I used to feel confused when it cames to choosing quality apps from the huge & ever-growing range of apps available from the app store. I also found it was very easy to have the cost of the apps mount up over time. My husband was forever noticing & commenting "O Oh! another app from iTunes!" as he went through on the bank statements.
I have been exploring and downloading apps for many years now in both my role as a Grandmother of small children and as a Teacher Librarian in a Primary (K-6) school in NSW, Australia.
I have found over the years a number of excellent places to go to for advice and guidance in selecting my apps.I especially love the #FREE ones when they are truly discounted and have no in app purchases!
I was delighted to find Music with Grandma FREE ATM-usually $3.79 US. I was notified of this app because it was on my wish list in the AppShopper ios app.
"Grandma has always been a favorite of mine, and this new app is my all-time favourite. It teaches kids note names, placements, instrument sounds and patterns. Grandma still dances, and Grandpa makes appearances playing instruments, too. A great app for learning and appreciating music, designed for kids from 6-12 but great for preschoolers, too, with a few settings accommodations." from
http://www.smartappsforkids.com/2016/01/best-app-for-music-enjoy-music-with-your-child-and-grandma-with-this-new-top-pick.html
I have found this site to be a great source of help in identifying quality apps.
I love finding apps that will meet the needs of a student, or one of my grand-daughters, who wants to explore an area of interest. The following app Monki Home -Language is totally FREE ATM with a 4 star rating. I am notified each day of the choice of today's apps gone free on this "News" app. I have found many valuable apps with a great saving in cost.
For those who have children interested in learning various languages: Try Monki :Home FREE
To ensure you get all the languages for free make sure that after you download the app, Open and Unlock. You will need to Confirm your purchases which are Free. If you wait a few days they will no longer be available for free.
MyBrushes Pro-Sketch 3 1/2 stars FREE ATM Usually $3.79
I hope that knowing about these helpful app will save you some time and money!
I believe that reading aloud to children is very important....however this article, originally published on The Conversation, points out another way of making kids great readers!
Dinnertime storytelling makes kids voracious readers
Anne Fishel, Harvard Medical School
As a young child, I loved to imagine myself as a pioneer girl in Little House in the Big Woods, eating fresh snow drizzled with maple syrup. I even pestered my mother to make this treat with the dirty snow that fell on our Manhattan sidewalk. Not a chance.
Years later, I honored my young sons’ request to try a coconut after reading the adventures of Babar. Who knew that even a hammer and chisel won’t crack these nuts? I resorted to clearing out the sidewalk below and then pitching the fruit out a third-floor window.
It worked, but thankfully there are many easier ways to bring food and reading together than hurling coconuts or eating dirty snow.
Here are some of the connections I researched while working on my book, Home for Dinner. And remember, none of these requires a gourmet meal or a trip to the bookstore. Library books and a takeout pizza are just as good.
Dinner conversation builds vocabulary
For starters, there is the linguistic pairing of reading and eating, shown in such common expressions as “devouring a good book” or being a “voracious” reader.
Those sayings reflect the reality that children who have regular family dinners have a real leg up on being good and early readers. Years of research from the Home-School Study of Language and Literacy Development have shown that dinner conversation is a terrific vocabulary booster for young children – even better than reading aloud to them.
Rare words, those that go beyond the 3,000 most common ones, are 10 times more likely to show up in dinner conversation than in storybooks. When parents tell a story at the dinner table about their day or recount a funny family anecdote, they usually include many words that a young child hasn’t yet learned but can understand from the context of the story. Children who have rich vocabularies, packed with less common, more sophisticated words, learn to read more easily because they can make sense of the words they are deciphering.
The benefits to children don’t just come from listening to stories. Children who know how to tell stories are also better readers. In one large study, kindergartners who were able to tell stories grew up to be fourth- and even seventh-graders with higher reading comprehension than those kindergartners who lacked narrative skills.
