by Admin | May 30, 2013 | Life Skills
Teaching kids about manners isn’t the most fun thing that you will encounter as a parent. No one likes to nag, but it’s worth putting in some effort to teaching manners because if your kids have good manners, adults will be nicer to them, and they will know how to speak and be respectful to others. You can send them off into the world, knowing that they will know how to behave in different social situations. So in the interest of making the world a friendlier, happier place, we have rounded up lots of good books, apps, videos, and cards that will help you teach your kids the manners they need to know.
Manners Cards for Kids
An easy way to get children familiar with what is polite and not polite would be to try out a few manners cards:
- Happy Mini Manners Card Set has 42 good manners mini card with helpful phrases/reminders & matching peek-a-play characters that say things like knock on the door, do not tease, say excuse me, love your family, listen to others, etc.
- Good Manners FlashCards is a set of 15 cards that remind kids to love your family, wash your hands, be kind, say thank you, etc.
- Golly Gee-pers is a fun and easy table manners game to help encourage good manners.
Manners DVDs for Kids
- Mind Your Manners (ages 5-12) teaches kids the benefit of good manners. Using adults to serve as the “bad examples,” the lessons provide kids with the proper etiquette they need to be successful in life in a variety of circumstances, from dining at the table to cleaning up after themselves.
- What Every Kid Should Know About Manners and Etiquette is a 60 minute, three-part video program where kids teach kids using humor, songs, funny costumes, and situations in which kids often find themselves. This video teaches children how to treat others with respect and shows them that the world is a much nicer place when we follow the simple rules of manners and etiquette.
- The Etiquette Factory has a 12-week program that includes a DVD that is designed for homeschool, pre-school, or any elementary classroom setting.
The Best Books to Teach Kids Manners
There are A LOT of manners books aimed at kids, so we decided to research all the reviews, comments, and recommendations on what books are the best manners books for kids. Since there are so many books to choose from, we are listing our top ten books.
- What Do You Say, Dear? It is a whimsical guide to manners that uses absurd situations and funny illustrations to help teach kids everyday social behavior.
- Cookies: Bite-Size Life Lessons is a kind of dictionary that defines mysteries such as “fair” and “unfair” and what it means to “cooperate by using examples having to do with cookies.
- Manners Can Be Fun by Munro Leaf has stick figure drawings and a brief text that tells why good manners are essential and how to have good manners at home, at play, and on visits.
- How to Behave and Why also by Munro Leaf talks about the four main things (be honest, fair, strong, and wise) that you have to do if you want to make good friends and keep them.
- Dude, That’s Rude! has cartoons and kid-friendly text that teaches the basics of polite behavior in all kinds of situations—at home, at school, in the bathroom, on the phone, at the mall, and more. Our eight-year-old kid tester was laughing out loud while reading this book.
- Excuse Me! Teaches toddlers the ABC’s of “polite behavior” in a gentle and funny way.
- socialsklz(Social Skills) for Success: How to Give Children the Skills They Need to Thrive in the Modern World is a new book that we recently came across that is great for kids who are growing up in a digital age.
- Whoopi’s Big Book of Manners for K-Grade 3 reminds kids of common polite phrases to use, such as please and thank you. It also talks about circumstances children will recognize: interrupting, forgetting to clean up after yourself, and not saying you’re sorry. The author outlines good manners for different situations: table, movies, and theater, sports, elevator, etc.
- Everyday Graces: Child’s Book Of Good Manners uses stories and poems under headings like “Honor Your Mother and Father,” “Please and Thank You,” “No Hurtful Words,” “Good Behavior in Sport,” and “Showing Respect for Country”.
- How Rude!: The Teenagers’ Guide to Good Manners, Proper Behavior, and Not Grossing People Out teaches teens how to be a good host and guest, what to do (and not do) when going online or waiting in line, how to deal with rude relatives, how to act at the mall and the concert hall, how to make introductions, who invented manners, and much more. Hundreds of “Dear Alex” questions and answers cover everything from dating to breaking up, thank-you notes to table manners, ethnic jokes to social cliques, skateboarding to celebrating.
