Over the years, structures get modified for continuing growth. Here you will find the help to encourage life long learning.
Articles are updated frequently.
These sections are organized by age level, but the information is not confined to just these ages. Consider looking at other age ranges as well. Also, make sure to check out the Archives.
Articles are updated frequently.
These sections are organized by age level, but the information is not confined to just these ages. Consider looking at other age ranges as well. Also, make sure to check out the Archives.
Teen Innovators
Innovation is the action required to create new ideas, processes, or products which when implemented lead to positive effective change.
This is what businesses crave. This is your children’s future – to create solutions and new uses for products already being made or to create new uses for products already on the market.
How do you prepare your children for this kind of future?
According to fastcompany.com, allowing your teens to play. Inspiring your children to be curious is another way you can help your children explore diverse ways to see things and to do things. Maybe your older children can draw how they see something being used. This is observational drawing--observing and capturing the smallest details of line, shape, size, texture and turning what they are trying to draw in ways to give them a different perspective.
Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation. Mason Cooley
Parents can help their children develop passion by observing what children need to learn to satisfy their curiosity. What subjects do they want to study? What training do they need to pursue their dreams? What tools do they need to design their own investigations, to learn more?
Young people need to develop fearlessness. They need to attempt actions by taking risks and trying new things. hey are not going to learn to cook or build by watching videos about how. They are not going to learn how to do these things without trying them themselves.
There is a way to do it better. Find it. Thomas Edison
Doing some new things to make a difference in their own lives and the lives of others gives them purpose. It gives your older children the incentive to take risks and try new methods to solve challenging issues in our society. Fresh new ideas about how to garden or build are wanted and needed in our communities.
As your children become curious and try new things, do not discourage them because they goof.
There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period. Brene Brown
The Wall Street Journal says by encouraging creativity in ways small and large...parents can help children develop skills needed for innovation. www.gerberlife.com/blog/how-to-teach-innovation-to-children/ provides insight for parents seeking to grow “kid innovators.” Approach everything as a new learning experience (even failure). Widen your children’s horizons by encouraging them to “try them all.” Help their desire to create become second nature. They can create instead of buying new. Help your children innovate.
Give Your Teens Wisdom
Solomon was a biblical king known for his wisdom. Would you want to be like him, making smart decisions without mistakes, pleasing to everyone in your family, with no conflict involved? All of us would like that, but you can help your teens make better decisions, another skill that may help their future be more successful.
First of all, you lead by your example. When you need to make major decisions, you need to discuss them with your family. Share each step of the decision you are trying to make. Expose your children to the real world where money does not grow on trees and where you use your credit card to buy something, which is really a loan you must pay back.
Share your mistakes also. “I wish I had not said that or spent that money...” Allow your teens to make mistakes, but do not punish them if they do not do what is acceptable or seems right to you. Talk to them and help them to learn so they do not repeat that action. What can they do the next time? How can they say something that will not be so harmful? Help them to learn from their mistakes.
Get to know your young people’s interests and help them to discover the things they like to do. This will enable them to search for the most satisfying way to spend their time and money.
Listen to the desires of your children. Encourage them and then give them the autonomy to make their own decisions. Denis Waitley
Recognize opportunities for your teens to know themselves, to appreciate their strengths and to recognize their weaknesses. They may be great talkers, but not great writers. They may enjoy reading books but be the last person chosen for a sports team. My son loved to draw but did not like to be in the outfield on a baseball team. Only by trying things will they discover themselves.
Stay involved in your children’s lives. Help them to solve conflicts with their siblings and friends by discussing what they have done and what they can do to make peace. Guide them in making decisions by discussing the outcomes or consequences of their actions. Show them ways to control their impulses by role playing what they look like when they are mad or act out.
Use games to help them think and make decisions quickly, to think on their feet. They can learn strategies that work to help them succeed in playing chess or video games.
Your children are influenced by your values and expectations. They will continue to do what they see you doing and thinking. parenting.firstcry.com has ideas for helping your children learn to make good decisions. This is an attribute that you can teach your children as they continue their journey to adulthood.
All through my life, when faced with a difficult decision, I always ask myself—where can I learn more. Make the choice to learn. Maria Ressa
Hope is in Your Horoscope
Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today. Thich Nhat Hanh
Hope is a learned response and a bigger determinant of success than intelligence, skill or previous success. It is your work as parent, grandparent, or caregiver to help your children stay hopeful. If your children have a higher “hope score,” they will be more successful at achieving academic and athletic goals. They will be able to recognize and make the best use of opportunities. With your children and yourself, if you make the choice to hope, you put yourselves in control of how you react to circumstances, knowing that you can draw on hope to see things in a new or different way. Hope strengthens us and expands our capacity to believe in our dreams and what is possible for us.
How do you develop hope? First of all, you need to be optimistic, to believe that things will get better. You need
to set goals for yourselves and help your children to do so. Having goals to work towards in one of the best ways
to have hope.
