All you need is sidewalk chalk and you can practice math and reading skills with your child all summer.

Reading Activities:

• Write out the letters of the alphabet and have your child identify each as he/she jumps from one letter to another.
• Have your child spell out common words by jumping to the correct letters in the word in order.
• Write out capitals and lower case letters and have your child match them. Your child can jump from one to the next to make a match, or throw a ball or bean bag (or even water balloon!) at the matching letter.

• Write out common sight words and have your child find the correct one as you call them out, or have them read the words as they hop from one to the next.
• Have your child throw a bean bag and give rhyming words for the word they land on, or make a sentence using that word.

Math Activities:

• Draw a number line. Depending on your child’s age, you can have them write in the numbers.
• Practice number line math: start on 3 and take 5 steps. So 5+3=8. You can also do addition and subtraction or skip counting.

• Write out numbers and have your child count their way up or down as they jump to the next correct number.
• Toss a beanbag to land on an odd number or even number.

Your kids will see it as playing games with sidewalk chalk, but you’ll know that they are learning!

What other games can you play with sidewalk chalk?

Shell- known as @shellthings on Twitter- wrangles chaos and mayhem on a daily basis (otherwise known as raising three boys). When she’s not breaking up wrestling matches or ducking Legos, she spills her thoughts on her blog, Things I Can’t Say. Featuring the popular weekly link-up “Pour Your Heart Out” and a guest post series titled “Things They Can’t Say,” Shell’s blog is all about encouraging community and support among bloggers. In her free time (ha!), Shell is cofounder of Other Half Media, which takes on blogging and social media projects for bloggers and companies alike. She also team-teaches classes for bloggers on How to Rock Your Blog.

10 Bite-Size Ideas for Helping Through Reading

1. Ask your child’s teacher if, during Teacher Appreciation Week, your child and his or her classmates can do one 30-minute to 1-hour long service project for the teacher, whether it be cleaning the classroom windows and desktops, organizing files, or taking out the recycling bin. It is often through bits of service, done as a team, that the kids better understand their teachers and the work they do. Consider reading to the class as they work, or hiding large word strips around the classroom for the kids to find by cleaning/organizing and can put together to read a rewarding message.
2. Contact your schools’ PTA representative and volunteer to help out for an hour or two on Field Day.
3. Find out when and where the next Taste of the Nation Culinary Event is taking place (they take place all over the country), and attend one, making sure to read the menu.
4. Go to Scholastic or Amazon right now, and let each of your kids choose two new books that they’d like to read. Choice is often a strong motivating factor in getting kids to read.
5. Visit your local library with your kids, or if you don’t like your local library, find out if there is a better one from which you can purchase a library card. Consider spicing your families’ visit up by thinking of several book titles beforehand that they can locate, and then solve a puzzle by rearranging the words of the titles or find a few words in each book to put together and make a fun message.
6. Read these tips on how to monitor your teen’s online activities.
7. “Like” your favorite author’s Facebook page.
8. Tweet or write a blog or Facebook post about how reading or literacy has blessed your life.
9. Donate $10 through DonorsChoose.org to help purchase some Sammy Keyes books for Ms. Chamberlain’s fifth-grade Florida classroom, to help them get up to grade-level reading skills.
10. Have every member of your family write up a “job description” listing what they have to do every day. Your tween’s list might have items like: “getting dressed for school on time,” “making my bed,” and “getting my homework done.” Your three-year-old’s might list “going pee on the potty,” and “putting on my shoes.” This is their opportunity to list as much as they want, in either pictures or words. Write up one of your own for yourself if you want to. Then, around the dinner table, have everyone swap and read each other’s lists.

How Will You Give to Others This Week?

• Have you ever done any of these things? How did it go?
• What other acts of service have inspired you?
• How have others given to you this week and what difference has that made in your life?

How Else Can You Make a Difference This Season?

• Commit to do one act of kindness/service based on the week’s challenge.
• Leave a comment with ideas relating to the week’s challenge as well as your experience(s) performing it.

And while we at MomItForward like to offer many tips on how to be a better mom, we just earnestly want to empower our readers to be the best, or rather the hardest-trying parents they can be, whether they are male or female. Dad Rules has a similar purpose. It is, as author Treion Muller puts it, “A collection of rules focused on helping fathers understand what they should know, say, and do—because let’s be honest, there are plenty of awkward moments when you just don’t have the foggiest idea of what you should say or do.”