Books to Help Teach Kids Table Manners
Table manners are an incredibly difficult skill to develop, so here are some of the best table manner books for kids:
- The Berenstain Bears Forget Their Manners this book is mostly is about good manners in general, but there is quite a lot about table manners in the story. It’s a fun and easy way to get your kids thinking about manners.
- You’ve Got Manners!: Table Tips from A to Z for Kids of All Ages (You’ve Got Manners series) This guide to proper behavior at the dinner table provides an introduction to etiquette for kids and a refresher in manners for adults. Offering three tips for each letter of the alphabet, kids are asked to examine the factors that contribute to proper form.
- Emily Post’s Table Manners for Kids goes in-depth about table manners answering questions like which fork do I use? How do you use chopsticks? Is it okay to answer my cell phone during dinner? What is the polite way to eat spaghetti? Pretty much everything you need to know to get you through any meal is here—from table settings to eating tricky foods, to holding up your end of a dinner conversation.
- How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food? (Book & CD) just like kids, dinosaurs have a difficult time learning to behave at the table. However, with a little help from Mom and Dad, these young dinosaurs eat all before them with smiles and goodwill.
- Tiffany’s Table Manners for Teenagers Written by Walter Hoving, former chairman of Tiffany’s of New York, it is a step-by-step introduction to all the basics, from the moment the meal begins (“It is customary for the young man to help the young lady on his right to be seated”) to the time it ends (“Remember that a dinner party is not a funeral, nor has your hostess invited you because she thinks you are in dire need of food. You’re there to be entertaining”). In addition to the essentials about silverware, service, and sociability, it includes many of the fine points, too—the correct way to hold a fish fork, how to eat an artichoke properly, and, best of all, how to be a gracious dining companion.
- Soup Should Be Seen, Not Heard! A Complete Manners Book for Kids teaches kids how to politely handle introductions, telephones and cell phones, dining, partying, writing notes, e-messaging, dressing, and more, all in a lighthearted tone that appeals to both boys and girls four-years-old and up.
Best Apps to Help Teach Kids Manners
There aren’t many apps to teach kids manners, but here are a few that we found that look good:
- A Quest for Good Manners is an interactive storybook that teaches kids the secret to good manners is kindness and consideration.
- Maddie & Matt’s A to Z’s of Good Manners & Values is an interactive storybook showing Maddie and Matt exhibiting good manners and values.
- Good Manners for ages 3-7 is a mini book where kids watch characters at dinner, the playground, and the classroom as they learn sharing, kindness, and respect.
photo credit: Podknox via photopin cc
by Admin | Apr 15, 2013 | Life Skills
Critical thinking isn’t the most exciting topic to break down, but helping to develop it in kids can be fun and fascinating. You can easily add a few simple techniques to your daily interactions with your kids that will produce some fantastic conversations and insights into their brains and thought processes. You probably already do lots of things to develop your kid’s critical thinking skills without realizing it, but if you don’t, why not try out some of the tips below? You will be glad that you did, promise.
In case you are a little foggy about what precisely critical thinking entails, it means knowing how to think, not what to think. Kids can develop critical thinking skills or the ability to evaluate and analyze ideas and concepts. Still, it is something that does not come naturally; it needs to be encouraged and guided by teachers and parents as the child develops.
Easy things you can do at home:
- Ask your kids open-ended questions that don’t have a right or wrong answer. Your goal is to try to stimulate their thought processes, so you should be talking about something that the child is interested in and something that makes them think.
- Be a devil’s advocate and say something outrageous that your kids have to argue with you about and disagree. This can help them learn how to find flaws in someone else’s evidence or reasoning. Also, make sure you are giving the child time to respond. There is no rush, just enjoy the silence while they think about what they might say.
- When reading books, have children make connections and look for clues that will help them to think more deeply about what they are reading. Making connections will help your child learn how to use what they already know to tackle new problems.
- Give your opinion and show your thought processes by thinking out loud about how to solve little problems or complete tasks around the house.
- Let your kids make decisions themselves by weighing the pros and cons of a choice and don’t be afraid to let them make the wrong decision. Later you can discuss with your child how they think the decision turned out.
