The Spoon Boon Blog

Safety regulations are the chief concern when picking out a seat for your children, but the style variations aren’t purely cosmetic, and you should be aware of just what ramifications your choice will have before making it. The safest baby safety seats, manufactured by brands such as Cosco, Graco, and many more, are made with babies of up to 12 months or 20 pounds in mind. Remember, when sorting through potential models, to set your preference between rear facing seats and more flexible chairs so as not to settle on a chair out of line with your requirements. The best of these seats can be used as baby carriers, meaning it’s less problematic to move from car to house without your child stirring. The time your baby will be in safety chairs is not long, but it is certainly more than a single year. A convertible seat costs a little more but you’ll only need one. As any review will point out, by and large chairs like these are less easy to carry out of the car.

A comprehension of each model’s key features comes from available reviews, ensuring that you choose not only the best seat but the best for your family. Choose your car seat knowing most available reviews are independent third-party pieces.

Visit and hop over to this marvelous webpage for Cosco children’s car seats reviews info!

Child booster chairs are designed specifically for children weighing between thirty to forty pounds all the way up to eighty. You’ll have to decide between the five-point harness and those requiring the car’s safety belt. To check your little one will be comfortable, let him try both types out and see which one works best. As you’ll probably have noticed with convertible safety chair reviews, child booster chairs tend to come with various extras designed to make your daily travel easier by keeping the child occupied. We can’t deny you have a tough decision ahead of you, due to the importance of finding something which matches the needs of the moment, and your lifestyle and wallet are hardly minor factors. You’ll find your perfect solution by starting with third party reviews.

For parents who have a young child and are expecting another, the tandem pushchair can be an ideal transport solution. The tandem is a form of double pushchair which has seats one in front of the other. Thus carrying two babies becomes quire easy, as there are seating arrangements for both.

If the older child is accustomed to sitting in a pushchair, the tandem becomes even more useful, as in that case the older child can be placed in the front seat and the newborn can be safely tucked into the rear one. The child in front can have the fun of looking around, while the baby in the back sleeps undisturbed.

A tandem pushchair is usually no broader than a single model. This makes it very easy to move through doorways and aisles. It is designed to be easily folded and stored in a very compact space. Travelling with two babies becomes far more hassle free and cost effective if they can be moved around in a tandem pushchair. Being compact, tandem pushchairs can be carried easily with your other luggage.

For those who want to take babies along on their jogging routine, the slim chassis of a tandem lends itself easily to movement on the track. Feature packed and still lightweight, these models are available for purchase online also. In addition to all the other features, tandems come with the facility of fitting a car seat onto both seats. This gives parents a complete travel solution for both babies.

There is no dearth of pushchairs in the market. However, what is important is to choose the one that is most suitable for your and your baby’s needs. The problem that arises with this is that most of the pushchairs promise the same features and thus you get confused as to which chair would be the best for your baby.

Maclaren chairs are different from others that you may find in market. They provide all the modern pushchair functionalities. They are very comfortable for the baby and come in many designs to suit the needs of everyone. To ensure proper protection of your baby, they are covered with net mesh to keep off bugs and flies.

These pushchairs also have air wheels to ensure that they do not jerk even when the surface is rocky or hilly. They are designed in a manner to be perfectly suited even when travelling via train or bus. They are also portable and you can fold them and carry in a car.

They also provide enough storage space for all the necessities of your child, thus doing away with the need to carry any other baby bags. One Maclaren chair is strong enough to last the whole childhood of your baby.

In addition to incorporating all these features, maclaren pushchairs are much less expensive than other similar products in the market, and thus everyone can afford them.

Among the different models of pushchairs offered by Maclaren, the most famous are Jogging Stroller and Triple Stroller.

In the new age of celebrity fashion, it seems pregnancy is now the latest “must have” accessory for many Hollywood stars with and without little ones already at home.

Pregnancy and children used to be considered career suicide in Hollywood. But now we have the pop culture coined “baby bump”, “bump watch”, and other cutesy-trendy phrases to describe the public’s obsession with who’s pregnant, who’s planning on getting pregnant, and who looks suspiciously pregnant in the world of celebrity gossip.

