Archive for the ‘Guest Posts’ Category

Six Creative Homeschool Lessons For Your Pre-Teen by Craig Middleton may even work for your teenagers. Keeping kids engaged and ready to learn at home can be a challenge. You’ll need to make sure that you keep your child’s attention by mixing it up and involving some creative lessons. Here are six lessons to try in your homeschool curriculum to keep your kids excited while they learn.

1. Build A Solar Oven

• Learning about energy and about how the sun can power things like solar panels gives your child an inside look at renewable energy sources. You can make a solar oven easily out of a leftover pizza box and a few other supplies you probably have on hand. While you’re building you can discuss with your children why certain materials are used. You’ll use some aluminum foil to reflect the sun’s rays toward the inside of your oven and how black construction paper on the bottom can hold in heat to begin warming your food. After your project is completed, you can use it to make a fun afternoon snack like s’mores.

2. Design A Building

• If you want to teach a little bit about construction and engineering, have your kids design their own buildings. There are a variety of ways to do this sort of project. You could build with blocks or Legos, draw out a design, or even utilize a design program on your computer. Or you can make a day of it by combining all these elements from design to construction. Your student will learn about the process of design as well as about problem-solving while they try to bring their design to life.

3. Invent A Game

• Get those creative juices flowing by leading your kids in inventing their own game. If you want to keep it quick and simple, help them come up with a new card game with their own rules. If you want to get fancier, take an old board game you don’t use anymore and completely reinvent it. Your students can cover the existing board with construction paper to design the playing board. Use some cardstock to create cards with instructions. Find some fun knick-knacks around the house to use as playing pieces.

4. Do Some Time-Lapse Photography

• Time-lapse photography projects can be simple and short, or you can make it into an entire unit. Using an old webcam you can set up what you want to record and set the camera to take photos at pre-determined intervals. You could do something short-term such as recording leaves blowing on the trees in your yard for a few hours or longer-term like recording a daily photo of a plant sprouting. Once you have your photos you can help your kids put them together into a time-lapse video. This may even spark other photography-related projects like animation or a scrapbook.

5. Go On A Field Trip

• A field trip is a great way to sneak in a lot of learning while you’re having fun. Research some possible locations in your area and reach out to them to see if they offer any special informational tours you can sign up for. If you don’t have time for an extended outing, you can make even a trip to the grocery store into a lesson. Teach your kids about math, budgeting, nutrition, and meal-planning while you shop for what you need.

6. Bake A Cake

• Baking can teach your kids about math, measuring and chemical reactions while also teaching them valuable life skills. They’ll learn about following directions in a recipe to get the desired outcome. Once their sweet treat is baked and cooled they can get creative decorating it. Then at the end of the lesson, they can enjoy the fruits of their hard work by taste-testing their cake. Getting your kids active and involved is simple if you get a little innovative. Letting them get involved and engage in these hands-on projects will not only let them learn but also keep them entertained.

Craig Middleton

• Craig is a New York City-based retired business consultant, who is an expert in education and cultural trends. He has a Masters of Business Administration and a Masters in Education from St. Johns and loves sharing his knowledge on the side through his writing. If you have any questions or comments you can direct them to Craig at craigmiddleton18@gmail.com.

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House Moves 101: How Do You Do A House Move With Your Kids? by Rhenn Taguiar gives some tips on moving from the point of view of a company that moves people. If you are planning a move be sure to head his advice along with my addendum. This post is brought to you by RoadwayMoving.Com. @roadwaymoving @roadwaynyc

Introduction

• If you decide to move to a new house, then congratulations! Your new house can serve as the best place to open a new chapter in your life – be it that you’re moving to start a new family, moving to get closer to work, or moving to get closer to school. Regardless of the reason, a new house can definitely make way for a wonderful new home life. You can enjoy amazing meals with your kids, delightful walks around your neighborhood, and interacting with new schools and teachers. However, remember, you can only enjoy all of these things if you’ve finally settled down in your move. And unfortunately, such an idea can be stressful, considering you need to worry about other obligations while having to move houses. In fact, you can definitely enjoy moving with your kids, provided you start with a few steps.

