Reading This Summer: 4Th - 6Th Grade

Reading with your child or having your child read everyday will improve their reading as well as build vocabulary. Writing skills will also improve and all academic areas will be strengthened. The following titles are books that I have found that students enjoy or are award winning titles. Make sure you check your child's school summer reading requirements and have your child reading 15-60 minutes every day during the summer.
Fourth Grade

1. The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleishchman

2. My Side of the Mountain by jean Craighead George

3. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

4. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

5. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

6.The Mouse and The Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary

Fifth Grade

1. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

2. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

3. Number the Stars by Lois Lowry

4. The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe By C.S. Lewis

5. Charlotte's Webb By W.B. White

6. Nettie's Trip South by Ann Turner

Sixth Grade

1. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

2. Animal Farm by George Orwell

3. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

4. The Call of the Wild by Jack London

5. Sounder by William Armstrong

6. Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt

To read more about "Getting the Best Education Possible" for your child and suggested readings , order my book "A Parent's Handbook: How to Get the Best Education Possible for Your Child Grades K-6Th at http://www.besteducationpossible.com/ or http://www.amazon.com/ or http://www.barnsandnoble.com/

Reading This Summer: Pre-K - 3rd Grade

Most school districts have suggested reading list for students during the summer. Check on your child's school web site and make sure he/she is reading any required reading while on summer break. The following titles are books that I have found students enjoy hearing or are award winning titles. Great literature abounds for children. Ask friends and relatives to buy your child books instead of toys or video games. Research shows that reading to your child early on will improve a child's academic performance throughout life. Below are my favorite children's literature for Pre-K -Third Grade.

Pre-K and Kindergarten

1. Curious George by H.A. Rey

2. Corduroy by Don Freeman

3. The Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Anderson

4. The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

5. Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman

6. Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish

First Grade

1. The Snowy Day by Jack Keats

2. Lily's Purple Plastic Purse by levin Henkes

3. The Princess and the Pea by Hans Christian Anderson

4. Sleeping Beauty a tale from Brothers Grimm

5. The little Engine That Could by Watty Piper

6. One of Three by Angela Johnson

Second Grade

1. The Emperors New Clothes by Hans Christian Anderson

2. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

3. Charlotte's Webb By E.B. White

4. A Pocket for Corduroy by Don Freeman

5. Peter Pan by James M. Parrie

6. Ricardo's Day by George Ancona

Third Grade

1. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

2. Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp by Schenherazade

3. Gone is Gone a Story from Bohemia

4. William Tell a Switzerland Legend

5. Jason and the Golden Fleece a Ancient Greek Myth

6. The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Anderson

To get more suggestions for summer reading get my book, A Parent's Handbook: How to Get the Best Education Possible K-6 Grades. You can order my book from http://www.besteducationpossible.com/ or http://www.amazon.com/ or http://www.barnsandnobles.com/ . Tomorrow I will give you suggested summer reading for grades 4-6 grades.

Meat Free Meals

Vegetarian or not, your kids should be eating lots of fruits and vegetables. A well-planned vegetarian diet is healthy even for babies and children, according to a statement from the American Dietetic Association. Kids who avoid all meat usually take in less saturated fat and eat more produce an d fiber that their carnivorous peers. They tend to be leaner and have lower cholesterol too. Make sure your little vegetarians are getting these nutrients that can go missing from meatless diets. (Save nuts and seeds until age 4). Below are some suggestions from the December 2009 issue of Parents magazine.

Iron:

White or kidney beans, spinach, whole wheat bread, pumpkin seeds (to boost iron absorption, serve all the above with vitamin C-rich foods like oranges, strawberries, and broccoli)

Protein:

Beans, nuts, nut butters, edamame, soy-based veggie burgers

Vitamin B12:

Yogurt, milk, eggs, cheese, fortified breakfast cereal

Zinc:

Sunflower seeds, almonds, tofu, wheat germ (add to muffins and smoothies)

Make sure you educate yourself before starting your child on a vegetarian diet. Children's brains, teeth, and bones are developing and you must make sure they are getting the proper nutrition. If you are not vegetarians, start your children early eating all types of fruits and vegetables. They will grow up loving them!

Walk This Way

According to an article in the December issue of Parents magazine, each year 51,000 child pedestrians are injured. Kids are especially vulnerable because they move quickly and impulsively and they aren't good at judging an oncoming car's speed or distance, interpreting road signs, or spotting vehicles in their peripheral vision, says a new report from American Academy of Pediatrics. One study found that a third of parents allow their kindergartners to cross the street alone. Below are traffic-safety tips to keep in mind:

1. Cross the streets with kids under 10. (except in limited situations such as watching him cross a residential street). Use your judgment with older kids.

