I’m going to be chatting LIVE on with Kristen Chase on the Motherhood Uncensored Show about books and activities to prepare your little ones for their first year of school, whether it’s preschool, pre-K, or kindergarten. The show is on Wednesday, July 30 at 9 p.m. ET / 6 p.m. PT. You can listen to it live at blogtalkradio or you can call in at 646-915-8634 and chat with us.

If you missed it, you can listen to the archived show here.

For a lot of kids the first day of school is scary. Reading books and talking about school can help calm their fears. Here are some books and activities you can do with your child to get the discussion started.

Books

• Kevin Goes to School (Kane/Miller) – Belgian author Liesbert Slegers’s character Kevin and his friend Ali help make the transition to school less frightening.
• Something for School (Available in August 2008 from Kane/Miller Book Publishers) It’s the first day of kindergarten, and Yoon’s new teacher and classmates mistake her for a boy. Oh no! This book is about starting school and making friends instead of assumptions. By Korean author Hyun Young Lee.
• Little School (Kane/Miller) Australian author Beth Norling gives readers a realistic account of preschool life so your preschooler knows exactly what to expect when they start.
• Tibili: The Little Boy Who Didn’t Want to Go to School (Kane/Miller) French author Marie Léonard set a story of a reluctant first-time school-goer in Africa. Also available in Spanish and French.
•  First Day Jitters (Charlesbridge) Author Julie Danneberg’s character Sarah Jane is scared and doesn’t want to start over at a new school. With prodding from her father, Sarah Jane reluctantly goes off to school. She is quickly befriended by Mrs. Burton, who helps calm her nerves. Also available in Spanish.
• Kindergarten Countdown (Random House) By Anna Jane Hays and illustrated by Lind Davick. A little girl named Lucy counts off the days by naming what she’ll do in kindergarten, what she’ll wear, and what she’ll learn. (Read my review of Kindergarten Countdown.)

For more book ideas see my post Back to school book roundup.

Activities

Here are some links to articles that can help you prepare your child for that scary first day of school:

• First-day jitters: starting preschool by Isadora Fox, Ilisa Cohen and Diane Debrovner of Parents.com
• Cures for First-Day Jitters – by the American School Counselor Association
• Preparing for the First Days of School by Ellen Booth Church of Scholastic Parent
• 10 Steps for a First Trip to School from Scholastic Parent
• Click here for some school lunch ideas.

My Home 2.0 is a TV show that gives families technology makeovers . You can catch season one’s episodes online. Also, they’re interviewing families in Ft. Wayne, Indiana for the next season’s batch of shows until the end of July 2008 at Verizon stores.

The My Home 2.0 website is full of techno-helpful tips and DIY projects. Many are eco-friendly like How 2.0: Make a Solar Cell Phone Charger. The project takes one hour and uses an Altoids Tin case, 2 mini solar panels, soldering equipment, a wire stripper and a cell phone charger (either for the wall outlet or car).

I reviewed this project online with it’s step by step pictures and helpful directions, and it seems doable as long as you’re fairly handy and know how to use a soldering iron. They also caution to use an extra cell phone charger or to get a cheap one at Best Buy. This would be a great project for a teenager or maybe for an adult with a child assisting. Having a solar cellphone charger is a must for anyone who hikes or camps, too, and this would make a cute present for the “greenie” in your life.

There are also several projects that are much more challenging but are fun to watch, like “Hack a Bat.”

How 2.0: Hack a Bat – the Ryan Howard Speed Test from My Home 2.0 DIY on Vimeo.

You never know, a TV show like My Home 2.0 may inspire some of the inventors at your house.

I’m off to the BlogHer conference tomorrow, and the kids will be off to their grandma’s later today. After my children’s escapades yesterday, I’m glad to get a break from them. You see, Nathan decided to spray PAM all over the kitchen floor while I was upstairs folding laundry and packing bags. Somehow Lucie didn’t witness his shenanigans either. What possesses an eight-year-old boy to do that is beyond me. I’m not sure he knows why he did it either or why his sister covered for him.

So I leave you with some things to read and a yummy recipe to make. Hopefully this will keep you busy enough so your son or daughter won’t cover your house in cooking spray.

To read:

• I Don’t Want to Go by Addie Meyer Sanders and published by Lobster Press. It’s about a little boy, Joey, who is scared to visit his grandparents on his own for the very first time. I’m lucky. My kids are thrilled to be staying at the old folks apartment where their grandmother lives. They’re even excited about going to church with her. If your child is afraid of any type of transition, this would be a good book for them since it shows a little boy overcoming his fears.
• Kersplatypus by Susan K. Mitchell from Sylvan Dell Publishing. A strange little creature appears out of nowhere after heavy rains Down Under. The other animals wonder what he could be. The For Creative Minds section provides more information on platypuses and other Australian animals.
• Some blog reading – Strengthen Your Family Ties by Believer in Balance and Simple Summer Fun from Seasonal Kids Activities. Both blogs are on the Sparkplugging blog network – Work at Home Resources & Community for the Web 2.0 Generation.

Continue Reading »

All you have to do is enter the Kimberly-Clark Rock Your School Sweepstakes!

Kimberly-Clark, the folks who make Huggies and Kleenex, are working with Box Tops for Education to give parents a chance to win 100,000 Bonus Box Tops, plus an exclusive concert featuring Radio Disney star Jordan Pruitt for their child’s school.

