Teaching Noah in the Car

I love to travel so much. It's definitely a passion of mine. If I won the lottery, I would travel extensively with Noah. I am always looking for ways to teach him new things and share experiences. He's older and really smart, he doesn't like being quizzed on things. When he was younger, I could just ask him questions. He just gets annoyed at me now. He is really curious about things. I want to take him to Williamsburg again, we went when he was two months old. We didn't really do much but go to Yankee Candle.  He's learning about Paul Revere in school and that would be a fun trip or Washington DC. He seems to be very interested in history. I asked him about who Paul Revere was. He told me that it was a guy who told the people that the British are coming.  After that he was talking about different wars today. He wanted to know if any of our family was in either the Civil War or the Vietnam war. My mom explained that our family on her side wasn't in the United States yet. I also told him that  his grandpa side wasn't either. I told him how I am the first generation born in America. He is the second.

When I named him Noah, I didn't know how fitting his name would really be.  He loves aquariums and zoos. We want to go to every major aquarium in the U.S. some day. He has been to quite a few already.  He loves to learn and experience new things. I have discovered that you can make anything a learning experience.  It doesn't have to be complex, it can be as simple as just counting miles or shouting out different colors of cars. Starting young is a great idea. It helps build a foundation and a love for learning.

For more ideas check out my post about educating in the car.

5 Little Monkeys App Review

It is no secret that I love to sing. Noah loves to listen to music and sing along too.  When you are a parent there will come a time when your child is crying uncontrollably.  You might not be able to pick them up and comfort them if it happens in the car.  Just ask me, once I had to sing the Car-X theme song. You know Rattle rattle thunder clatter boom boom don’t worry call the Car-X man over and over again while driving through Virginia.  I am not sure why that particular song worked when no other did, I was just thankful it worked.  His toy had stopped working and I guess he was not happy about it so I improvised.  I sang anything I could think of. I didn’t have a Smartphone back then; I had a flip phone so apps were unheard of for me. Now this uncontrollable crying incident or being bored or just wanting to listen to music can happen anywhere.  I can’t carry a TV, a CD player or a DVD player everywhere but I always have my phone. Now you can share apps with your children to teach them, and to entertain them.

 One of Noah’s favorite songs now has its own app, 5 Little Monkeys.  This app is adorable. I love when mama calls the doctor. It is funny and entertaining too.  The graphics are great, the monkeys are too cute.  It is something your child can spend a lot of time doing without driving you crazy. I know that some apps are very annoying, 5 Little Monkeys is a great educational app that will help your child learn important vital skills.  Some of the skills are cognitive skills, memorization and counting.  It can even teach your child pitch if you dream of having a future rock star. 

Here is more information from the developer:

5 Little Monkeys is available as a universal iOS app (iPhone, iPad, iPod). The app aims to help parents teach counting and language skills to kids while sharing the beloved nursery rhyme with beautiful graphics and sounds.



Featuring adorable animals, 5 Little Monkeys turns counting and language development into a fun-filled sing-a-long for young children. The repetitious quality of the nursery rhyme helps kids develop vital cognitive skills including: memorization, reasoning and comprehension. Additionally, nursery rhyme singing helps kids to learn pitch control, volume, and voice inflection.

Features

- Interact with characters and objects in the background

- Professional audio narration

- Original music designed specifically for this app

- High-resolution artwork for each scene

5 Little Monkeys is  available in the App Store for $2.99 for iPod, iPad and iPhone.

For more information, please visit the Kid's Academy Website

 Be sure to like Kid's Academy on Facebook

 Follow Kid's Academy on Twitter

Win a $2000 Educational Grant from Desire2Learn

Noah's education is extremely important to me. I always make sure he does his assignments; he follows directions and have great communication with his teachers. I know that he is extremely smart and that someday he will want to go to college. Right now, he says that he doesn't want to because he doesn't want to be away from me. I know how expensive college is now and by the time Noah is old enough to go to college, it will be so much more expensive.  He wants to be a marine biologist so, that will require a special school. It isn't something that can be taught at a community college. I know lots of parents hope that their child receives scholarships in high school for college, but unfortunately not every child can receive one. Parents have to come up with different ways to earn money or look to other scholarships and grants to provide an education for their children.  Thankfully there are companies that realize this, and offer to help by having contests to take off some of the burden. I have to tell you guys about a really cool contest for your child to win a $2,000 education grant.