Mr. Muller has a certain amount of authority on the subject, gained from both fortunate and unfortunate circumstances. His own father left their family when Treion was only seven years old. His mother passed away when he was 20. He was blessed, though, to have seven “surrogate” dads, as he calls them, who took his dad’s place over the years, including: his uncles Henry and Justice, his father-in-law Boyd Murdue, and a college friend’s father, into whose family he was “adopted.” He has also been blessed with five children of his own—four daughters and a son, ranging in age from 11 to 1½—with his wife Soni.

“Ever since I was young, I didn’t want to be my dad, ‘that guy’ who would leave his family,” Treion says. He watched his replacement fathers, analyzing what made a good dad. He read a lot of parenting books. And he learned by doing, with his own children. When it came time to write the book, he wrote it quickly. “It’s easy to write about something you’re passionate about,” he says. It is short and to-the-point, with one rule to a page and a few comments in between. It is not an exhaustive list. It is a “simple manual for a complex job.”

If someone were to read this book to find an in-depth analysis of the obstacles men face in becoming good fathers,  or for instructions on how to overcome those obstacles, they would be disappointed. The underlying message of Dad Rules is that these are the things that will best help you be the father you want to be—things like “driving a minivan is inevitable,” “raise children, not clones of you,” and “be a dad first and friend second”—and it’s best just to focus on those things as goals because in the end, what matters most is your kids.

When asked what rule he felt was most important, Mr. Muller replies with some thought: “Rule 1: Show Up For the Job Everyday.” While this truth may seem obvious to people in general, it is only the fathers, or the parents, who are truly trying that understand not only the simplicity and challenge behind it, but also the beautiful benefits of following it.

The book will be released on April 10th. You can read more about it and the author at Treion.com, on Facebook at DadRules Manual, and on Twitter at @Treeon.

What parenting books have you found to be the most helpful?

Featured image courtesy of Flickr.

Suzanne Collins says the inspiration to write The Hunger Games came to her while channel surfing.  She came across one channel with people competing in a reality show, then another channel was footage of the invasion of Iraq.  She says that the two “began to blur in this very unsettling way” and the idea for the book was formed.  Collins said that the Greek myth of Theseus served as the foundation for the story and she feels Katniss, the main character, is a sort of futuristic Theseus. Naturally, Roman gladiatorial games also contributed to the story’s concept.

But wait! I am getting ahead of myself if you aren’t one of the millions who have read the story.  The Hunger Games was originally published on September 14, 2008, by Scholastic.  Collins wrote it in the first person which draws you into the emotional journey that the main character, sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, takes.

I think part of the appeal of this story is that it is set in a post-apocalyptic world.  This trend of post-apocalyptic worlds continues and can be seen in popular T.V. shows such as The Walking Dead and the movie Take Shelter.

Katniss lives in the country of Panem where the countries of North America once existed.  The Capitol is a highly advanced metropolitan area and holds complete power and control over the rest of the nation.  The Hunger Games are an annual televised event where each of the 12 districts of Panem has to send in one boy and one girl, ages 12 to 18, to compete in a battle to the death with one remaining winner.  The first time you get really emotionally attached to Katniss and her community is when the names are randomly selected in a lottery.

Collins does a wonderful job of drawing you into their world and feel their tension and fear when the names are drawn to fight in The Hunger Games.  This type of page-turning tension is felt throughout the entire story, making it a tough book to put down!  Apparently it has struck a nerve worldwide because The Hunger Games has been translated into 26 different languages since its initial release back in 2008.

The Hunger Games is the first novel in The Hunger Games trilogy and is followed by Catching Fire, published in September 2009, and Mockingjay, published in August 2010.  The Hunger Games movie is coming out March 23, and was written and produced by Collins and directed by Gary Ross.

I highly recommend this page-turning YA novel to anyone who enjoys a good story.  I am very curious to see if they are able to recreate the tension and fear you feel for the characters on the big screen.  Guess we will find out in a few weeks!  Happy reading and movie viewing!

What books do you and your kid like to read together?

Melissa Northway, M.S. Human Nutrition, is a wife and mom to a fiesty redhead who inspired her to write children’s picture books and apps.  Her first storybook app Penelope the Purple Pirate has gone on to be a Top 25 iTunes Book App and chosen as a Top 10 Educational iPad App by Digital Storytime.  You can reach her at mcube@sbcglobal.net and www.melissanorthway.com.  Make sure to stop by Penelope the Purple Pirate’s Facebook Page as she loves to hand out pirate booty!