One would almost be able to say that celebrity pregnancy watches have surpassed divorce and breakup watches - almost, but not quite. The world loves other people’s “dirty laundry”, and a baby is still considered a generally happy occasion for anyone, so I suppose this new obsession is better than the lust for bad news about stars and their fortunes, right?

A growing trend right now is also single motherhood, and the declaration of independence many young actresses, such as Halle Berry and Penelope Cruz, have recently made about the virtues of single motherhood.

More and more actresses are saying no to marriage, and yes to motherhood, which is probably a sign of a growing sense of feminism and independence in Hollywood, and around the world.

Now that women are in the working force, and many times more than capable of financially supporting themselves and a child, single motherhood has become more acceptable. In Hollywood, single motherhood has become somewhat of a status symbol. Take Angelina Jolie for example.

When before do you remember a single mother being looked upon with respect and envy? Angelina and other high fashion, beautiful, big name actresses who’ve said no to relationships and yes to mommyhood only increase the public’s hunger for more “celebrity baby news”.

She and other sexy moms like Diane Lane, Shania Twain and other svelte celebs who’ve given birth have also given new meaning to the term “hot mama”.

These women have helped us “regular” women realize that we don’t all have to stop having fun, looking sexy, and dressing young once we’ve had children. They’ve made motherhood seem sexy, almost like a new beginning or rejuvenation of the spirit and outlook on life.

Some may argue that celebrity mom glorification makes real life mom’s feel inferior and paints an unrealistic picture of ease and happiness in motherhood, what with all the extra help celebs can afford to hire.

I disagree. I think it’s taught women that we can pursue a career, and have a family. We can have it all, we just have to work for it. And who is going to disagree with that?

Preschool Graduation Rings

Each and every parent seeks to hold as many memories of the entire graduation experience as possible, from the diploma, to graduation attire, to the graduation jewellery and nothing is to be overlooked. Preschool graduation rings are among the numerous graduation accessories that can be given out to make the day memorable for the child. They normally have a band that is made from stainless steel or plastic with ring faces that usually come in a variety of preschool designs that are colorful and creatively made.

Preschool graduation rings

are made in a standard size that will offer the ideal fit for all preschoolers. Some design options specifically identify the school related activity that the child was actively involved in such as sports, music and artwork.
Preschool graduation rings can be kept as a graduation souvenir after being worn during the ceremony. The rings come with engraving options that allow one to visibly add a name or to personalize it more. They are made from different metals such as silver elite, lustrium, platinum and yellow or white gold representations. The ring’s metal finishes can be a natural or a plastic finish that gives luster to the ring that is appealing.

GraduationSource, a leader in graduation regalia products since 1960.

One of the most standard reasons for having spectacles is myopia

For a lot of reasons, a person might become short sighted. The offical term for this is shortsightedness. When somebody is nearsighted, they can not focus well into the distance, alternatively they can see rather clearly, when looking up close at things.

To be myopic or short sighted, the light ray that comes into your eye focuses too quickly as either the cornea or lens are too short or your eyes are too long..

shortsightedness does decreases in later life. This appears not to be related to a reduction in close work as is often suggested but rather due to some factor intrinsically related to ageing. It has been hypothecated the might of the lens of the eye modifies in later life.

About 1 in 4 Americans are shortsighted.

An ophthalmic opticianwill examine a child’s eye and vision very carefully and work out if there is a problem with how they focus images.

To work out how badly shortsighted you are and the specific nature of your shortsightedness, more tests will need to be conducted. This will help to determine the type of eye glasses that you will need. The optician will assess visual acuity, visual movements and the ability to focus on nearby objects. They may need to dilate the pupil to see if there are any rare or alarming complications.

There are many children who will be falsely assessed to be myopic, because of their natural tendency to over focus. To counter this, a trained eye pratitioner will often elect to dilate the pupils with some eye drops to prevent the child’s lenses from over correcting.

If you have shortsightedness, you will need to have glasses prescribed. If your child has been diagnosed with shortsightedness and are under 4, then they may get away with not wearing eyeglasses unless their vision is particularly bad.

Once a child starts school, then being able to focus on the board becomes important for learning, etc. So they should be regularly assessed for the need to wear eyeglasses or the need to change their prescription.