Desire2Learn Incorporated is starting the summer off right with a Facebook video contest that awards the winner a $2,000 education grant. The edtech company is providing K-12 students and their families with the opportunity to win education money by simply by uploading a 30 to 60 second home video to YouTube and posting it to the Desire2Learn Facebook page. The videos of K12 students must describe their greatest lessons, achievements and accomplishments from the previous school year.

The three-step process for making a submission is easy: 

1.  Create a 30 to 60 second video of your child where they talk about what they learned this school year and then upload it to YouTube
2.  Go the Desire2Learn Facebook page and “Like” it; 
3.  Submit your video, share it with your friends and family and ask them to VOTE FOR YOU!

 Contest judges will be selecting the top videos every week, which will be posted to the company Facebook page. Nominees are given easy tools to “share” their videos with their friends and family to help increase their vote totals and check their progress in the standings. Videos can be submitted to Desire2Learn’s Facebook page until July 8 and awards will be given out to noted participants on July 11.

“Desire2Learn’s core focus is to promote a lifelong learning among students of all ages,” said Desire2Learn CEO and President John Baker. “This Facebook competition is a fun way for the company to give back to the very people that inspire us every day− the learners. We wish everyone the best of luck in this contest and can’t wait to see the entries.”

About Desire2Learn

Desire2Learn is helping to transform the way the world learns. Providing the next generation learning environment and solutions to engage and inspire lifelong learners, Desire2Learn helps clients break down barriers to access the highest quality learning experiences, and is recognized for its leadership in accessibility. Desire2Learn is a global leader in cloud (SaaS) based learning solutions and provides an open and extensible platform to over 750 clients and over 10 million learners in higher education, K-12, healthcare, government and the corporate sector, including the Fortune 1000. Desire2Learn has personnel in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, Brazil and Singapore.

For more information or to contact, visit: http://www.Desire2Learn.com.

I hope you all enter; I can’t wait to see your videos!

High School Students using Craigslist for Fraud?

I occasionally browse Craigslist for writing jobs. I have never done one but I like to look and see what is potentially out there. I also look for social media jobs that would be interesting. I was browsing Craigslist as I normally do and I saw that a couple people were looking for someone to do school work for them. One person wanted to pay someone to do his online work and another one wanted someone to finish all of his friends high school course work.  This is so wrong! It is totally dishonest and bad. It reminds me of when tv shows would talk about people buying someone's old reports or even a kid doing a bully's homework. I didn't realize this was going on. If Noah ever tried that he would be in so much trouble. Is this a new trend? Why isn't Craigslist doing anything? This brings cheating to a whole new level. Who knows if the person who did online school or online college is really the person holding the degrees? Man, this is so sad.

This is a real Craigslist posting. I took the screenshot myself.

They are looking for someone smart. No way! You have to complete a really long and I mean really long list of things which all have a final exam. There are probably about 40 things on the list. You have to do it in five days but if you complete it in less than five then you get a $100 bonus. The best part of this ad... You have to keep it a secret. My dear sweet Craigslist user. You don't know about IP addresses do you? They know where you are. They can find out who you are. You want to scam some school and you publicly post about it on Craigslist.  You are not only breaking moral laws but I am sure there are some kind of fraud laws that you, your friend, and the person hired are breaking.   You are also defrauding the Florida Department of Education. Obviously  your friend has slacked off for who knows how long but then all the sudden has the urge to amount to something and gets everything done in five days or less. He will get a B average too.  That is not at suspicious, not one tiny bit.  

So, if you work for the online high school in Florida and someone gets all his work done in five days or less with a b average it might be worth taking a look at it.  My dear sweet Craigslist poster don't worry your friend can still get their high school diploma in prison. Don't give up hope.

Noah and I Love Playing Bingo

It has been almost a year since Noah's first Bingo game on the cruise. He still talks about wanting to play bingo and how much fun he had. He actually asks me if game shows were bingo. They had the lights and music like the games we went to.  We have seen bingo halls around that he points out. My almost six year old can read the word bingo. I am not sure how old you have to be to go to a bingo hall but if he's old enough... It's a date.  I think it would be fun to play with him again. He is a good luck charm.  He will surely bring smiles to the other player’s faces.  He gets so excited with each number called. His little face lights up.  Winning at bingo isn’t important to me, it would be great but I love to play.  I decided to Google it and there are lots of places to play bingo around me every day of the week. I guess I will have to call them and see if he can accompany me. I know that he isn’t old enough to play himself because you have to be 18 or 21 to win so, he would be there for moral support and as my good luck charm.  That way I don’t need to enlist a babysitter to watch him too.