How to Celebrate Dr. Seuss’ Birthday with Your Kids

Here are four fun ways to throw a Dr. Seuss’ birthday party with your kids:

Watch a Cat in the Hat Marathon

PBS stations nationwide will feature a two-hour marathon of “The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That.” Check here for your local listings. It will feature new episodes about the seasons and problem-solving. My three-year-old and I had the opportunity to preview the marathon, and it doesn’t disappoint. (I was so excited to figure out that the voice of The Cat is Martin Short!)

Have a Family Read-a-thon

On the evening of March 2nd, participate in the national “Read Across America,” sponsored by the National Education Association. Help your kids pick a special spot on the floor of the family room and plop down a bunch of pillows. Provide lots of books, “brainfood,” popcorn, or treats. Challenge them to read for as long as possible, maybe giving prizes for the most pages read. Make sure to log everyone’s minutes.

Have a Seuss party!

There is no shortage of ideas online for decorations and refreshments for a Dr. Seuss themed birthday party for your own kids’ birthdays, but they can easily be adapted to celebrate Dr. Seuss himself. Here are a few posts about games, crafts, and refreshments. We’re going to make birthday cards to Dr. Seuss, thanking him for all of his books.

Display and Discuss a Dr. Seuss Quote

Print or make something that displays one of his great quotes, then read it and talk about it over dinner. For instance, Dr. Seuss once said: “Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is you-er than you!” I love that! Pinterest is plastered with tons of creative ways to present that.

What is your favorite Dr. Seuss book?

Photos courtesy of PBS and Pinterest. Feature photo courtesy of Flickr.

After his 93 year-old mother passed away, Dan was thrust into a new world. The world of possibilities. He moved into a wonderful Senior Living Facility and is learning a new way of life. But unfortunately, a lot of his normal routine has changed and he does not have as much to do during the day. So Dan and I began a search for opportunities to volunteer.

There are limitless volunteer opportunities for seniors at every physical level. If you have someone in your life that needs a little something more to lift their spirits, here are just a few of many ideas that are out there. I am sure this will get your brain flowing.

Volunteer Opportunities for Seniors

RSVP (Retired and Senior Volunteer Program)

This program is a nationwide volunteer program for adults age 55 and over who are looking for ways to stay active while serving their community. RSVP is part of Senior Corps of the Corporation for National and Community Services. They can help direct you to opportunities in your area.

Local Schools, Libraries, and Community Centers

These places, usually undergoing budget cuts, are always looking for people to help out with different programs. From the basics of reading and math, to music and art, there are many ways to volunteer. Contact these organization’s main offices to find out where you can best serve. You can become a pen pal to a student or read to preschoolers. So many options.

City Transportation System

Dan has found that there is a need to assist first time bus riders. Many people need help navigating the bus routes, and if you know the ropes you can help.

Food Bank

Believe it or not, food banks need help in ways that are not all lifitng and sorting. They send out mailings and do fundraisers, so they have many sit-down opportunities for seniors.

Political Headquarters and Voting Polls

From stuffing envelopes to making calls, there is always a need for volunteers at these places.

Additional Locations

The following are a few more places who are always in need of volunteers: Art Museum, Science Center, Churches, Animal Shelter, Meals on Wheels, and Boy and Girl Scouts of America.

This has been a rewarding experience for me to help Dan see potential in his new life. The best part is that I have realized that you can be involved at any age!

If you are feeling a little down and lonely, look out your own front door and voluteer! It will boost your spirits, give you purpose, and help others! There is nothing better than that!

What volunteer opportunities have you or a loved one been involved in within your community?

Photos courtesy of Flickr.

Susan lives in Boise, Idaho, and is a self-taught artist and a jack of many artsy trades. She is married to professional artist and has two great teenagers. She has her hand in a lot of pots. She in very involved in her community and church. She loves friends, family, movies, eating out, laughing, and  vacationing to warm destinations! She just started her own blog! Visit susansspinningplates.wordpress.com.

I don’t think it is an accident that coming from a family of readers, I in turn, absolutely love to read. I enjoy Young Adult (YA) Books, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and even Middle Grade (MG) Books! My husband does think I am (a bit) silly for reading MG and YA Books, but the good ones have interesting characters and storylines such as The Ember Series by Jeanne DuPrau and The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins.

Research has found that the most important aspect of reading is how the child feels about reading. This means that positive reinforcement from parents and educators does help. For a child to see that their parents enjoy reading is one of the best ways to encourage them to read. Research has also found that forcing a child to read does not yield positive results. Instead of forcing the issue, it might work to have a reading time that the whole family enjoys together (Source: www.creativeteachingsite.com).

