Deanna Mascle on LifeDeanna Mascle (3,602)  Renaissance Woman Online Good Parenting Advice - Do Not Put Education On Summer VacationPosted Thursday, June 26, 2008 (10 days 11 hours ago.) Viewed 19 times. Studies have shown that children forget between 1 and 3 months of school during the summer vacation. While reading is the least effected, the most impacted subjects are spelling and math. Obviously it is important for children to have time to play and relax -- to just enjoy being kids during the summer. Children should not be pushed into a high-pressure study schedule over summer vacation. But parents can take steps to slow down that loss of knowledge and erosion of skills. First and foremost, keep children reading over the summer but try to work in some nonfiction as well as fiction onto the reading list. Take a lesson from many experienced teachers and pick a few spelling words from the books children are reading. Perhaps tie test results into some special summer reward and you will have eagerly awaited spelling bees. Writing is one skill that often erodes during summer, but you can give children a writing journal and a weekly goal. They can write about whatever you think will interest your child. They can report on their baseball games, make up elaborate games, or simply report on the books they are reading. There are lots of great writing prompts out there for kids if you run dry of ideas. It does not matter so much what your child writes so long as they spend time writing so they can work on handwriting skills as well as keep in the groove of putting words on paper. One easy writing prompt is to have the child describe people, places, objects, pets and other animals, insects, and games. Lists are another easy writing prompt -- favorite things, worst things, etc. Then on another day you can use those descriptions and lists to generate another writing prompt. Math skills might seem the hardest thing to work on during summer but in fact these can be the easiest. Math does not have to come out of a book and you can easily work a lot of math lessons into those long car rides or plane trips as you go on a family vacation. Try counting car headlights (counting by 2s) as you drive or fingers in a restaurant or plane (counting by 5s). Find various shapes around the house and then trace them to create yet more complex forms. Get the kids involved in cooking and learning about measurements. Give the kids a ruler and notebook and tell them to measure various objects around the house. Empty out your pocket change and have the kids sort it and create word problems with the coins. There are lots of activities you can do at home without the expense of special tools, workbooks or programs that will actively engage your child in learning and help keep their school skills sharp. They will not even notice they are learning because they will enjoy these projects so much. Renaissance Woman Deanna Mascle shares more good parenting advice at http://renaissancewomanonline.com/family.php 
Permalink Comments (2) Parenting Advice - Have Questions About Parenting ClassesPosted Tuesday, May 06, 2008 (61 days 4 hours ago.) Viewed 30 times. There is a huge market for parenting classes in this busy world. Many people find that they do not know how to balance their jobs as parents with their occupational goals, so they attend parenting classes to get some advice and to get some grounding in terms of parenting. These people meet regularly with other parents to share tips, get advice and to gain information in terms of parenting so that they can take what they learn in class home with them to create a better working family. One of the things people learn about in a parenting class is parenting style. There are virtually thousands of options and many people vary their own parenting style several times during the life of the child. Some maintain a nurturing style throughout and display affection and lavish caring towards the child at all ages. Others maintain a more distant style of parenting, preferring to let words promote the parenting style as opposed to actions. Whatever the parenting style is, parenting classes offer a glimpse into the variations between these notions. Parenting education is another important aspect of parenting classes. Many people go to parenting classes because of the sharing of information. People find, in talking about their issues, that they are able to learn more about parenting. This sharing of parenting education is prosperous for parents and for the children that benefit from new pieces of shared information about raising a family. With the right education, many parents learn how to treat sickness with their child or how to handle a tough psychological problem with their teen. There are, of course, options for those parents that are parenting baby. A babies needs tend to be more specific and involve a greater amount of care in terms of parenting needs. A baby needs a great deal of attention, so parenting baby training picks up on that and works with tons of valuable information to create the best possible parenting skill-set. From these types of parenting classes, people are finding more confidence to continue parenting baby. Regardless of the age group of the children, many parents are finding that attending parenting classes is an incredibly helpful way to go about learning more about the troubles and trials of parenting. It is also a great way to communicate and form a network of other supportive parents. One of the major benefits at most parenting classes tends to be the notion of treating each parent, each member of the relationship, as the same and as equal partners in parenting classes. There are many options for parenting classes. They are typically offered in community centers or within church groups and run year-round on all of the days of the week to accommodate the busy schedule of the average working parent. Finding parenting classes is typically just a matter of looking in a phone book or contacting local representatives for community information. Parenting classes can make all of the difference in the world, even to the most seasoned parenting veteran. Find more parenting advice at http://parentslearnmore.com/