- If you like watching TV with your kids, you can talk to them about commercials and how information can be manipulated to make claims that aren’t necessarily true or check out Get Media Smart. It is an excellent site for young people that encourages users to think critically about media and become smart consumers. Activities on the site are designed to provide users with some of the skills and knowledge needed to question, analyze, interpret, and evaluate media messages.
Read More: Fun Ways to Help Kids Learn Mental Math
Videos
An easy way to get kids to start thinking about how they think is to watch these fun videos that were created by the Foundation for Critical Thinking based on their book Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking for Children.
Apps
Here are some of our favorite apps to help develop critical thinking in kids:
- Blokus HD is a fun app that is based on the super-popular Blokus board game.
- Question Builder is designed to help elementary-aged children learn to answer abstract questions and create responses based on inference.
- MathLands teaches kids ages 7 + math problem solving, math logic, critical thinking, and pattern recognition skills.
- Rush Hour is a sliding block traffic jam puzzle where your goal is to get the red car out the exit gate by moving the blocking cars and trucks out of the way.
Books
- Visual Discrimination, Grades 2 – 8 is a fun workbook designed to teach the skill of visual discrimination, the ability to recognize similarities and differences between different things. The lessons in this book are pictorial analogies that are arranged in lessons of increasing difficulty.
Online Games
Another fun way to encourage critical thinking skills involves solving riddles, brainteasers, and such games like Sudoku or crossword puzzles. They help engage the brain and encourage kids to think about different ways to solve problems. Here are some good sites to check out:
- Brain Boosters has a huge list of online educational activities that you can sort by Lateral Thinking, Logic, Reasoning, Spatial Awareness, and more.
- Sudoku for Kids is a fun way to practice your math and logical skills.
- Cool Math has so many games on their site; you will have no trouble finding some sound logic and puzzle games to help with critical thinking building.
- Cyberchase Games Central has some excellent logic, puzzle, and pattern games.
- Puzzles have lots of fun and easy puzzles for kids.
- BrainBashers has more advanced games, puzzles, crosswords if you are looking for a bit of a challenge for your kids.
Toys and Games
If you’ve been to a toy store in the last little while, you probably will have seen these Perplexus maze games. They are fun and infuriating.
Or if you want some excellent strategy board games try Blokus, Qwirkle, or Mastermind board games that help develop critical thinking and logic skills.
Read More: Resources to Teach Children to be Resilient
Read More
by Admin | Mar 4, 2013 | Life Skills
One of the big ideas to come along lately in child development circles is that if parents want their children to be successful, then they need to start teaching their kids resilience. The argument is that we have been so focused on trying to make sure our children avoid pain and disappoint at all costs, that children are so insulated from unpleasant situations or challenges they are incapable of dealing with any sort of failure or adversity.
The idea of developing resilience in kids started to gain some traction after the publication of the groundbreaking book NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children that explored the problems with the self-esteem movement and the helicopter style of parenting.
More recently, the huge success of Paul Tough’s How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character put the idea of resilience back in the spotlight. Tough argues that character attributes such as perseverance and resilience are a better predictor of future success than standardized tests, and that character is created by encountering and overcoming failure. So our job as parents shouldn’t be trying to protect our kids from making mistakes, but instead letting children fail because it helps to develop resilience.
Since developing resilience in kids does seem like a pretty good idea, we thought, why not jump on the bandwagon and find out where you can get more of the best practical advice on how to build resilience in kids.
After going through lots of books on resilience and reading way too many reviews, our top resources for learning how to create resilience in your kids are:
- Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg is an expert on how to build resilience in children. Dr. Ginsburg has a wonderful site called Fostering Resilience that has all sorts of great advice, including his 7 C’s building blocks to resilience. The 7 C concept (competence, confidence, connection, character, contribution, coping, and control) is also explored more in-depth in his book Building Resilience in Children and Teens: Giving Kids Roots and Wings. This is a great (almost 400 page!) book with a lot of practical advice about how to teach kids to make wise decisions, how to recognize and build on their natural strengths, how to deal with stress, and so much more practical advice that will help develop resilience. We highly recommend this book.