How To Increase a Child’s Literacy Skills

Here are some suggestions that can help your child build the necessary literacy skills.

Model Reading and Writing

My parents were always reading and I just thought that all families enjoyed reading growing up. As we know, children learn best by what we model. You can ask your middle-grade or teenager to write out to-do lists, shopping lists, letters, and invitations. Another great idea is to have them find a pen pal from another state or even another country. Also, read an MG or YA book together and discuss the characters, storyline, and what you hope will happen next if it is part of a series such as The Hunger Games. This might be fun to do together as it is coming out as a movie this March.

Participate in Everyday Activities

This could include discussing newspaper articles you read together, journals, or magazines. Another idea is to have them compare prices of items they want at different department stores or sporting equipment to find the best deal. Playing language and spelling games together like Scrabble, Boggle, or Trivial Pursuit can help improve literacy skills by looking up the meaning of certain words together.

Turn Family Vacations and Trips Into Learning Opportunities

My daughter loves to go the local museum, planetariums, and zoo. This provides a wonderful opportunity for me to explain how things work and about the animals. Maybe put together a scrapbook of a family vacation together and have them write out funny captions above the pictures.

These are all simple ideas to help to encourage your child to enjoy reading and writing. The less it feels like a chore and more a way of life, the more likely they will grow up with a positive association with reading.

What books are you and your family reading? How can you encourage your kids to read more?

References:

1. How To Encourage Students To Read (http://www.creativeteachingsite.com/read1).
2. Peel District School Board.  Help your teen build literacy skills (www.peelschools.org).

Picture courtesy of Flickr.

Melissa Northway, M.S. Human Nutrition, is a mom, writer and her storybook app Penelope the Purple Pirate has been chosen as a Top 10 Must-Have eBook by lilsugar of Popsugar.com and a Top 10 Educational iPad App by Digital Storytime.  She does consulting work for companies interested in marketing their apps or eBooks. She can be reached at: mcube@sbcglobal.net and http://www.melissanorthway.com or @melissanorthway. See my review of The Hunger Games coming next week.

5 Ways to Get Your Kids Excited About Reading

It is important to be actively involved in your child’s literacy experiences. The following are five suggestions to help you raise a reader in your home:

• Listen carefully to your child when he/she shows an interest in something. For example, if he/she tells you about a cool animal on the Discovery Channel or a new student who is coming to school from Japan, make a mental note. Find a book about that “hot topic” and remember: a child’s interest fades quickly, so don’t wait too long to get a book!
• Allow choice to be a strong motivator. Let your child choose some books that he/she likes. Reading Rockets, a website dedicated to teaching kids to read and helping those who struggle, offers a themed book list that you can browse to find the best book for your child.
• Don’t make reading difficult! Let your child read a few pages to you. If he/she misses five words out of 100, the book is too difficult for him/her to read by himself. Choose another book, or read it to your child. In addition to a wealth of books, your library most likely will have tapes and CDs of books, musical CDs and tapes, movies, computers that you can use, and many more resources. You also might find books in languages other than English, or programs to help adults improve their reading. You can also pick up some reading tips on the U.S. Department of Education’s website.
• Model reading in your home. Set a time when the whole family reads together. Each of you can share something about what you read.
• Set small goals with your child, such as reading one page every night. Use chart paper and chart the nights she reads. He/she can see for herself if she’s achieving her goal. Do an internet search for a template to use or you can make your own reading log.

How do you get your kids excited about reading? How do you make reading fun for your kids?

Photo courtesy of Flickr.

Desiree Allen is a thirty-something single parent with two children. A native of Denver, Colorado, she lived there until 2009, when she moved across the country to northern New Jersey with her kids. She is doing her best to avoid ‘picking up’ a Jersey accent, but she’s not making promises that she won’t eventually start sounding like some of her new friends. You can find her blogging at Writing to Sanity and tweeting @writingtosanity.