Apart from a few children with esophoria (not able to converge their eyes) shortsighted children must wear their specs as often as they can, otherwise they could do harm to their eyes.

We’ve all heard the term “goth”, but do we really know what it means?

Originally, the word “Goth” described a Germanic tribe which invaded Rome. “The Goths” were regarded as barbaric and uncultured. The term was later applied to a style of medieval architecture, Gothic architecture, because some critics believed that the designs were uncultured. There is even a body of literature, the works of Edgar Allen Poe, for example, that might be termed “Gothic”.

The more recent “goth” movement was a subclass of punk rock, which emerged as an alternative subculture in the 1980s. The term “goth” was first applied to music in 1979. Fans were called “Goths” or “Gothic Punks”.

Goth is a style of music and fashion. Goths tend to dye their hair black, and wear black clothing. Clothing might be ripped. Some goths wear lots of fishnet. Others wear lots of crushed velvet and lace, very Victorian. Jewelry is usually silver. Very white faces with plenty of black eyeliner are seen on both women and men. Sometimes a bit or red or purple might be worn too.

Goth is a mode of self expression and creativity. Goths tend to be quiet, intelligent, creative people who focus on things dark and brooding, and especially the darker side of human nature.
Imagination and originality are key.

Not all goths are depressed. Not all goths wear black. All goths don’t even necessarily enjoy “goth music”. Most do not like to label themselves as “goth” at all.

Though the original Goth movement has faded out almost completely now, there is a new group of young goths, which are sometimes called “KinderGoth” or New School.

Rebecca Fairbanks lives and writes in Vermont, USA. She also owns http://www.SweetInSCENTives.com.

The method know as three dimensional ultrasound scanning is used in early pregnancy, providing 3 d pictures of the fetus. Most times these ultrasound images are quickly collected and joined together to make a 4d ultrasound scan.

Three dimensional scanning works in a similar way to the normal ultrasound scanning methods except that the ultrasound scanning waves are directed from multiple directions. The waves are reflected back then captured to provide information to construct a 3-dimensional image in very much the same way as 3d pictures. 3d ultrasound was devised by olaf ramm and stephen smith.

It’s important to understand that sonologists around the world have always conjured three-dimensional images of anatomy or pathology in their minds while doing 2d scans. However, until recently it was not possible to do this type of reconstruction on on patient information using ultrasound. With the advent of baby scans for the first time allowed us a view into the thinking of a sonologist and hence letting us see the images on the ultrasound machine.

The 3d/4d ultrasound image should utilize ultrasound energy following the same limits as conventional 2d ultrasound to create the 3d images. There is no data to suggest any harm due to 3d ultrasound, its use in none medical situations needs to be undertaken with an understanding of the risks involved.

Also remember to collect your unborn childs stems cells by involving a company like futurehealth.

Teen drug use is on the rise again with the recent introduction of club drugs and
the rapid spread of methamphetamines. Teens are exposed to more and more
opportunities to use drugs through the increase in availability as well as
opportunity since many parents work, leaving their children home alone.

Parents Must Be aware of their children’s actions, so they can detect possible signs
of drug use. While some warning signs are evidence of depression, many signs
present in a child are more indicative ofdrug use rather than depression.

Parentingteens.com cites numerous warning signs at home and in a school
environment. The signs include a sudden change in friends, a significant drop in
academics, fatigue, loss of interest in family outings, physical and verbal abuse
toward others (especially those they love), lying, unhappiness, change in general
appearance, and behavior. There are many other signs of warning when a child is
using drugs. Try to stay in tune with your teen in order to quickly pick up on any
sudden changes. If your teen is spending a lot of time in their room, then take the initiative to spend time with them in their room, perhaps watching television.
Encourage your teen to open up and talk to you.

Teen drug use will always be a universal problem. The way to keep it from becoming
your problem is to talk to your child and let them know you have a no tolerance rule
in place for drugs. Let them know drugs will never be welcomed in your home, and
always remind them how much you love them.

In recent years the field of reading education has changed dramatically and many reading instructors have divided between phonic instruction and whole language. Various reading programs that fall into one of the two camps have spent millions advertising the relative merits of both.