- Another of our favorite resources is Dr. Wendy Mogel. Dr. Mogel is a clinical psychologist and author of the bestselling books, The Blessing Of A Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children and The Blessing of a B Minus: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Resilient Teenagers. You don’t have to be Jewish to benefit from her books. The Blessing of a Skinned Knee is a wonderful, funny book that gives advice about how parents can get back to the basics of being authority figures in children’s lives, instead of grown-up “friends”. It also talks about how to teach kids that what you do is more important than what you think or believe, why it’s essential to do a thing in moderation, kids and adults are not equal, how to celebrate or embrace our child’s faults, and lots more stuff. The Blessing of a B Minus is an excellent book for parents of teenagers that shows parents how all the terrible or frustrating parts of being an adolescent can be viewed as blessings and why they are important for psychological growth and character development. This book has a lot of tools and advice that parents can utilize.
- Finally, our last choice for the best resource is Raising Resilient Children: Fostering Strength, Hope, and Optimism in Your Child. This is a great book that lists ten essential behaviors or guideposts to try to incorporate into your life to help teach your kids resilience. The guideposts are:
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- Teach and convey empathy
- Listen, learn, and influence to communicate effectively.
- To change your words of parenting, rewrite your negative scripts.
- Find ways to love your children that help them feel special and appreciated.
- Accept your children for who they are and help them set realistic expectations and goals.
- Nurture islands of competence; every child must experience success.
- Mistakes are teachable moments.
- Help your child develop responsibility, compassion, and social conscience.
- Teach and emphasize the importance of solving problems and making choices and decisions.
- Discipline in ways that promote self-discipline and self-worth
You can check out the book or the author’s website to find out more about these ten behaviors and how to work them into your life.
by Admin | Feb 22, 2013 | Education
Lots of people can use a little help with spelling, especially kids who are just learning. Luckily there is no shortage of material available to choose from that will help your kids become spelling masters. We have found some great apps, books, websites, and free online spelling games that can help make learning to spell a little bit easier.
Best Spelling Apps for Kids
There are quite a lot of spelling apps for kids available, so finding the top few apps was a bit of a challenge. The spelling apps that we choose as our top picks are:
- Squeebles Spelling Test allows parents to customize spelling tests for their children by setting up tests, entering words, and then recording audio versions of those words for your children to listen to before they try to spell them. Stats on each child let you see how they’re doing and which words they’re struggling with. When the children do well on the spelling tests, they can move on to play a mini-game. This app has received great reviews on the iPhone Mom, Best Apps for Kids, Teachers with Apps, Pad Gadget, and many others.
- Freefall Spelling has 75+ prebuilt words and allows parents to set up their own custom spelling lists. Each new word supports a custom audio recording and image, allowing the child to practice any spelling/sight word list that may come home from school. When the child correctly spells several words in a row, and they’ll be rewarded with a new item to add to their fish tank. This app has excellent reviews from the Daily Download on TiltTV, App Advice, Smatoos, and more.
- Simplex Spelling Apps offer a range of very well received spelling apps that use a combination of phonics lessons, spelling/word patterns, and something they call their “reverse phonics” approach as well as contextually relevant spelling rules. The great reviews for these apps are too many to mention, but if you are interested check out their home page where they have links to the reviews.
Books
- Uncovering the Logic of English is the book for you if you want to teach kids how to spell. It is a multiple-award-winning book that will show you the phonogram and spelling rules which explain 98% of English words. The reviews for this book are overwhelmingly good. You can view the author’s YouTube channel here (if you can find the time, these videos are beneficial with explaining how kids learn).
- Spelling Power, Fourth Edition (for ages 8 +) don’t let the size or the price of this book put you off. It is very popular with homeschoolers and parents with kids who are struggling with spelling.
- Scholastic Dictionary of Spelling is a great beginner dictionary for kids to do their own spell-check. The introduction gives instructions for looking up a word the reader does not necessarily know how to spell, offers more than 150 memory tricks to correct commonly misspelled words, and clearly explains general spelling rules (and their exceptions).
Websites
- Spelling City is an excellent site with lots of free spelling activities, games, word lists, resources for parents and teachers as well as lots of other stuff.
- Big IQ Kids has free vocabulary and word lists organized by grade level that you can use to play games, practice, and be tested on the word lists.
- Kid Spell is another free site to check out with spelling lists and games.