10 Bite-Size for Serving Through Reading

1. Read this “Magic for Muggles” article by J.K. Rowling, on the power of imagination and empathy for the greater good.
2. Read an article like this on how to set up a budget, so that, if you haven’t yet made a budget for your family, you will be encouraged to do so. Budgets can greatly relieve stress, rather than cause it.
3. See if your local library carries book club kits (multiple copies of popular books, often along with book club questions and author bios) and/or if anyone is hosting a book club in your area. If you’re already a member of a book club, invite one friend to join or put up a notice at the library inviting new members to join and discover the joy of reading with friends.
4. Help someone else experience the joy of reading without having to buy a book by sending a book you’ve already read on a BookCrossing journey. You put a special label in your book and let others know its available, either by posting about it on that site or leaving it on a park bench, then encourage whoever picks it up to read it and then pass it on in the same way.
5. Read the Atin Afrika story.
6. Sign up to receive and read the Central Asia Institute’s Alima newsletter to keep abreast of what they’re doing to teach girls to read in the Middle East.
7. Read a post on ViolenceUnsilenced.com, from an actual survivor of domestic abuse, and leave a supportive comment. It takes a lot of courage for these women to post their stories, and it may take a bit of courage for you to read about their horrific experiences, but they need to know that someone is listening.
8. Read these 10 Tips on Family Volunteering Fun.
9. Sign up to become an In2Books penpal, where you read up to 5 books a year with your assigned student online, and exchange letters with him or her about them. It takes 1-2 hours a month.
10. Read up on your state’s Core Curriculum. These are the objectives towards which every teacher is working, and the standards by which your kids are graded. Understanding them can help you better guide your kids’ study time, and maybe even inspire specific activities. (Here are Utah’s Core Curriculum standards, for example.)

How Will You Give to Others This Week?

• What other articles or posts have you read about service or inspiring people?
• Has reading made a meaningful difference for you this week?
• Have others read to you this week? If so, what difference has that made in your life?

How Else Can You Make a Difference This Season?

Make a meaningful difference this season by taking the Season of Service (SOS) Challenge. Here’s how you can participate:

• Commit to do one act of kindness/service based on the week’s challenge.
• Leave a comment with ideas relating to the week’s challenge as well as your experience(s) performing it.
• Enter to win each week’s giveaway. Win an ipad2 and a $100 iTunes gift card from CoolSculpting.
• Join #gno this Tuesday on Twitter to connect with other Mom It Forward moms about the challenge.

Luckily we have organizations who are working hard to overcome these barriers. Once such organization, First Book, has donated over 80 million books to children in need!

I had a chance to interview Rochee Jeffrey, Social Media Coordinator at First Book about the organization. We spoke about the work they are doing to help overcome illiteracy – one book at a time. Ms. Jeffrey explained how this organization was started by Kyle Zimmer, president and founder of First Book and two of her friends. “Ms. Zimmer began her career as a corporate attorney in Washington D.C., and spent her evenings volunteering as a reading tutor at a soup kitchen. While volunteering she learned that the children she was reading with had no books of their own at home. After some research into the scarcity of books for kids in low-income communities she began to grasp the magnitude of the need. So, she and two friends decided to do something about it and founded First Book in 1992.”

One person, one idea = 80 million books. Pretty awesome in my book! They also work with several corporations such as Disney – who just donated 8 million brand new books this month, Target and Pi Beta Phi Sorority whose philanthropy is literacy. In fact, according to Shawn Eagleburger, Member Services and Programming Director of Phi Beta Phi, in 2012, the Fraternity for Women will celebrate 100 years of literacy services. They joined forces with First Book for a virtual book drive in 2007.  This was so successful, that in 2008, Pi Beta Phi announced a 1 million dollar, 1 million book commitments to be filled by June 2012 – which they are happy to report has already been achieved!  However, their support and efforts to overcome illiteracy continue (Source: Interview with Mr. Eagleburger).

Susan B. Neuman, Ph.D. University of Michigan, Ctr. for Improvement of Early Reading Achievement says it best: “Access to books and educational material is the single biggest barrier to literacy development in the United States and beyond. If we can solve the problem of access, we will be well on the road to realizing educational parity – a goal which as eluded this country for generations” (Source: www.firstbook.org). Indeed! Seeing these organizations working together to overcome this problem that affects all of society is great. If you live or work in low-income communities you can get involved and help by registering with First Book or join a volunteer First Book Advisory Board in your area.

Another organization, MrsP.com is also working hard to encourage the love of reading. Their stories are streamed free of charge on their fun and interactive website and they pledge to donate ten percent of its profits to groups that encourage literacy (Source: MrsP.com). Literacy is such an important societal issue! As Ms. Jeffrey of First Book states “Literacy is one of the best predictors of a child’s future success. See how you can get involved and help low-income communities by going here: www.firstbook.org.

Melissa Northway is a mom, writer, and has written a storybook app and book called Penelope the Purple Pirate.  She supports literacy organizations and programs such as MrsP.com.   She is donating signed Penelope copies to the first 10 submissions received in the 4 to 8 years of age category for MrsP.com Be-A-Famous-Writer Contest. You can read more about Penelope and Melissa at: www.melissanorthway.com.