Dinner is a prime time for children to tell stories and to be encouraged to tell better stories. Researchers have found that children can be taught to tell longer, more information-packed stories with a few simple instructions.
Reminisce with your children about past experiences you’ve shared with them. “Remember when we forgot to take the brownies out of the oven?”
Ask a lot of open-ended questions, including plenty of “how” and “why” questions rather than questions with yes-or-no answers.
Encourage longer stories by repeating what your child says or by elaborating on her story.
Instead of deciding what story to tell, follow your child’s lead on what she wants to talk about.
In this study, children who were given these instructions had bigger vocabularies and told more complex stories a year later.
There are other tasty connections between food and books. Consider the banquet of children’s books that feature food as a central force in the action. There are the magical noodles in Strega Nona, the pomegranate seeds that bind Persephone to Hades, the irresistible Turkish delight in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and the whimsical tribute to picky eaters, Green Eggs and Ham.
Reading done away from the table can inform dinnertime topics.Eden, Janine and Jim, CC BY
Just as dinner conversation can lead to more reading, reading can be the prompt for meals and for conversation. Parents and children might recreate a favorite literary meal for dinner, and then read that book, or a portion of it, aloud. Split pea soup from George and Martha or spaghetti and meatballs from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs are two possibilities.
And, don’t forget the many nursery rhymes that involve porridge, rice pudding and blackbird pie (to name just a few). It could be fun to imagine what Harry Potter might eat for dinner at Hogwarts or to create a high tea that Mary Poppins might like.
Of course it’s not just children’s literature that gets our mouths watering. Melville devotes a chapter to clam chowder in Moby Dick, and in Nora Ephron’s Heartburn, the philandering husband gets his comeuppance with a Key lime pie in the face.
If cooking a literary meal doesn’t get you in a reading mood, here’s another idea for a dinner: ask family members to talk about one book that changed their life. That dinner conversation might just jumpstart some bedtime reading. Anne Fishel, Author of Home for Dinner and Associate Clinical Professor of Psychology, Harvard Medical School
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Kids' who read, succeed!!!
Cheers
:-)
For kids and families, TumbleBooks lets you watch and listen to hundreds of e-books online, play a game, watch a video, write a review..
To visit Tumblebooks at home you first need to visit the Coffs City Library page http://libraries.coffsharbour.nsw.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx
and then click on the Tumblebooks icon.
Tumblebooks is subscription based.
If you go straight to the Tumblebooks page you will be asked to register and sign in.
You need to go through the Coffs Harbour City Library page to gain free access.
The Council is covering this fee so our community has access to this resource.
Some researchers believe birth order is as important as gender and almost as important as genetics. It gets back to the old nurture vs. nature business." Dr. Gail Gross
Human Behavior and Education Expert, Speaker, Author. Ph.D. Ed.D.
The Achiever, The Peacemaker, and The Life of The Party
"While the eldest child is programmed for excellence and achievement, the middle child is raised to be understanding and conciliatory and the baby seeks attention. As a result, birth order is a powerful variable in the unfolding of your personality.
Discover the effect of being The Lone Wolf: The Only Child.
Understanding that a first-born child feels highly responsible allows you to lighten their load and recognizing that the baby of the family is experiencing a more lenient environment can help you be more diligent in your discipline.
Click on the article link below for more information from her article:
"The moral of the story for parents is to look for your own biases and stereotypes about birth order as you think about what your children are capable of doing. Encourage them to teach each other, to define their own identities in the family, and to avoid labeling themselves based on their birth order. Don’t let the lives of your children be dominated by the random forces that caused them to be born when they were."
How does this reflect your childhood and birth order? Does it ring true?