The simple truth of the matter is that the best reading instruction takes place using a combination of both strategies. And increasingly reading research has demonstrated that phonemic awareness, not simply phonics, is critically important to ensuring reading success-especially for students with learning disabilities.

However what makes this so confusing for many parents and caregivers is that the term “phonemic awareness” is tossed around so often and in so many different ways. Phonemic awareness concerns the structure of words rather than their meaning. To understand the construction of our written code, words, readers need to be able to reflect upon the spelling-to-sound correspondences. To understand that the written word, beginning readers must first have some understanding that words are composed of sounds (phonemic awareness) rather than their conceiving of each word as a single indivisible sound stream.

The development of this awareness cannot be accomplished in one simple step but rather over time. It is also important to note that these skills are actually pre-reading skills. Children do not necessarily recognize any of these elements on the page but rather by ear.

The stages of phonological development toward the end goal of deep phonemic awareness can include:

~ Recognition that sentences are made up of words

~ Recognition that words can rhyme & the ability to make rhymes

~ Recognition that words can be broken down into syllables & the ability to do so

~ Recognition that words can be broken down into onsets and rimes & the ability to do so

~ Recognition that words can begin with the same sound & the ability to make these matches

~ Recognition that words can end with the same sound & the ability to make these matches

~ Recognition that words can have the same medial sound(s) & the ability to make these matches

~ Recognition that words can be broken down into individual phonemes & the ability to do so

~ Recognition that sounds can be deleted from words to make new words & the ability to do so

~ Ability to blend sounds to make words

~ Ability to segment words into constituent sounds

Phonemic awareness is more complex however than simple auditory discrimination, which is the ability to understand that cat and mat are different words. To be able to describe how they are similar and how they are different demonstrates a level of phonemic awareness. Young children are not normally asked to consider words at a level other than their meaning, although experience with rhymes may be the first indication for children that they can play with the structure of words.

Learning to recognize and play with rhyme is often the beginning of phonemic awareness development for many children. To be aware that words can have a similar end-sound implies a critical step in learning to read. Sensitivity to rhyme makes both a direct and indirect contribution to reading.

Directly, it helps children appreciate that words that share common sounds usually also share common letter sequences. Later exposure to common letter sequences then makes a significant contribution to reading strategy development.

Indirectly, the recognition of rhyme promotes the refining of word analysis from larger intra-word segments (such as rhyme) to analysis at the level of the phoneme (the critical requirement for reading).

Studies show a very strong relationship between rhyming ability at age three and performance at reading and spelling three years later. A number of studies have reinforced the value of such early exposure to rhyming games.

Rhyming and phoneme awareness are related. Studies have shown that children who are capable of good discrimination of musical pitch also score high on tests of phonemic awareness. Since pitch change is an important source of information in the speech signal, it may be that sensitivity to small frequency changes, such as is involved in phoneme recognition, is an important aspect of successful initial reading. Such results raise the interesting possibility that musical training may represent one of those pre-reading, home-based experiences that contribute to the marked individual differences in phonemic awareness with which children start school.

So, what do you teach? Techniques that target phoneme awareness most frequently involve direct instruction in segmenting words into component sounds, identifying sounds in various positions in words (initial, medial, final), identifying words that begin or end with the same sound, and manipulating sounds in a word such as saying a word without its beginning or end sound.

Most of the phoneme awareness activities should not take more than 15 or 20 minutes to complete. Although a particular activity can be selected well in advance, the specific words targeted for phoneme awareness should be selected from material familiar to your child such as a book you recently read together or a game or a family outing. Phoneme awareness activities are a natural extension of the shared reading activities.

A natural and spontaneous way of providing children with exposure to phonemes is to focus on literature that deals playfully with speech sounds through rhymes. Simple rhyme patterns are easily recalled after repeated exposure, and children will get the idea of creating new rhymes. In “There’s a Wocket in My Pocket” (Seuss, 1974), initial sounds of everyday objects are substituted as a child talks about the strange creatures around the house, such as the “zamp in the lamp.” Children can make up their own strange creatures in the classroom such as the “zuk in my book.”

Alliteration is the repetition of an initial consonant sound across several words, such as presented in the alphabet book “Faint Frogs Feeling Feverish” and “Other Terrifically Tantalizing Tongue Twisters”.

