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9 September

Future Trends: Education in America

Futurists predict that our youth will be unprepared in science and math to compete successfully in the global economy by 2010 unless we make drastic changes to public education today.

This is just one of the reasons why today’s schools are implementing instructional coaches in the classroom, one of the fastest growing trends in education. The reason is because schools are faced with greater accountability than ever before and many school districts are seeking new methods of supporting professional development among teachers to strengthen teaching practice and improve student learning.

Districts are using coaches to help implement reform and focusing on particular critical areas such as math, science and reading. These new methods are intended to support broad implementation of best practices in classrooms.

There are other trends in education that have started at grass roots level in communities such as Sunset Park, in Brooklyn, New York. In that community alone, more than 15,000 kids drop out of school every year.

One woman named Joyce Mattera founded a charity organization called Children of the City in 1981 to reach out to kids in the community. Volunteers and began visiting children weekly to assess their needs and invite them to various community programs, helping them via academic support, life skills training and family counseling. Board members have helped the organization raise funds for this last year’s Christmas gifts for more than 800 children.

Create Success is one program being used at Children of the City that is constantly being evaluated for needs and even better success. It is fast becoming a model sought after by other agencies.

High priority is placed on student’s academic success with intense tutoring and daily personal homework help. They also provide students with counseling, and advocacy within the social systems such as courts, plus age-appropriate group and individual mentoring.

Trends will shape the future of educators and students globally. The future of America’s education system, for example, according to futurist James Canton, is that “the quality of public education, in crisis today, will either propel or crash the future aspirations of the American workforce.” It is also predicted that education is failing to prepare high-tech workers.

There is also a rise in the hispanic population in this country. Many of the kids in Brooklyn, New York, for instance, come from hispanic families who cannot afford help when their kids are not doing well at school.

Thanks to the Internet there is hope for the future of our education system. By the year 2040 the Internet should be available to people of all nations. By then futurists like Canton predict immediate, portable, transferable, in-demand knowledge sources on a scale equivalnet to the Library of Congress. It’s eighth among the top ten trends of the new innovation economy.

29 August

How to Help your Child Do Well at School

Time and tide wait for no man”. Before you know it, your little child is a teenager, then adult. Throughout this period, the bulk of their time is spent at school or college, and once they are teens, they are beginning to make choices for themselves.

If your child is doing well at school your job is easy. However, if not, it can be difficult when you feel, because you are not in the school with him, you have little control or motivational input in his education. Often the picture you only get to see is that of his homework tasks, and news of any misdemeanour. It is hard knowing what is really going on, and how you can do your absolute best to help him get the most he can out of the long time he has at school.

1. It’s important to make your child aware that what he does at school is important to you, and that you have a genuine interest in his welfare there. Most parents will admit that getting a child to talk about school can be like getting blood out of a stone. Look at the recurring conversations you have with your child. By this I mean, when your child gets home from school, or at dinner, do you say the same thing day after day, for example “how was your day at school?” or “what did you do at school?” Usually the reply will be “nothing” or “boring”. Once you identify these conversations you can break the cycle, choose something completely different to say, or totally avoid the subject all together, and then later on in the day, initiate a conversation along the lines of what he likes about school, or what he doesn’t like about school. Often, approaching a conversation in an indirect way allows a child the freedom to be more open. Something will pop into their head about an event that happened that day, and they will communicate it to you, so the subject of school is totally initiated by them.

2. Not only make your child aware that you are interested in what happens at school, but also make his teachers aware of this. Attend parents’ consultations, with a pre-prepared list of questions. It’s all too easy to walk away having not asked a vital question because you felt rushed by the appointment system. Make his teachers aware that you want to support your child in his education, and that communication is important in that.

3. Communicating with teachers is not always easy when they are busy people. Often it is only at parents’ evenings you see them, but they are usually willing to discuss any issues that come up for your child at any time. Many schools have an email system. You can email the school office who can then forward your email on to the teacher’s direct email address. Such an email system can be very useful if, for example, your child is not communicating his homework tasks, or bringing school letters and announcements home.

4. Be aware of your child’s homework tasks, and be available to help him with it. You can support him with classwork as well. Many subjects have periodic tests, and if you know when these will be, then you can help your child prepare in advance for these. This can make all the difference to his overall achievement for the year, and his sense of confidence in his own abilities.

5. Check your child’s classwork regularly. Don’t leave it to parents’ evening to discover he has sat through months of, say, maths, and done very little. Regular checks will tell you where he needs help. Many children do not ask for help at school, so do not leave this responsibility to the teacher only. He or she is a busy person who has lots of children to track and motivate.