If you have school-aged kids, you know that Box Tops for Education is a program dedicated to helping schools raise money to develop programs, purchase books, and buy school supplies. I’m always on the lookout for those little labels on the products we buy, and have been collecting them all summer. Now that Lucie is starting kindergarten in August, I’ll have two classrooms to collect them for.

Last year our school’s teachers earned enough to buy a die-cutting machine for classroom projects – around $350. Imagine winning this prize for child’s school – 100,000 Bonus Box Tops are equivalent to $10,000! Here are some of they could buy with that money:

• 20 wireless-ready laptops.
• Enough No. 2 pencils so that when laid end to end they would stretch across the length of more than 145 football fields.
• An educational class trip for 20 students including airfare, hotel accommodations and museum admission.

Wow! Here are some of the details. To learn more go to the Rock Your School Sweepstakes FAQs page. Or you can click here to see the official rules.

• If you are a legal resident of the United States,18 years or older, a parent/legal guardian of a child in grades K-8, and your child attends a school located within the 50 United States or the District of Columbia, you are eligible to enter this sweepstakes.
• Entries are limited to one entry, per person, per day, with a maximum of 80 entries per person throughout the sweepstakes
• Parents or legal guardians of students in grades K through 8 can enter the sweepstakes daily June 28 through September 15 online at www.RockBacktoSchool.com. Winners will be selected at random from all eligible entries on or around September 22.

Look for Box Tops on specially marked packages of participating Kimberly-Clark brands like Huggies, Cottonelle and Kleenex along with many other participating products.

For more information on how to collect box tops, you can visit BoxTops4Education.com. Check out the Box Tops for Education recipe page, too.

Last month Paramount Home Entertainment and Nickelodeon Movies released The Spiderwick Chronicles on DVD and Blu-ray. Based on the series of Spiderwick Chronicles books, the movie brings to life the unseen, magical world that surrounds all of us. The all-star cast includes Freddie Highmore from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Mary Louise Parker, Sarah Bolger and the voices of Seth Rogen and Martin Short

If you’re not familiar with the story, here’s a quick description:

From the moment the Grace family moves into a secluded old house peculiar things start to happen. Unable to explain the accidents and strange disappearances, the Grace children, Jared, Simon and Mallory start to investigate and find the unbelievable truth of the Spiderwick Estate and the amazing creatures that inhabit it.

The release of this video as well as recent releases on Disney DVD including The 45th Anniversary Special Edition of the Sword in the Stone and The Jungle Book 2 make me wonder what comes first, the book or the movie. Obviously the book if the movie is based on it, of course. But how often after seeing a movie do you go back and read or reread the book? What about your children?

I think it’s half and half with me. I’ve read the Harry Potter books years before the movies came out. But movies like Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia made me go back and read books I tried to read, but couldn’t get through, as a child.

Bottom line for me is that anything that gets people to read is a good thing. So enjoy the movies and then go check out the books!

Lucie was a fussy baby. I’m convinced she had colic along with her reflux. Nathan on the other hand wasn’t fussy, but his reflux was a hundred times worse. He could projectile vomit and did large spit ups 30 to 40 times a day. (I’m not exaggerating – we kept track for the doctors.)

One of the things I tried for Nathan’s reflux, but not Lucie’s colic was gripe water which is recommended for baby gas, along with colic. I gave up on it when I used it on Nathan since it didn’t help with reflux. However, I’m not sure why I never tried it with Lucie. Maybe if I had know about Colic Calm, I would have given it a try.

Colic Calm is a homeopathic gripe water that calms a fussy baby who has gas, colic, tummy pain, and they claim even even reflux. They also recommend it for teething.

Colic Calm gripe water contains NO alcohol, sugar, sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), simethicone (another thing I tried), herbal oils or extracts, citric acid, or artificial sweeteners, flavors or colors. Also, there is NO wheat, gluten, soy, starch or dairy in our formula, which is very important when it comes to allergies.

The Best Book for the Fussy Baby’s Parents

I highly recommend The Happiest Baby on the Block: The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Newborn Baby Sleep Longer by Harvey Karp, MD. He gives parents strategies like swaddling, jiggling, holding sideways, swinging, and using white noise.

The Happiest Baby on the Block was a lifesaver for me. And I hope you find that with Colic Calm gripe water and Dr. Karp’s techniques you’ll have a very happy baby soon.

From Lobster Press comes Come on, Mom! It features 75 activities mothers and daughters can do together like making perfume or bread-dough clay to playing radio reporter or playing goofy golf. Each activity includes easy-to-follow instructions and a materials list if supplies are needed. This girls-only guide will create memories that will last. For girls ages 3 to 9 and their moms.

Not to fear, there’s a father/son version, too – Come on, Dad!: 75 Things for Fathers and Sons to Do Together. For boys ages 3 to 9 and their dads, sample activities include Personal Pizzas, Paper Air Force, Time Capsule, Family Story Collection, Math Olympics, Obstacle Race, Recycled City, Personal Place Mats, and Backyard Camp Out.

Not only are these books great for parents, they’ll be helpful for new stepparents, volunteers in big brother/big sister type programs, and babysitters.

I like how these books have their share of pretend play, physical activity, mental activities, and cooking. Speaking of cooking, another great activities to do with your kids on your next camping trip is to make Campfire Pies. Grilling dessert over the campfire? Sounds like wholesome family fun.

Continue Reading »