2. Be a stickler for traffic rules.

3. Work with your child's school to start a program that escorts kids.

4. Prevent back-overs by walking all the way around your car to check for children before getting in.

5. Don't let kids play in an alley, a driveway, or an unfenced front yard.

6. Talk to your city council about speed bumps or speed-limit signs.

Learning With Magnifiers

According to Ellen Booth Church, a former professor of early childhood, you should have your children take a closer look at life with a magnifying glass! Tiny things are a wild source of fascination of children. Small stuff adults take for granted, like a line of marching ants on a sidewalk or a minute peck of mica shining in a rock, they see as invitation to stop and examine. A magnifier is available at most toy stores, is the perfect tool for helping young explorers further their intimate investigations in an up-close and personal way. The activities below will guide your children in their search through the world of the small.

1. Examine fingerprints: Together check the fingertips of each member of the family. Invite everyone to press their fingers into a stamp pad and then on paper. How do the fingerprints compare? Discuss the patterns found in nature that are one-of-a-kind, such as snowflakes and zebra stripes.

2. Inspect the ingredients: Next time you bake with your child, look at the different white powders (sugar, salt, flour, baking powder). Your child will be surprised to see how different the grains and crystals look from each other using a magnifying glass. What does each remind them of?

3. Make your own magnifier: Your child can make a magnifier by filling a plastic sandwich bag with a small amount of water. How much you put in the bag affects the degree of magnification, so experiment with a few different amounts. Then seal the bag, hold it sideways over an item, and take a look.

4. Play a guessing game: Without letting your child see them first, place a variety of everyday objects behind the magnifier's lens one at a time and encourage him/her to try to figure out the identity of each.

5. Use other tools for a closer look: Handheld magnifiers are not the only things we use to make something appear larger. Have your child look at the neighborhood with binoculars or the zoom on your camera. Check out the leaves and a fleck of dust with a microscope. Ask your child to take note of how these tools are similar to and different from the magnifier. Your child may notice that the magnifier and microscope work best close-up objects while the others are better for things in the distance.

6. Sketch your view: Scientist often record observations with illustrations in a field journal. As your children explores, provide paper, pencils, or crayons so they can keep track of what they see.

Comic Strips! They Help Kids Learn to Read and Write!

According to Bill Zimmerman, a prize-winning newspaper editior, comic strips, like their cousins graphic novels and comic books, are more accepted today by educators as tools for helping children master literacy. The funny silly, clever, and touching story lines in each short strip draw eager readers in. Just a few words per frame is all it takes for a comic strip's characters to reveal a complete story. They don't require long sentences or paragraphs to relate a captivating tale or a powerful message.

Getting your kids into comic strips is easy. Just pick up a newspaper or visit a comic strip website like gocomics.com. Then, you can extend the educational value by helping them create a strip of their own. Some kids need only a blank piece of paper and pencil to churn out box after box. For those who need a prompt, you can enjoy to fun of creating one together. Try these ideas:

1. Draw a row of story boxes or print one from the Internet try blog.zingerding.com/tag/comic-strip-template/. A few large boxes is best at first. Your child can work up to a grid when she's ready fro a longer sequence.

2. Brainstorm with your young cartoonist. Will the characters be humans or animals? What emotions might they display happiness, sadness, anger? Where does the story take place?

3. Think about real-life situations to depict, such as a joke Dad told yesterday or a wacky thing that happened on the way to school. Move on to fantasy if your child wishes.

4. You can either draw by hand or use a free online comic strip generator (makebeliefsxomix.com)

Once you children have gotten in the swing of things, you'll probably find that their vocabulary expands as they search for new words to help their characters express themselves.

Teasing Vs. Bulllying

Kids poke fun at one another. It's just what they do. Our instinct as parents may be to immediately stop the behavior and try to protect our kids from it, but, some teasing is critical to our children's social development, according to an article in Scholastic Parent & Child, October issue.

When kids make fun of their friends without aggression or any intention of hurting their feelings, it's called positive or productive teasing. This kind of behavior, says Mill, a communications professor at the University of Alabama, helps kids build relationships and use humor to address taboo topics or handle sticky situations. According to Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, 60 to 70 percent of the teasing young kids do is positive. If we don't let kids tease at all, says Keltner, we stop the majority of teasing, that helps kids form bonds and navigate social situations.

Teasing Vs. Bullying

1. Teasing is misunderstood because it is often confused with bullying, which has a strictly negative impact.

2. The way to distinguish between the two is by intent.

3. The goal of teasing is to create a closer relationships and make connections.

4. The goal of bullying is to harm.

5. Teasing turns into bullying when kids use it to gain greater social status.

6. It has been found that 4-5 year old will bully to increase their social power.

7. Even the most positive teasing turns sour if it goes to far.

Definition: Teasing Vs. Bullying

When both people are equal in size, intelligence, and age and are having fun, it's teasing. But when the two aren't equal and one is more poplar, bigger, or powerful, the exchange is out of balance, it's bullying.

If your child tells you his/her classmates called him/her ugly, don't just jump in to assure them they are beautiful, says Mills. "As soon as you do that, you've let them become victimized." Instead, listen to what they say, and then help them come up with a plan to address it the next time it happens. If you want more information, don't ask your child directly if he's being teased. Instead a question that can be answered in the second or third person. How do kids joke around these days? Or, what is teasing kike for kids today?