6. Many children find it very difficult to learn through books and find it even harder to express themselves through pen and paper. Your child may be excellent at recalling information through speaking, but not through writing. You can help your child by letting his teachers know this. With this information, they can possibly teach and test him using different methods, for example, using oral tests.

And finally, make sure your child has a balanced view of our world and its expectations. Schoolwork and passing exams isn’t the whole and only answer to success. Many of the most successful people did not succeed at school. Einstein was a poor student, preferring day-dreaming to studying, and was eventually expelled from school for being a disruptive influence. Yet he was nominated as the greatest creative genius of the 20th century.

Your role as parents is to stay informed, and to do what you can to support your child, without overt pressure. Pressure only serves to hinder and sometimes paralyse children who really do find academia a struggle. Your praise and support where necessary is what they need.

29 August

The Principles of Child’s Development of the Character

Psychologists underline the fact that the area of living does not very important for the development of the child’s character, whether the kid lives in the city or far from it there are always some problems which can be the reasons for negative impact on the child. Modern society faced great number problems such as increasing of the violence, antagonistic attitude to the local powers, rising of the dishonesty, sexual rudeness and lack of awareness of simple life principles. In order to give the necessary education for the child parents and schools have one important goal which concerns the avoiding of above mentioned problems.
Kids need character building, regardless of where they live—inner city, suburbs, rural settings—the problems really exist everywhere. Rising youth violence, increasing disrespect for authority, increasing dishonesty, sexual promiscuity, drug abuse, illiteracy, and lack of knowledge of things as basic as the golden rule—these problems really cut across all segments of society. The development of good character is really part of every child’s birthright. Parents and schools and communities have an obligation to meet that need of children.
As Character Education Partnership or it is more famous as CEP, reports that there are no certain measures for good education of the character. But nevertheless, parents and school workers should keep in mind some general ideas concerning the effective brining up of the kids.
First of all, the promotion of ethical ideals is the min element of character formation. Secondly, it is very important to call for the moral actions to define the major features of the character. The third principle contains the meaningful school curriculum that meets the requirements of all students and promotes their success.
One more important principle is regarding the school workers as one big group which takes some measures as for the education of the child and forming the character. Such group is to be the example of positive values and to motivate the kids to be better.
Finally, such institutions as family or schools should be like the partners for the kids. It is also very important.
Due to all such principles it is very difficult to decide whether it is possible to make the attempts to help the child in the formation of the character.

29 August

Some Examples Of Kids Educational Toys

All kids enjoy gifts. Receiving a gift is a positive reinforcement for them and boosts their self confidence. Rewarding a child for being good with a small token can go a long way in promoting good behavior. Most children have a penchant for information and knowledge and love to explore. And therefore, one of the great gifts that you can give the child is the gift of knowledge and learning.

Today there are many mesmerizing ways that toy companies have developed with the help of research in designing educational toys. They have figured out how a child can learn while having fun. The standard trampoline has been modified to a talking one with the aid of technology. These sing along exercisers allow the child to learn while jumping. Songs include nursery rhymes, music that teaches the alphabet and numbers. Some even have animal sounds, memory games and sound recognition devices incorporated in them.

The Melissa and Doug learning tools help your young ones to learn with colorful shapes and letters. When your child picks up a letter and the appropriate sound is emitted.

The reasonability charts are one of the most amazing toys that you will ever see in the market. They teach the art of helping out with the daily chores at home, being polite to elders, sharing and not be a bother. The young tyke can decide what tasks he/she wants to achieve in a particular week and set out to accomplish them. The parents can track the performance of the child by using magnets which come in various shapes like flowers, stars, bears, balls and faces. On a particularly good week, the child can be adorned with a magnet which says You Are A Star or magnets can be personalized using the blanks.

The Sorting Clock aids in teaching to tell the time by placing the right colorful numbers in the right places.

Role playing tools can be of great help in developing the emotional quotient. Kid vacuum cleaners can be an interesting gift which will educate the child on completing chores while enjoying at the same time. These cleaners come with various hoses and they have real life working tools which actually help clean up. So let your tyrant who normally flings things in all directions help you clean up for a change.

Though the Bosch tool kits are amazingly bewitching and minutely detailed, you should be careful while deciding to buy any of these. You do not want your young ones to mount a repairing session on your perfect car or kitchen sink only to find that it does not work after they have finished with it!