Top 15 Free Online Spelling Games
We looked through a lot of games and weeded out what we think are the best free online games
- Fun Brain is always a good source for kids’ education games, and this game is no exception. In this game, you are the spell checker, and you have to pick out the word that is spelled incorrectly and then type in how to spell it correctly.
- ABC Ya Spelling Practice (for Grades: K,1,2,3) is a simple game where you select a Dolch Word List and listen to the word the dragon speaks. Then you just click and drag the letters to spell words correctly. Press’ hint” to see how the word is spelled or press “skip” to go to another word.
- Primary Games See ‘N Spell is another simple game for younger kids that shows a picture and has the child move letters into a box to spell the word.
- Spelling Central makes games out of a spelling list that you input. After inputting the list, you can do a word search, arrange the words in alphabetical order, unscramble the words, and try to figure out the missing letters.
- Learning Games for Kids have eight different games to choose from, including hangman, word scramble, and word search. Kids can even study for their spelling tests by entering their own words.
- Look and Cover is pretty good. You see a word, and then a creepy giant hand moves over the screen and covers the word, and you have to type in the proper spelling. You can change the level of difficultly of the lists by going through the ‘Pupils Lists’.
- Spellits (for 7 – 11-year-olds) is a site that offers interactive online activities and printable resources which teach spelling strategies, rules, and patterns.
- Wild West English is a good site for older kids. There are a couple of spelling games on this site, to find them just click on the bull or the spelling showdown character.
- Alpha Bot is a little different than the other games out there for older kids. You have to move letters around on a giant grid after hearing the audio of the word.
- Spin and Spell is an animated game for students ages 4-8 that has pictures that the player can select to try to spell.
- Swiper’s Spelling Book Game a straightforward game for preschoolers that shows a three-letter word, then Swiper takes the letters, and the child has to select the letters from a list to spell the word.
- EduPlace has simple spelling and vocabulary games that you can select based on grade level.
- PBS Kids has some good spelling games for younger kids based on Super Why, Clifford the Big Red Dog, etc.
Spelling Curriculum to do at Home
If you are looking for an intensive spelling program to work on at home, several programs have a full curriculum that is used by homeschoolers that might be helpful to parents of non-homeschoolers who are struggling with spelling. Some of the more popular ones are:
by Admin | Feb 7, 2013 | Languages
Guess which language many people consider the hardest to learn and yet has more native speakers than any other language? That’s right, it’s Mandarin! Mandarin is the umbrella term used for dialects spoken in the north and south-west of China.
It has been predicted that China will become the world’s most powerful economy by 2027, making workers who can speak China’s most popular language highly valuable (i.e., your kids). Don’t worry, though; there are A LOT of fun and educational resources to help your kids learn to speak Mandarin Chinese – even if you don’t happen to know your Ni hao from your Zai jian.
Language DVDs for Children
Teaching children a new language is a big undertaking so if you are teaching your kids at home and aren’t quite sure where to begin to start with the essential words in the same way that you would teach a baby your mother tongue: colors, the alphabet, family, animals, items around the house. In the beginning, it is all about the repetition of words. Videos and DVDs are a great re-enforcer of basic vocabulary at this stage.
Most of the DVD’s that we checked out combine English and Mandarin. The standouts for the DVDs based on user reviews are Journeys to the East: The River Dragon King. Both of these DVD’s have great reviews for the educational value of the content, and they both have engaging storylines that help keep kids entertained. There are a few negative comments about the production value compared to Nick Jr.’s Ni Hao Kai-lan, but overall they are the best choice if you are looking for a Mandarin-English DVD.
If you are looking for a total immersion DVD Smart Tiger is a great choice or Bin Bin’s Magical Bubble Adventures: Learning Mandarin Through Stories (Colors, Foods and Sleepy Time) also has excellent reviews.
If you are looking for something free, you can try Sesame Street’s Mandarin Learning Program.
Language Learning Programs/Websites
There are quite a few options for language learning programs for children to learn Chinese. If you don’t mind spending some money, Muzzy is one way to go ($200 plus). It’s a very popular program, but the negative reviews seem to outweigh the positive for this program. One of the big complaints with Muzzy is that some people find the animation to be a little primitive. If you are looking for something to expose a baby to a new language, you can try Baby Learns Chinese. This program generally has positive reviews.