Here are some things you need to do.

• Secure your documents and requirements and submit them as soon as possible. Once you’ve decided to start the moving process with your kids, it’s wise to secure your documents and requirements and submit them to the necessary channels as soon as possible. That way, you’ll limit the need for you to visit faraway offices, especially if you’re moving to a faraway location especially to Manhattan. Moreover, you can use this opportunity to tour your kids to your new neighborhood, meet moving companies and other professionals, and even help them be more familiar with their new community. That way, you minimize the risk of unnecessary leaves and absences just to secure these materials.
• Plan and sort your belongings as soon as you can to avoid complications. Before you pack, it helps for you and the kids to sort and create an inventory of what you own – especially if it’s through the cloud via a spreadsheet or an app – so you can keep track of what you want to keep, sell, or even throw away. Moreover, a cloud-based tracking system allows you and your kids to pack their things simultaneously and among their individual rooms without having to keep track of a ledger or a notebook. Make sure your moving timeline doesn’t interrupt your other obligations. While you may only move houses a few times over a few decades, you need to make sure that these moves don’t interrupt your other obligations like your job or your kids’ schooling.

Track Your Time Line and Consider Involving Professionals

• If possible, try to make sure you’re using a calendar app or a scheduling app that synchronizes your moving timeline with the rest of your daily routine. That way, your kids won’t have to risk losing too much school. Try to ensure that your moving needs are positioned on days you can take time off, free days, or even paid leaves and vacation days.
• Pack one room at a time over the course of a week before the moving day. Instead of panicking about packing a few days before moving day, try to pack a room at least a week before moving day. That way, you can slowly focus on ensuring that all things are put in their right places and that you won’t misplace anything. Moreover, packing one room at a time allows you to avoid any unnecessary mishaps, especially regarding missing items. It also allows you to still be able to pull off other things you might have to do such as study and work without having to panic about accidentally packing essential things.
• If possible, have your kids start packing the things they need the least first, and then pack the things they might need more urgently last in order to be able to get access to them should they need to. Get in touch with professionals to handle much of the heavy lifting. If you’re having a bit of trouble with the rest of your moving process, you might want to rely on professionals such as packing and moving services to deal with the heavy-duty moving tasks for you. Thanks to their expertise and specialization in various moving services, these moving teams can help you manage various parts of your move from packing and unpacking, storage, and even transportation. With their help, you might find it much easier to organize your move and still be able to accomplish your other moving needs without many worries.

Make It Work For Your Loved Ones

• With the above tips in mind, it’s important to remember that it’s totally possible for you and your kids to conduct a house move while still having to meet your other obligations. Remember, the success of your house move lies in how you manage your various tasks – which means it’s actually the planning and execution stage that holds all the answers when it comes to successful house moves for your family. As such, remember to keep a close eye on how you communicate with your moving services, how you plan your inventory, and how you manage your entire moving timeline in general.

Dr. Dong’s Comments

• Since Rhenn is not an educator he has left out some important things that you need to consider when moving with children. Depending on their age moving is likely to cause emotional difficulties for kids. They may be moving away from close friends and a school they like. I suggest reaching out to your school counselor for advice on this matter. This person may also be willing to meet with your children to help them. You should also involve them as much as possible in the process of looking for a new home as well as planning and executing the move. Try to make them seem like part of your team as you take on a great adventure.

This post is provided by RoadwayMoving.Com


• Rhenn is a Manila-based content writer with a love for all things health and lifestyle, science and technology, and geek and pop culture. He has a BA Journalism degree and has since then pursued making content about geek culture. Rhenn used to write for a couple of geek and gaming publications and also served as editor-in-chief for Philippines-based What’s A Geek!. He constantly plays video games but also takes the time to try out older activities.
• Top Image Source: https://pixels.com
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How to Keep Your Children Safe Online by Craig Middleton offers some specifics that parents can attend to as they try to keep the kids safe while they spend increased time online. Be sure to click on the links in this article for detailed advice.

