian schools teachers already assign so much math homework to students, students do not really need more exercises to practice, what they really need is to get more “teaching” time, not “practice’ time. So the future of this type of learning centers is very limited now especially more and more parents turn to other style of learning centers when kids are complaining how boring of these self-learning teaching method in disguise of just pure “drills”. Ironically, They are effective in improving computational skills but is downright boring. If parents believe math is more than just computation then this teaching method is pretty much out dated.  *** has a franchise advantage that is it so closely follows the successful principle of franchise that is “teaching” is just to mark homework – a repetitive task. From franchisee to franchisee, the teaching really relies on their teaching material, not teachers. Thus the concept of fast food franchise idea can be found here. Students go through a routine of having homework marked or checked and that is about all these learning centers will do. The teaching method also encourages parent’s involvement in actually teaching their own kids, but quite often it gets into arguments between parents and children and it hurts each other’s feelings. This is the drawback of the system. On the surface, ideologically, the teaching method sounds very good but in reality, it has problems. Since it advocates low fee and uses fast food concept to franchise, it attracts many copycats to use more or less the same “drill” method but with modified formats.

 

There are also learning centers with lecture style that is the learning center will teach students regardless what the students are doing at school, it is fine if the students do not have problems at school math but if they do then this type of learning center can only attract the most bright kids to go. They really have no uniformed teaching material so it is difficult to franchise and many independent math learning centers use this type of teaching and managing style. Once the super star teachers are gone, then the class also dies since the teaching almost exclusively relies on the star teachers to attract students. There are no real teaching methods, no real teaching philosophy, no systematic workbooks. It has the drawback of selling as an assets in the future since there is rally no assets to sell to others other than the super star teachers. A successful franchised math learning center must weigh heavily on the teaching workbooks and they must be unique with innovative teaching idea.

 

There are some other new and innovative math learning centers like using abacus or some type of India mental computing technique but they also have their shares of problems. The biggest problem is their math computation techniques are so different from the way most schools are teaching, most kids abandoned what they learned as soon as they do not register at these learning centers. Without continuing practice what they learned, they will not use these techniques when going to their day schools. The benefits of learning these so called effective and innovative way of computing go wasted if they go against the mainstream teaching method and technique.

 

Finally, there is another type of learning center that is it does not use any out of the world computation technique that deviates from the mainstream technique but trying to come with a different teaching method which is more effective or fun. Many in the past have tried this method but failed sine no one could successful come up with a workbook which actually integrates game and math so it makes the learning environment both fun and educational. This has all changed when Ho Math ad Chess, founded by a Canadian math teacher Frank Ho, invented the teaching method by combining chess and math together, it does not do math teaching and chess teaching separately. Ho Math and Chess created the world’s first commercially available math and chess integrated workbooks and successfully implement this teaching method in the worldwide Ho Math and Chess Learning Centers. It solved the problem which has boggled educators for so long that is how to create a learning environment for kids such that children could learn math while having fun?

 

This “educatmaint” teaching method will be the future for math specialty learning center.  With the integrated math and chess innovative teaching method, Ho Math and Chess has revolutionalized the entire math learning center industry and bring the birth of a new age to the after-school math tutoring and teaching. More details can be found at www.mathandchess.com.

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