Permalink Comments (0) Christian Parenting - an Alternative Parenting Style?Posted Tuesday, May 06, 2008 (61 days 4 hours ago.) Viewed 21 times. There are many different aspects of parenting that qualify as alternative parenting, including Christian parenting, gay parenting and surrogate parenting. All of these are somewhat normative in that they involve loving sets of parents that take care of their children, but many of the details can create a stir in the hearts and minds of detractors. Whether or not the debate surrounding Christian parenting, gay parenting and surrogate parenting is necessary is irrelevant because it exists and we are inundated with it. As the world changes, so do parenting rights. What once was regarded as being purely for a man and a woman under legal definitions has now been spread to meet the changing needs of our evolving society. Gay families now have equal parenting rights in most North American areas. Marriage rights for homosexuals is another can of worms, however. While Christian parenting and gay parenting may seem to be polar opposites, they are often greeted by opposition in the public arena because of the controversial viewpoints that exist. While on the one hand, Christian parenting detractors vocalize their opinions on the notion that Christian parenting involves teaching children a "mythology" at a very young age without offering choices, they also advocate that this parenting approach traditionally expresses solid value systems in children. The same perplexing two-pronged sentiments are expressed towards parents of the homosexual persuasion. One the one hand, many people seem to intrinsically doubt the notion that two homosexual people can be parents. On the other hand, people also think that the only requirement of a marriage and a family relationship is for the two people to be loving and capable of compassion in regards to one another. In that respect, one would assume that the viewpoint in terms of gay parenting seems a little bit contradictory. Surrogate parenting is another topic that often gets thrown into the mix that affects Christian parenting and gay parenting. Surrogate parenting is the controversial practice of seeking out a vessel to carry a child until childbirth and then passing the child over to another parent. Many people object to this practice because they view it as being "baby farming". This objection typically comes right on the heels of the statement that a surrogate mother is one of the most tenderly giving women in the world because she gives of her own body. This confusing point of view is more evidence as to the perplexing arena of debate surrounding the various types of controversial parenting. Christian parenting, gay parenting and surrogate parenting all face an enormous amount of criticism from the general public in terms of what is required as ethical parenting. These issues are typically not ethical issues, however, and instead stem from a very basic and primitive paranoia about the raising of children in the Western world. Christian parenting, gay parenting and surrogate parenting are all important aspects of parenting that should be noted for their loving compassion before any social issue gets in the way of good sense. Find more parenting advice at http://officialfamily.us/
Permalink Comments (0) Good Parenting Tips - Who Really Writes Parenting Books?Posted Tuesday, May 06, 2008 (61 days 4 hours ago.) Viewed 7 times. The best parenting books tend to be the ones written by those with actual parental experience. It seems that this qualifies them to write and discuss parenting, but it may not always make them the best authors. Still, when it comes to taking the advice of either a parent with a little dirt on his or her fingers or the advice of an "expert" with no children, many parents would select parenting books written by the former. As parents, it is common to wonder how a person with no child-raising experience is at all qualified to write parenting books. Instead, most parents want a book written by someone with knowledge of parenting and all of the trials involved in the most harmful and dangerous of life's professions. Many parenting books tend to take a viewpoint that looks at it as parenting from the inside out. This simple philosophy refers to the notion that authors of these books are reflecting on their own personal experience as a parent and are, therefore, offering parenting advice from someone experienced with parenting from the inside out. As someone who has been down many of the same roads before, parenting advice can typically be well-founded when it comes from an experienced parent. Of course, not everyone that writes a parenting book needs to undergo systematic training for effective parenting. Often in lieu of systematic training for effective parenting, an author of parenting books may have a degree in pediatrics and may be experienced in child psychology. The author can then approach the prospect of writing parenting books from a position of expertise and not necessarily a position of experience. In this matter, the advice and words from an author with such expertise would be well-founded, but the matter of whether or not it would be as broadly accepted as the same advice from an author that was an actual parent is another matter altogether. Various BBC parenting specials, for example, often utilize the advice of several of Britain's highly trained pediatricians in their construction. These BBC parenting specials ask for advice from several of the UK's top experts on parenting and piece together a feature documentary based around that qualified information. The BBC then also asks the advice of parents. In many of these specials, it is often amusing to examine the differences in advice given from the childless experts in comparison to the seasoned veteran parents. While both pieces of advice are typically genuine and can be considered "right", it seems that the advice from the actual parents in these cases is generally more realistic and based on actual experience as opposed to potential theory. Parenting books are constructed in the same fashion, but other times a parenting book may be written by a parenting expert based on theories that they are aware of. A parent is more than capable and more than experienced when it comes to knowing about parenting, so trusting their ideas when it comes to parenting books is probably a good idea. Whether you decide on parenting books from so-called experts or from regular parents, both can contain good ideas and great advice for the ultimate task of parenting your children. Parenting books are often very helpful to parents, especially in terms of getting answers to the load of questions most parents have. Seeking out advice can be difficult, but most of the books on the market contain great advice that is easy and rather pleasant to read. Parenting books can be really helpful in many situations by developing a good understanding of the life-long job of being a parent and tempering it with some good advice. Find more parenting tips at http://officialfamily.info/
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