Hopes are the strands that run through our lives—our struggles, our successes and setbacks, our strengths and shortcomings. Realistic and reasonable hope can move us forward toward achieving goals and lift us up as we accomplish each step in attaining them You and your children need to “high five” or pat yourselves on the back each time you move a step closer to your goals. If each one of you is setting and accomplishing a goal, you encourage and help each other. (www.wikihow.com). Hope breeds hope.
You can even schedule hope according to Noami Drew. You can create a daily 5-minute silence ritual and curtail your intake of the news. Develop a mantra such as I am the key to hope. I am the key to peace in my family.
Using this time to make a difference in your lives gives you the opportunity to live your greatest promises and to develop your highest and best selves. Hope is energy, fuel for living. Hope is a necessity, an emotional engine and basis for engaging in life.
Hopeful thinkers achieve more and are physically and psychologically healthier than less hopeful people.
Charles Richard Snyder
Treat your family to a healthy, hopeful life in spite of COVID 19.
Jumping Rope: An Antidote for Stress
Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall. Ray Bradbury
I am not sure your wings will unfold as you jump rope. It is said that neither you nor your children need to jump that high to profit from jumping. Jumping has many benefits. It works your heart by pumping oxygen around your body more efficiently. It strengthens muscles in your upper and lower body as muscles move simultaneously. It expands lungs as you move air rapidly through them, and it relieves stress. Jump roping skill transfers to other athletics due to its “one-stop shop” for your whole body. It is also a great calorie burner. 10 minutes of non-stop jumping equals 30 minutes of jogging.
To get the most benefit from jumping or skipping rope, you need to have a good jump rope. A beaded rope is better than a cloth or vinyl one. buyjumpropes.net has all kinds of beaded jump ropes for sale at very reasonable prices. They have jump ropes for all occasions, especially now for Christmas. They show you how to measure jump ropes for everyone in your family. By holding the handles as they reach your armpits while you are stepping on the rope, you can tell if the rope is the right size. If you need to adjust the rope, this website has a short video to tell you how to do that.
Your driveway may not be the best surface to jump rope on, but it is a convenient place for your family to gather. Wood is the best surface if your children want to help dad drag pieces of plywood for you to jump on. Maybe jumping inside on a mini-trampoline is good because it absorbs some of the shock and conditions your calf and leg muscles.
Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to ‘jump at the sun.’ We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground. Zora Neale Hurston
Another reason to use jump rope during this pandemic is to reduce stress. It decreases overall tension, elevates and stabilizes mood, improves sleep, lifts self esteem and improves balance. For your children, it develops both sides of the brain, improves spacial awareness and reading skills, increases memory and mental alertness.
Jumping rope can make your family less stressed and happier and increase the bonding your family needs through Covid 19.
Innovation is the action required to create new ideas, processes, or products which when implemented lead to positive effective change.
This is what businesses crave. This is your children’s future – to create solutions and new uses for products already being made or to create new uses for products already on the market.
How do you prepare your children for this kind of future?
According to fastcompany.com, allowing your teens to play. Inspiring your children to be curious is another way you can help your children explore diverse ways to see things and to do things. Maybe your older children can draw how they see something being used. This is observational drawing--observing and capturing the smallest details of line, shape, size, texture and turning what they are trying to draw in ways to give them a different perspective.
Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation. Mason Cooley
Parents can help their children develop passion by observing what children need to learn to satisfy their curiosity. What subjects do they want to study? What training do they need to pursue their dreams? What tools do they need to design their own investigations, to learn more?
Young people need to develop fearlessness. They need to attempt actions by taking risks and trying new things. hey are not going to learn to cook or build by watching videos about how. They are not going to learn how to do these things without trying them themselves.
There is a way to do it better. Find it. Thomas Edison
Doing some new things to make a difference in their own lives and the lives of others gives them purpose. It gives your older children the incentive to take risks and try new methods to solve challenging issues in our society. Fresh new ideas about how to garden or build are wanted and needed in our communities.
As your children become curious and try new things, do not discourage them because they goof.
There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period. Brene Brown
The Wall Street Journal says by encouraging creativity in ways small and large...parents can help children develop skills needed for innovation. www.gerberlife.com/blog/how-to-teach-innovation-to-children/ provides insight for parents seeking to grow “kid innovators.” Approach everything as a new learning experience (even failure). Widen your children’s horizons by encouraging them to “try them all.” Help their desire to create become second nature. They can create instead of buying new. Help your children innovate.
Give Your Teens Wisdom
Solomon was a biblical king known for his wisdom. Would you want to be like him, making smart decisions without mistakes, pleasing to everyone in your family, with no conflict involved? All of us would like that, but you can help your teens make better decisions, another skill that may help their future be more successful.
First of all, you lead by your example. When you need to make major decisions, you need to discuss them with your family. Share each step of the decision you are trying to make. Expose your children to the real world where money does not grow on trees and where you use your credit card to buy something, which is really a loan you must pay back.