11 August

Educational Toys: Making the Most Out of Play Time

When one examines how the typical toddler passes his or her day, they discover that there are
in fact very few productive hours. Between the 12 to 15 hours of sleep and the hour or so spent eating, children have precious little time to focus on their most important task, learning. That’s why it’s so important to make sure that children are able to spend as much of their time learning as possible. Of course, toddlers do most of their learning through play, so it is during this time that parents and caregivers must make an effort to maximize the learning opportunites. The most effective method of doing this is by providing children with educational toys and games. Although all toys have some degree of educational value, they simply do not compare to what a high-quality learning toy has to offer. In fact, some educational toys are so useful, they can help children learn skills that are typically learned at much later stages of development. Some bath toys for instance, can help toddlers learn how to count and sort colors and shapes many months before they are generally expected to learn these skills.

The question is then, how does one differentiate between an ordinary toy and a high quality educational toy?
The first thing to consider is what tasks are performed as a child plays with a given toy. If these tasks are ones that a child is not expected to have mastered, you’re off to a good start. To illustrate, a remote control car that is intended for children between the ages of 4-6 may allow for the development of various skills such as manual dexterity and visual tracking. The problem however, is that these are skills that should be worked on earlier on in a child’s life.
On the other hand, if a four year old child is presented with a toy that teaches the alphabet, he has an appropriate educational toy and stands to learn a lot from that toy, assuming he or his siblings don’t break it first.

Although there are many toys out there that claim to be educational, some have a lot more to offer your children than others. One way to distinguish between the good and the ordinary, is by considering how many different skills a child can learn from a given toy, and whether the activity involved in that toy is one that may very quickly bore the child. Remember, no matter how a educational a toy may be, if it’s boring or very breakable, the child is not likely to learn very much.

When purchasing a learning toy it is also important to consider if it is manufactured by a reputable brand such as Anatex, Kidkraft or Guidecraft and if it is being sold by a real specialty educational toy store. Such companies tend to provide you with the best learning toys for your money.

One thing that is always important to keep in mind when shopping for a toy is the reason you are making that purchase. Although finding the best toy for that little child in your life may require a little more time and thought than your typical purchase, the reward is immeasurable.

11 August

Educational Learning Toys on the Market

Are you interested in educational learning toys that you can find for your child that will enable them to learn as they play? There are many different types of toys you can buy for your child that will help them learn while they are having fun. Preschool is an important time of life because children are soaking up tons of information and they love to play. They learn through play and it is important to allow your child the time to play, as well as learn discipline, nurture and rest. The best way to find educational learning toys your child will enjoy is by going online to educational toy stores as well as looking at your local toy stores. You want to choose , a Preschool Educational Toys that will have some basis for helping your child enhance the use of their mind and five senses. Blocks, puzzles, imaginary play, lacing toys, memory games, arts and crafts, and letter games will help prepare them to read and do the school tasks that will be required of them.

When buying a Preschool Educational Toys choose a variety of toys that use different parts of the brain as well as different senses. You want to help them expand their learning abilities even if they are already school age. If you have questions about the best toys to buy you can always speak with a teacher about your child’s development. Other ,Preschool Educational Toys that can be helpful are coloring books that teach them about different animals, characters, people, history, and clocks. There are toy clocks you can buy to help your child to read the time. The idea behind educational learning toys whether you create them or buy them is to help your child be prepared for school and learn while having fun. It is a blessing to have a child in school who enjoys learning. Why not start that early, by showing them that we can learn all the time. It is fun to watch our children learn and grow. Be deliberate in the Preschool Educational Toys you place in front of them and you will be amazed at what their brains will soak up!

11 August

A Look at How a Preschool Educational Toy Can be Useful

As a young child, your child is most open to learning as well as suggestion. This means that your child may find a toy in anything around the house or they may be most interested in the Preschool Educational Toys you buy for them. Most usually any thing can be turned into a toy. While you may feel you need to spend quite a bit on Preschool Educational Toys you will find most good toys are usually fairly priced. In order to help your child develop at a steady rate and prepare for school, you need to be a bit deliberate. The Preschool Educational Toys you may have can be extremely helpful, and you will find just sitting with your child and cutting, pasting, and drawing can be helpful too. There are many tools that will encourage your child to learn while playing and the most exciting thing is that they do not even know it. And when you have some creativity you can take those toys a step further in the learning process.