 I haven't told him yet that he will probably play bingo in school. He has requested fish bingo and transportation bingo games.  When kids play bingo it can be a fun and educational game.  I remember playing color and shape bingo. There are even math bingos where you have to solve the math problem to know if your number was called. I had some teachers that would make their own themed bingo games for holidays. I think I will make some bingo games for Noah to practice reading and spelling words. I hope playing bingo will be another tool to help him learn.  I also hope he gets the same joy I did when I played bingo in school. 

Planet Fassa: A New Children's Interactive Site

As a mom, I am always looking for fun and educational things for Noah to do. He has a love for learning and playing so, he is open to new ideas and games. He also likes to use my computer and play games, type, and listen to stories with me. I have noticed that there are a lot of great sites out there for him to use but, once we go to a site for a while he starts to get bored. Some of the sites are fun but are not too educational and all of the interaction is on the computer. Noah is a child that is extremely active and likes to do things where he is moving around and learning at the same time.

I came across a site that I instantly fell in love with called Planet Fassa. F-A-S-S-A stands for Fun, Activities, Stories, Service, Awards. Planet Fassa is an interactive website. I don’t mean that it is interactive because your child interacts with the just the website. Planet Fassa has a wide range of characters that go on different adventures within a series of books called “Fassa Tails”. Kids are challenged to get outside and participate in activities alongside the books’ characters. It encourages you and your child to turn off the computer and TV and do activities or nuggets as they are called on Planet Fassa. There are things to do pretty much everywhere. Inside or outside your home, the doctor’s office and even on an airplane, both the doctor’s office and the airplane are places where I wish I had ideas on what to do with Noah. I think a great place to use these activities on long car trips, which can be long and boring. A couple of the Nuggets that caught my eye are The 5 minute Quiet Game and The Last Year’s Smelly Underwear Game. The Village Members can make up their own challenges too. Each Nugget has a different number of points. There are heart points, brain points and body points. Some of the Nuggets only use two point categories but there are many that use all three. Your children will not be bored anymore. There are so many nuggets for your children to do. They also have story books that read to your children.

If you are a working parent, you can also log on during the day and see the type of activities your child did with Planet Fassa. When returning home, you can encourage your child to discuss these activities, giving families a wider range of conversation topics and helping them move beyond the usual “how was school today?” Parents can find a new way of communicating with their children and feel a part of their everyday activities.

I am sure you are wondering what does your child do with the points? I know I was wondering that. Your child can use it as a virtual allowance. They can use the points to do special things like go out to eat, go to the movies, and have a sleep over with a village member. Your child can also create wishes where their parent sets the amount of points on their account for the wish. It can be anything from going to the mall or getting a special item, which your child has been begging for. We all know most children have something they really want. I think that is a great way to play, learn and earn.

You can also invite your family members to join in the fun. They are Village Members. You could have your child’s grandma, aunt and uncle in the Village. They can also use the ideas and give rewards to your child. Your child can use their nuggets to do something special with another family member. I am sure Noah would love to make a wish of going fishing with his uncle Mike. I really think this website is really cool and I think that it will bring hours of fun for our family.

I hope you check out Planet Fassa with your kids and let me know what you think.

What Exactly Does That Toy Do?

I decided when I was pregnant that my son was going to play with educational kids toys. There are quite a few useless toys on the market in my opinion. Who really needs a doll that comes with a dog that needs to be “housebroken” or creatures that make foul noises? I think it is disgusting. I think it is important to use toys as a teaching tool, especially when your child is young. I believe that your child can learn a lot with playing with toys. Noah has a huge imagination. He is always coming up with new ideas to do with his toys. He has blocks that he loves to play with and he makes patterns with them, complex ones. He will turn just about anything in to a crane or some other kind of transportation, yes he calls it transportation. He loves to build things or “do construction” as he calls it, and that helps with his gross motor skills.

There are what I classify as good toys and bad toys. Good toys are educational and have a purpose and are fun. Bad toys are those that are crude or violent. I know it is not really an issue at Noah’s age now but as he gets to be older he might want some toys I find unacceptable. I have already decided there will be no toy guns in my home. My neighbors have BB guns and it drives me up the wall because I am afraid Noah will pick up the BB’s the kids shoot and try and eat it. I also don’t like that they seem to aim at live animals on our pond. I don’t want Noah to think that guns are cool. They also look a lot like real guns and that is how tragedies happen.