As far as what might be the best bet for a language program, the choices we narrowed our search down to were Chinese for Smart Kids and Language Nut. If we were going to purchase a language program for our children, we would probably go with Language Nut. Language Nut was primarily designed as a teacher resource to be used in schools, but they do offer a home user, single computer license for $29.50. It has 24 units, with songs, stories, and games. The graphics are super cute, modern, and child friendly.
If you are looking for a DVD based learning system, you could try Dino Lingo’s Chinese for Kids or Little Pim Chinese. Both systems generally get good reviews and are suitable for younger kids who are just starting to learn a new language.
As far as the best free sites, we like Poisson Rouge School and Kid Chinese they both have lots of free and fun lessons.
Five Free Online Games
Games are a fantastic way to help children memorize vocabulary and keep things fun, so children will want to continue learning. No big surprise, but there are lots of online games to help with language practice. The following are our top five favorite games. See our more extensive list of games in our resource guide.
- Zon is a multiplayer, online learning environment designed to teach language and culture through gameplay. Kids can practice their language skills and learn about the culture.
- Kid Chinese is an excellent free resource for helping you teach your kids. The ‘Fun World’ section of the site has very good games.
- Chinese iLab has games and quizzes that use audio, so you need to have headphones or speakers. With these games, you listen to the words and match up to the items in the game.
- Digital Dialects gives you a list of words to learn, and then it tests your knowledge of the words with a game.
- Chinese Staff Room is another excellent resource that has games that help kids learn greeting emotions, colors, clothes, verbs, etc.
Apps
Apps also help keep the learning process fun for children as well as reinforcing vocabulary with pictures and sounds. There are too many great apps for helping kids learn to pick just one, so we are highlighting the top five apps that we found:
- Animal Fun: Chinese for Kids generally has excellent reviews. The highlight of this app includes flashcards and games that have great animation and fun background scenes, including the sea, insects, the jungle, and the farm.
- Learn Chinese by MindSnacks has five games and a polished interface. One of the language apps for this company was named as “One of the best education apps of the year” on the App Store Rewind 2011.
- Learn Mandarin Vocabulary from Penyo Pal is another excellent app to help teach kids. This app has super cute graphics that uses a combination of story, games, and language learning to help children learn to identify new words.
- Check out Speak Mandarin with Private Eye also from Penyo Pal that can help kids start to learn this new language by playing a mystery game.
- LinguPinguin – English / 汉语 英语 has nine different visual worlds: e.g., animals, transportation, body, and toys. A total of ninety objects are made available to explore. When tapped, each item comes to life with sounds revealing the spoken word for the object.
Mandarin Kids Books
If you are looking for some websites to buy books, try Chinese Child Book or Read with me Mommy. Both sites have a good selection of books to choose from. Another interesting place to find language books is Language Lizard; this site offers dual language books for popular titles like Dear Zoo or The Wheels on the Bus, which just means that each page of the book includes Chinese and English text on the page.
For those people who are just looking for some good language titles for kids, a good one to start with is Mandy and Pandy. These books use easy words to teach kids up to grade 3. The books have topics that include greetings, counting, traveling, sports, colors, and animals. Each book has an audio CD which consists of both English and Chinese text. Another great title to look for is Taoshu Learn Chinese, if you are looking for a book that includes an audio CD.
An excellent workbook that you might want to have a look for is Chinese Made Easy for Kids, although you might need to have some knowledge of Mandarin to get the most out of this book.
If you are looking for books for very young kids, you can try the board book series Gordon & Li Li. There are three books in the series: Words for Everyday, Animals, and Count.
If you are looking for a reading system that is like the LeapFrog Tag Reading System or Vtech Bugsby Reading System, you should have a look at Touch Reading Pen with Chinese Books, and this could be very helpful for non-Chinese speaking parents.
And Finally …
Since the more exposure kids get to a language, the more likely, they will pick it up. Remember to check your local library for more free resources to help kids learn, also YouTube has a lot of great quick lessons that you can show to your kids that will help them learn in a fun way.
photo credit: GlobalCitizen01 via photopin cc
photo credit: BC Gov Photos via photopincc