One of the best toys from my childhood was the memory game. I found this game to be the most helpful when heading in to school because it helped me expand my mind and use the memory. With the memory game I found I could remember numbers, words, and many other things with a higher degree than my brother who did not care for the game. I learned to see the picture as a hole as well as dissecting the picture for details. Now you can take this Preschool Educational Toy a bit further and put take a few pieces out, look at them and then hide them. Now you will have to remember which memory pieces are no longer available. You can also take the pictures on those memory cards and sort them in many ways. Sort them phonetically, by color, by shape, almost anything.

Most children like to learn, but have short attention spans, which means you have to change activities frequently. It is often helpful to take a toy and hide it for a few months and then bring it back out again. Your child will think they have a new Preschool Educational Toys. No matter the preschool educational toy or toys you choose, you will find even the simplest toy can help your child use their five senses as well as expand their minds. Preschool Educational Toys should allow your child’s entire mind to work. You may have to have a few different toys to get them to use each part of their brain in learning, but the rewards are worth it. Be deliberate!

6 August

Children Books - Base of Knowledge

A pessimist can understand the cost of every valuable thing but cannot understand the worth of nothing. As such, reading habit should be cultivated among the children to teach them the right values of life. Reading books can help a child to face the stiff competitions with confidence. As life can be described as a challenge of drawing sufficient conclusions from scarce premises; we should always try to utilize the available resources. Moreover, when children develop reading habit they would clamor to unlock the wide horizons of mysteries. This important habit of reading books can help a kid to utilize her or his leisure time in a better way.

Life cannot be lost by dying; in fact it is lost minute by minute, day by day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways. It is very important to acquire knowledge whenever a person is sitting idle. Acquiring knowledge is a never ending process. A person cannot read all the literatures of the world in his or her lifetime. But if this reading habit is cultivated from the childhood, it can help the reader to gain more knowledge from various fields.

The books of the kids and the grown ups are designed and depicted in a different manner. The Children Books are always written in a simple language, to engross them throughout the reading process. The characters and the fantasy islands depicted in these books allow the children to wander in their imaginations and fantasy islands. A book is received well when it can enable a reader to relate himself or herself with the depicted characters. Reading books also expands the treasure of wisdom as they help us to learn various things regarding the distant places and peoples.

As people can learn multiple things by surfing the internet, it is believed that the habit of reading books would eventually fade away. However, the fact is really surprising. The internet has actually helped to cultivate reading habits among the people. Actually, a knowledge monger can never be satisfied by the available options, because human beings always seek more options. Books help them to satisfy their thirst for knowledge by permitting them to turn the pages over and over again without any hassle. Internet actually helps to incite the curiosity among the readers about various topics.

It is a popular saying that the more a child reads, the better human being he becomes. Various options are available nowadays to offer fun while reading. Kids find it pleasurable to read animated books as they depict exciting tales and interesting informations. This would in turn help the children to develop their vocabulary power and language skills too. Children books are particularly designed to introduce them to new worlds and teach the the right values of life. They can actually broaden the imaginations of the children and also encourage them to try new experiments. In fact, they enhance the critical thoughts of children and provide them the freedom to debate on various topics such as population, pollution and unemployment etc.

It seems that the kids are forced only to study the course books. This type of activity can actually limit their imagination and also their knowledge bank. In fact, various literatures of the world can help to enhance the creativity and talents of the children. The online book stores can help a consumer to find the best books for their children. These online shopping portals display the best children books which are not easily available in the market. Moreover, these sites are regularly updated to offer the latest best selling books to the consumers. These online shopping stores even offer various lucrative gifts along with the books. But the consumers should check the authenticity of these online sites as fraudulents do exit in every field.

6 August

Children’s Books: Bring Pleasures for Your Kids

Reading is an important habit that needs to be developed in children. It is necessary for survival in today’s stiff competition. It helps the kids in learning new subjects and finding helpful information they want to know. In spite of the present era of computers, the books have their own significance. Many people believe that the magic of printed words is no more, but the fact is that internet has made reading more popular these days.

It is true that more the children read, the better they become at reading. There are many enjoyable things to read which give them the opportunity to have fun while reading. Kids find reading children’s books a pleasurable activity since such literatures give them a lot of entertaining tales and interesting information. These also help them in enhancing their language skills, vocabulary power and their ability to express themselves.

Children Books bring up new worlds and enrich lives of kids. These give children the opportunity to learn about people and places from different parts of the world. They can expand their accumulated knowledge of mankind by reading these books. The novels that broaden children’s imagination encourage teens to experiment and test new ideas. In fact, these literatures enhance the critical thinking of kids and give them the liberty to think about various topics such as the concepts of cause & effect, problem solving, logical conclusions, etc. Now, the most important thing that comes to the mind is how to find the best books for the children. The following points can be helpful for finding such items.