Assonance, the repetition of vowel sounds within words, is often combined with rhyme, as in “It rains and hails and shakes the sails” from “Sheep on a Ship” or in humorous ways such as “The tooter tries to tutor two tooters to toot” in “Moses Supposes His Toeses Are Roses”. Some books include music to go with the rhymes, such as “Down by the Bay”, in which two children try to outdo one another in making up questions that rhyme, such as “Did you ever see a goose kissing a moose?”

Spend some time in the children’s section of your library or browse through your child’s book shelves at home to look for books that deal playfully with language. Read and reread the stories and comment on the language use then encourage predictions of sound, word, and sentence patterns (for example, “What sound do you hear at the beginning of all those words?”) and invent new versions of the language patterns utilized in the stories.

Research has demonstrated not only a predictive relationship between phoneme awareness and reading success, but also a causal relationship. Phoneme awareness that has a positive impact on reading can be developed in children through systematic instruction. Early training in phoneme awareness should be a priority for those interested in improving early reading instruction and in reducing reading failure.

Some other activites include:

Making Word Families Charts: Charts can contain words from one story or a brainstormed list from the children. The children can dictate the words to be placed on a word family chart. As they begin to develop letter/sound knowledge, they can copy or write the words themselves. You can use magnetic letters to “create” words for a word family chart. Provide a rime of plastic letters (e.g., at) and have the children take turns placing different letters in the onset position to create new words (e.g., hat, bat, sat, rat). These charts can be used as reference charts (or the children can make their own word families reference book) for spelling and creative writing activities.

Odd Word Out: Four words, three of which rhyme, are presented (e.g., zveed, bead, pill, seed ). The child determines which word is the odd one that doesn’t belong with the others. The game of concentration or memory is a good practice activity for rhyme recognition.

Alliteration: Sound personalities can be introduced naturally and in context by selecting a particular sound to talk about that is stressed in alphabet or other books that use alliteration. For example, presenting “smiling snakes sipping strawberry sodas” for the alphabet letter S. It is helpful to create or provide pictures that represent these sound personalities and to post them as each is introduced. A natural connection can sometimes be made between the sound and the letter, such as presenting a picture of “Sammy snake” drawn in the shape of the letter S or “Buzzy bee” flying in a pattern of the letter Z. Besides providing a label to facilitate talking about sounds, the pictures provide self-correcting cues for children engaged in initialsound isolation and sound-to-word matching activities.

Counting: To count syllables in words, activities can be used such as clapping hands, tapping the desk, or marching in place to the syllables in children’s names (Ma- ry), items in the immediate environment (win- dow), or words from a favorite story (wi-shy, wa-shy). Initially, two- syllable words can be targeted, building up to three.

Sound Synthesis: Sound synthesis can be done using the following sequence: blending an initial sound onto the remainder of a word, followed by blending syllables of a word together, and then blending isolated phonemes into a word. Model this by blending an initial sound onto a word by using the jingle “It starts with /n/ and it ends with ight, put it together, and it says night.” When they have the idea, the children supply the final word. An element of excitement can be created by using children’s names for this activity and asking each child to recognize and say his or her own name when it is presented- “It starts with /m/ and it ends with ary, put it together and it says .” Context can be provided by limiting the words to objects that can be seen in the room or to words from a particular story the children just read. As the children become proficient, they can take turns using the jingle to present their own words to be blended.

Sound-to-Word Matching: Requires that the child identify the beginning sound of a word. Awareness of the initial sound in a word can be done by showing the children a picture (dog) and asking the children to identify the correct word out of three: “Is this a /mmm/-og, a /d/d/d/-og, or a /sss/-og?” A variation is to ask if the word has a particular sound: “Is there a /d/ in dog?” This can then be switched to “Which sound does dog start with-/d/, /sh/, or /1/?” This sequence encourages the children to try out the three onsets with the rime to see which one is correct. It is easiest to use continuants that can be exaggerated and prolonged to heighten the sound input. Iteration should be used with stop consonants to add emphasis.

Deanna Mascle writes many articles on preschool education and emergent literacy for her newsletter Preschoolers Learn More. Visit Teach Phonemic Awareness at http://TeachPhonemicAwareness.info for more information and articles.