"Understanding the biology and lifecycle of head lice will enable you to understand how to effectivelytreat and manage head lice in your family and school." NSW Government Department of Health
"Head lice are only found on the human head. Head lice do not live on furniture, hats, bedding, carpet or anywhere else in the environment. Treating anything other than the human head does not eradicate head lice."Treatment of Head Lice NSW Government Department of Health "Spring cleaning your home, washing bedding and toys and rigorous vacuum cleaning do not affect the head lice population on a human head."Biology NSW Government Department of Health How do you catch head lice? "Head lice are caught from another human head. Head lice cannot survive off the human head for any length of time."Biology NSW Government Department of Health "Head lice move from human hair to human hair." "As no product has been shown to kill eggs, any chemical treatment must be reapplied after any eggs have hatched, ie. five to seven days after the first treatment."Biology NSW Government Department of Health "Unfortunately, the management and treatment of head lice is surrounded by a large amount of misinformation and myth, particularly about their habits and what is and isn't an effective treatment." NSW Government Department of Health To assist you to combat these annoying creatures: NSWPublic Schools and NSWHealth present: NSW DET video on head lice show you how to get rid of head lice. NSWPublic Schools and NSWHealth present:
Please check your child’s hair regularly and if necessary apply a suitable product to remove the lice.
"Sometimes you may need to reapply the lotion two or even three times. All eggs must be removed to successfully eradicate the lice. We understand that it is a difficult and tiresome job to do but unless all the eggs are removedthey can re-hatch over night." NSW Government Department of Health
Walk
Safely to School Day (WSTSD) is an annual, national event when all Primary
School children will be encouraged to walk and commute safely to school.
It
is a Community Event seeking to promote Road Safety, Health, Public Transport
and the Environment.
It
will be held throughout Australia on Friday 23 May 2014. Read the recent Media
Release.
"There's a smaller proportion of children walking to school than at any time in history, but most parents say they'd prefer to walk if they could. So what's the problem?
Why aren't we walking our kids to school more often?
Andrea Rowe looks into the barriers and benefits of walking to school."
The
objectives of WSTSD are:
To encourage parents
and carers to walk to school with primary school age children and
reinforce safe pedestrian behaviour.
To promote the health benefits
of walking and help create regular walking habits at an early
age.
To ensure that children up to
10 years old hold an adult's hand when crossing the road.
To help children
develop the vital road-crossing skills they will need as they
become mature pedestrians.
To reduce the car
dependency habits that are being created at an early age and which will
be difficult to change as children become adults.
To promote the use of Public
Transport.
To reduce the level of air
pollution created by motor vehicles.
Formal diagnosis of autism is performed by medical specialists.
What is AUTISM?
There are a number of different early intervention options to treat individuals on the autism spectrum.
Diagnostic Assessment Services
It’s important to remember that whilst there are many options available, parents should thoroughly investigate the quality and effectiveness of an intervention in order to make an informed choice.
To assist parents in making this decision, the Federal Government commissioned The Australian Society for Autism Research (ASFAR) to produce an independent evaluation of the effectives of early intervention options funded under the Helping Children With Autism (HCWA) package.
Autism Spectrum (Aspect) provides a number of fact sheets to find our more about the current resources available to you. The list includes:
To any creative Mums, Dads, Aunts, Grandads.....out there
Here's an awesome idea to try with your little one's drawings!
They make great Mother's Day or Father's Day projects.
Even Grandma's or Pops could get in on the act.
BEC – Board endorsed course – HSC subjects endorsed by the Board of Studies NSW. BOS – Board of Studies NSW - The body responsible for the development of core syllabuses for Kindergarten to Year 12. It also manages external examinations such as the School Certificate and the Higher School Certificate.