* The easiest way is to go for the books you loved as a child. Thinking like a child, one can know the exact requirements of her or his kids.

* The idea of purchasing the favorite books of trusted friends and family members is also not bad. Your friends and colleagues can suggest some great ideas that might be helpful in searching the best children’s books.

* The award-winning literatures can be availed because such items are appreciated by a large number of readers.

* Going for the classic children’s literatures and the best reviewed books can also be helpful.

* Many online websites offer the list of best selling literatures for the kids. One can easily find his or her favourite books there.

In most of the cases, kids start reading the course books. However, there are many kinds of such literatures that come with an innovative way of writing. The pocket sized “board books” come in themed collections. Such items are based on a number of themes which excite the kids. Another popular style of children’s literature is the simple picture book. These contain different pictures that give some messages. As kids are not very careful for their belongings, the physical construction of such books is designed to resist the rough handling of children.

The best children’s books can be found on the online shopping portals. These websites offer the customers many attractive schemes and deals. One can also find free gifts, incentives and cashback offers on these online marketplaces. The online shoppers should look for the authentic and reliable sites for purchasing any items. A number of shopping portals are popular in the UK markets. These are Abebooks, Waterstones, Penguin.uk, etc. Abebooks offers a large collection of more than 13,500 booksellers that have introduced their books on its portal. Many value-added benefits are provided by the other websites so that the customers could get the most astonishing shopping experience.

Some of the best known children’s books are the Harry Potter series, Disney High School Musical, KS2 Science, Heart to Heart, etc. These literatures have been written by the reputed authors in the world. On the whole, it is an open secret that the children’s literature business is growing at a rapid speed in the UK and the arrival of internet has benefited this industry.

6 August

Fun, Literature And Children

Fun with a purpose is a real help in educating children. It makes learning so much more attractive. Everyone has a good idea about what is fun and what isn’t. The same cannot be as easily said about literature. How accomplished need writing be to qualify. With regard to children the question may be asked whether there is a category of writing that could be considered literature in the real sense of the word. Are children capable of engaging with an expression of language that meets literary requirements? The answer to that question is a resounding ‘Yes!’ But how often is such an engagement actually offered to a child? Far too sporadically, I believe.

Titles like Alice in Wonderland, Peter Rabbit and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe come to mind when considering children’s literature. From books to be read and told these now have become movies and DVD’s to be watched. From words that introduce a child to good language that stirs the imagination this fine literature has become a sequence of images and sound effects. It needs no Einstein to conclude that somewhere there is a loss for modern children and their development. How many children these days have the opportunity to listen to a quality story being well told while becoming entranced by what is happening merely through the medium of the spoken word? It will be few and they will be the ones who will more easily express themselves later in life and may find the joys a good book can bring to the soul. They are the lucky ones.

Allow me to quote a sentence from Eloise, the Witch and the Wordsmith, a recently released multimedia story that uses narrative as communication with the occasional illustration in support. The spoken word is central in the two hour presentation which children are able to listen to without any loss of concentration. Here comes the sentence.

‘The Witch was so filled with her thoughts of vanquishing the Wordsmith that she didn’t hear the soft hum of the Fireflies that grew and grew around her, exploding from their hidden places, surrounding her with hot brightness, fire light, scalding her with dazzling, brilliant, blinding brightness, enveloping her in such sparkling radiance that she cringed, folded herself into a desolate parody of greatness, and crumpled to the ground, spent of her power, slack with defeat.’

This, most likely, is the longest sentence in the story. It also introduces the most words in one sequence including a lot of not frequently used ones. It’s not the only place where ‘difficult’ words are to be found in the Eloise adventure. Such words are scattered throughout the text. Overall there are well over a hundred words in the story that children would be less familiar with, or would haven’t come across at all.

The most pertinent question is, whether the occasional use of more adult language in an exciting story creates difficulties for the children, or whether they just take it on board. The latter is the case. If the story is exciting children will happily be exposed to richly descriptive language and will benefit greatly. Their minds and imagination will actively create for them what’s happening. They will experience some of the joys of language that has been so central to education in the history of human learning. If the language used is discussed a little, the benefits will be even greater.

Good fun makes literature accessible to children. That has been known for generations. This fun needs to be inherent in a story, but can be expanded beyond that. A good story usually has bearing on life in some way. That’s a treasure of exceptional wealth. As mentioned, this wealth is becoming less accessible in modern days. The children of this world deserve better, an educational exercise that doesn’t look like one. Isn’t that the best kind of learning?