Share your mistakes also. “I wish I had not said that or spent that money...” Allow your teens to make mistakes, but do not punish them if they do not do what is acceptable or seems right to you. Talk to them and help them to learn so they do not repeat that action. What can they do the next time? How can they say something that will not be so harmful? Help them to learn from their mistakes.
Get to know your young people’s interests and help them to discover the things they like to do. This will enable them to search for the most satisfying way to spend their time and money.
Listen to the desires of your children. Encourage them and then give them the autonomy to make their own decisions. Denis Waitley
Recognize opportunities for your teens to know themselves, to appreciate their strengths and to recognize their weaknesses. They may be great talkers, but not great writers. They may enjoy reading books but be the last person chosen for a sports team. My son loved to draw but did not like to be in the outfield on a baseball team. Only by trying things will they discover themselves.
Stay involved in your children’s lives. Help them to solve conflicts with their siblings and friends by discussing what they have done and what they can do to make peace. Guide them in making decisions by discussing the outcomes or consequences of their actions. Show them ways to control their impulses by role playing what they look like when they are mad or act out.
Use games to help them think and make decisions quickly, to think on their feet. They can learn strategies that work to help them succeed in playing chess or video games.
Your children are influenced by your values and expectations. They will continue to do what they see you doing and thinking. parenting.firstcry.com has ideas for helping your children learn to make good decisions. This is an attribute that you can teach your children as they continue their journey to adulthood.
All through my life, when faced with a difficult decision, I always ask myself—where can I learn more. Make the choice to learn. Maria Ressa
Hope is in Your Horoscope
Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today. Thich Nhat Hanh
Hope is a learned response and a bigger determinant of success than intelligence, skill or previous success. It is your work as parent, grandparent, or caregiver to help your children stay hopeful. If your children have a higher “hope score,” they will be more successful at achieving academic and athletic goals. They will be able to recognize and make the best use of opportunities. With your children and yourself, if you make the choice to hope, you put yourselves in control of how you react to circumstances, knowing that you can draw on hope to see things in a new or different way. Hope strengthens us and expands our capacity to believe in our dreams and what is possible for us.
How do you develop hope? First of all, you need to be optimistic, to believe that things will get better. You need
to set goals for yourselves and help your children to do so. Having goals to work towards in one of the best ways
to have hope.
Hopes are the strands that run through our lives—our struggles, our successes and setbacks, our strengths and shortcomings. Realistic and reasonable hope can move us forward toward achieving goals and lift us up as we accomplish each step in attaining them You and your children need to “high five” or pat yourselves on the back each time you move a step closer to your goals. If each one of you is setting and accomplishing a goal, you encourage and help each other. (www.wikihow.com). Hope breeds hope.
You can even schedule hope according to Noami Drew. You can create a daily 5-minute silence ritual and curtail your intake of the news. Develop a mantra such as I am the key to hope. I am the key to peace in my family.
Using this time to make a difference in your lives gives you the opportunity to live your greatest promises and to develop your highest and best selves. Hope is energy, fuel for living. Hope is a necessity, an emotional engine and basis for engaging in life.
Hopeful thinkers achieve more and are physically and psychologically healthier than less hopeful people.
Charles Richard Snyder
Treat your family to a healthy, hopeful life in spite of COVID 19.
Jumping Rope: An Antidote for Stress
Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall. Ray Bradbury
I am not sure your wings will unfold as you jump rope. It is said that neither you nor your children need to jump that high to profit from jumping. Jumping has many benefits. It works your heart by pumping oxygen around your body more efficiently. It strengthens muscles in your upper and lower body as muscles move simultaneously. It expands lungs as you move air rapidly through them, and it relieves stress. Jump roping skill transfers to other athletics due to its “one-stop shop” for your whole body. It is also a great calorie burner. 10 minutes of non-stop jumping equals 30 minutes of jogging.
To get the most benefit from jumping or skipping rope, you need to have a good jump rope. A beaded rope is better than a cloth or vinyl one. buyjumpropes.net has all kinds of beaded jump ropes for sale at very reasonable prices. They have jump ropes for all occasions, especially now for Christmas. They show you how to measure jump ropes for everyone in your family. By holding the handles as they reach your armpits while you are stepping on the rope, you can tell if the rope is the right size. If you need to adjust the rope, this website has a short video to tell you how to do that.
Your driveway may not be the best surface to jump rope on, but it is a convenient place for your family to gather. Wood is the best surface if your children want to help dad drag pieces of plywood for you to jump on. Maybe jumping inside on a mini-trampoline is good because it absorbs some of the shock and conditions your calf and leg muscles.
Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to ‘jump at the sun.’ We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground. Zora Neale Hurston
Another reason to use jump rope during this pandemic is to reduce stress. It decreases overall tension, elevates and stabilizes mood, improves sleep, lifts self esteem and improves balance. For your children, it develops both sides of the brain, improves spacial awareness and reading skills, increases memory and mental alertness.
Jumping rope can make your family less stressed and happier and increase the bonding your family needs through Covid 19.