C
CA – Creative arts CAPA – Creative and performing arts Civics and Citizenship – studied within Human society and its environment (see HSIE) and explores the people, processes and institutions that make up Australia's political system. CLO – Community liaison officer – encourage and support parents and the wider community to be actively involved in school activities and students progress. COGS – Connected outcome groups – Units of work, studied from Kindergarten to Year 6, which have been designed to link all key learning areas (see KLAs) together around one topic. For example "Being Australian" may be studied by Year 3-4 students and includes Science and technology, HSIE, PDHPE and creative arts components (see KLAs). Your child may be asked to do a project around a COG subject they are studying in class. COLA – Covered outdoor learning area. Usually a covered structure in the playground which does double duty as a learning and play area. Curriculum –The Australian curriculum in NSW is the planned program of teaching and learning constructed by educators, in partnership with learners and others, to achieve agreed educational outcomes. Creative Arts – a key learning area covering visual arts, dance, drama and music.
The Summer Reading Club is a great opportunity for school aged children to explore the amazing world of books and stories during the summer school holidays.
The library supports the SRC with fun activities for all children who participate, including ideas of interesting books to read!
Summer Reading Club 2013 2014
All children who register to participate in the SRC this year are invited to attend the
Investigation! Party at Cavanbah Hall
21 Jan 2014, 1.00pm - 3.00pm
Special SRC event Making Picture Books Workshop with Aleesah Darlison Tuesday 14th January 2014.
Some of our students had the wonderful experience of sharing a video conference with Aleesha Darlinson during 2012, which included the reading of her picture book, Puggle's Problem. Enjoy the reading of the story below.
Special SRC event Making Picture Books Workshop with Aleesah Darlison Tuesday 14th January 2014. Time: 10:00 - 11:30 at Coffs Harbour Library
Cost: $5.00 per person. For ages 7 – 12 years. Bookings essential.
Aleesah, an author of children's picture books, provides an introduction to this exciting genre and leads children through exercises to create their very own picture book. Includes a writing and illustration component.
Also during the holidays for times when you, or any other independent readers-think older siblings, grandparents, uncles, ... are not able to read to your child: Visit the Read to my Child website so your child does not miss out on this important daily developmental activity.
You can also use You Tube to Encourage Reading -a post by The Book Chook ."Use YouTube to entice your youngsters towards more wonderful picture books. You can find book trailers that give a sneak peek of the book's contents, but also there are whole picture book stories on YouTube."
Research has
shown that supportive home environments foster motivation forreading, which
leads to more frequentvoluntaryreading, whichimprovesreadingachievement.
Many collaborative interventions involving home and school have enhanced thereadingmotivation of
struggling readers as they enhanced comprehension.
Being able to choose what they read encourages some so-called ‘reluctant
readers’ to find their interest in reading.
·
No pressure — let children choose what they want to
read
It is not the amount children read, it is that they want to read that is
important, so let them choose things they want to read — even comics,
magazines, cookbooks or appropriate websites.
·Find out what others like
Peruse book reviews or lists or ask your local librarian what is ‘hot’ for kids
to read. Find out what appeals to your children, rather than what appeals to
you!
·
Listening is reading — consider audio books
Fluency with reading improves if children follow along as they are read to.
Listen to audio books in the car, or download audio books onto your children’s
iPods so they can listen to them privately.
·
Book groups are great
Ask your children if they’d like to get together with other children who might
like to read and talk about a book. Try an ‘all boys’ book group or a
grandparents–grandchild book group . . . any way to get kids talking about
books.
Credit: Dean Terry | Flickr.com / Creative Commons License
·
Read anywhere and everywhere
Encourage your child to read to you menus, maps, train schedules, flavours at
the ice-cream shop, specials at the supermarket, music and movie reviews —
anything that interests them.
Let us all continue to join hands to enable people with autism and other neurological differences to realise their potential and enjoy the opportunities and well-being that are their birthright.
Ban Ki-moon: "Reaching out to people with autism spectrum disorders requires global political commitment and better international cooperation, especially in sharing good practices." As highlighted by the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, people with autism are equal citizens who should enjoy all human rights and fundamental freedoms. April is Autism Awareness Month, a time to learn more about the neurological condition which affects one in every hundred Australians.