Keeping your children safe online is more important than ever. With education and entertainment being online, kids use the computer more often than ever before. While using common sense can keep kids out of a lot of trouble, parents still need to monitor their children’s internet usage. Below are some handy tips that can help both kids and parents stay safer online.

Use Multi-factor Authentication

• One way to keep kids safer online is to use multi-factor authentication. So, what is multi-factor authentication? To put it simply, multi-factor authentication is when people need to provide more than one credential (like a password) before they can access their account. Often, codes sent to email accounts or via text serve as the second authentication as do pictures and answers to questions that hackers wouldn’t know.
• How does the use of multi-factor authentication help to protect kids? Kids tend not to pick the most complicated passwords. This makes it easy for hackers to break into their accounts. By using multi-factor authentication, it makes it a lot harder for hackers. Whenever a site allows users to enable multi-factor authentication on their accounts, take them up on their offer. It is usually free and can do a lot to protect your children’s accounts.

Set Up Parental Controls

• If a parent knows that there are certain websites they do not want their children going on (whether the websites are too adult or for some other reason), then parents can set up parental controls on their computer. These controls can block specific computer accounts (like their child’s) from accessing certain websites.
• There are a variety of services that can help parents to set up parental controls. Schools often use these services to prevent students from using social media websites or other distracting or educational sites. Parents can also set up parental controls on their internet browsers.

Warn of Stranger Danger

• Not everyone tells the truth about who they are online. Someone may claim to be the same age as a child, but really be an ill-intentioned adult. For this reason, it is best that parents warn their children of “online” stranger danger. If possible, parents should encourage their children not to talk to anyone online unless they already know them in real life. Talking to school friends on apps is safe, but talking to someone they “met” while playing video games online might not be safe. When in doubt, tell children not to talk to anyone online.
• Luckily, there are some good apps that kids can use to talk to each other. Facebook has created a messenger app specifically for kids. They can use this app to talk to friends and play games online, safely. This app, and others like it, can be downloaded from the Apple App Store or in the Google Play store for free.

Don’t Save Credit Card Information

• Sometimes internet browsers will save credit card information to make purchases faster so you do not need to re-enter information each time you buy something. However, if parents have a child who uses the same internet account, the child would automatically have the credit card information saved. While this is not inherently dangerous to the child, it can negatively impact their parent’s wallets.
• Young kids, especially, may not know that it is not okay to spend their parent’s money without asking. This can be extra confusing for kids when they do not see the money. For example, they may know it is not okay to take money from their mother’s purse, but since they cannot see the money when they use a credit card online, they may not register that they are spending real money. Parents would do well to explain that credit cards do spend real money. In the meantime, not saving credit card, debit card, or PayPal/Venmo information online can help prevent kids from making purchases online.
• If you want to keep your kids safe online, keep these tips in mind. These little things can do a lot to keep your kids from getting hacked, getting into trouble with strangers, and more.

Craig Middleton

• Craig is a New York City-based retired business consultant, who is an expert in education and cultural trends. He has a Masters of Business Administration and a Masters in Education from St. Johns and loves sharing his knowledge on the side through his writing. If you have any questions or comments you can direct them to Craig at craigmiddleton18@gmail.com.

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Best Study Tips to Retain Information by Donald Giddings deals with the fact that studying is an essential part of learning. No matter how young or old you are, you can benefit from studying when learning something new. Fortunately, the best study tips to retain information can help you succeed at whatever you do and he covers them here.

Introduction

• For some people, retaining information is harder than it is for others. No matter how much you study, you may struggle to retain the information you are intaking. With the right study methods, you can increase the information you retain and improve test scores.

Best Study Tips to Retain Information

• When it comes to studying, not everyone is the same. Certain study methods work better for some people than they do for others. However, researchers have found some of the study methods to retain information.

Hand Write Your Notes

• Though in this day and age many people prefer to use laptops to take notes, writing done your notes with paper and a pencil can help you better retain the information. Writing notes by hand allows you to retain more information and get a better comprehension of what you are learning. By writing your notes down, you retain information for longer, allowing for better recall when taking a test.

Learn In Multiple Ways

• When you have the chance, learn in as many ways as possible. This can include taking notes, listening to recordings, using visuals, and reading out loud. According to the author, neurologist and teacher Judy Willis, by learning in more than one way, you are further sealing that information into your mind. (Willis, J. Brain-based teaching strategies for improving students’ memory, learning, and test-taking success. Review of Research. Childhood Education, 83(5), 31-316, 2008).
• “The more regions of the brain that store data about a subject, the more interconnection there is. This redundancy means students will have more opportunities to pull up all of those related bits of data from their multiple storage areas in response to a single cue. This cross-referencing of data means we have learned, rather than just memorized,” says Willis.
• Learning in multiple ways can also keep you more interested in the subject, as reading notes over and over again can become boring. By expanding your ways of studying, you can improve the information you retain. When possible, seek out demonstrations and use visual aids.

Teach Someone The Information You Learned

• One of the best ways to retain the information you just learned is to teach it to others. When you translate what you’ve learned into your own words, you are further solidifying the information you learned into your brain.
• There are many ways you can teach someone the information you’ve learned. Create a podcast, write a blog post, create a presentation, or participate in a discussion. Studies have found that by teaching what you have learned, you can retain up to 90% of that information. (D’Souza, S. (2020, May 28). How To Retain 90% Of Everything You Learn)

Practice Recall and Test Yourself

• An important part of retaining what you study is by getting information from short term to long term memory. Changing short-term memories to long-term memories takes time. By distributing your studying over time, you can change the information you’ve learned into long term memories and improve recall when practiced.
• Recalling what you’ve learned can be a more effective form of studying than just sitting there reading your notes. By testing yourself on what you’ve learned, you are able to dig information out of your long term memories. If you are wanting to engage in critical thinking and problem solving, you can draw on the information you have in your long term memories and from around your environment.
• You can also practice recalling your memory by using flashcards and online quizzes to test yourself. When putting aside notes and textbooks, using recall to study can be a powerful way to improve memory. Purdue psychology professor Jeffrey Karpicke was part of a study that proved recalling things from memory was an integral part of studying. (Karpicke, J. D. (2017). Retrieval-based learning: A decade of progress. In J. T. Wixted (Ed.), Cognitive psychology of memory, Vol. 2 of Learning and memory: A comprehensive reference (J. H. Byrne, Series Ed.) (pp. 487-514). Oxford: Academic Press.)
• “Learning is about retrieving. So it is important to make retrieval practice an integral part of the learning process,” says Karpicke.

Create a Stress-Free Study Environment

• To improve your studying, make sure you have a comfortable environment that is free of any stress. Get rid of any distractions such as your phone or TV and find a quiet area away from people.
• Essential oils can also be used to create a relaxing environment that can boost your studying. By using aromatherapy, you can boost your cognitive abilities which can lead to better concentration.

Improve Your Study Habits

• By following these study methods, you can improve the way you take in information. They are designed to help you efficiently and effectively maintain the information you need to know. Good studying often goes beyond just reading your notes over and over again.

Green Living Zone

• Donald Giddings is founder and editor in chief at Green Living Zone. A lifelong sustainability enthusiast, Donald is always looking for the best way to live in harmony with nature. When he is not trying out new eco-friendly recipes, he writes engaging content about green, sustainable ways to maintain your home, body, and soul, readily sharing his abundant experience with other green living aficionados.

Sources

Taylor and Francis Online

Practicing Memory Recall Boosts Science Learning

How To Retain 90% Of Everything You Learn

Scientific American – Short Term to Long Term Memory
Medicine.llu.edu Brain-Based Retention Techniques

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