Friday, April 8, 2011

National Poetry Month


I just did a post over on Kidculture.net about National Poetry Month.  Here's the link.

Parenting Boys

One of my kids has been giving me a hard time in school this year, I won't name names in order to protect his/her identity, but I will tell you this; it's not Avery.  It's nothing serious, just the growing pains of learning to work with the system.  Anyway, I started looking for some good parenting books in regards to school and boys.  It seems that school is just more set up for girls to succeed.  Girls like to sit, write, they have better fine motor skills, greater attention spans and want to please the teacher.  So already it seems like boys are fighting their DNA from the first day of school.  Here's what I've found:

A detailed look with statistics and charts regarding at how boys vs. girls perform in school.  K-12 it seems like girls are always one step ahead.  Why is that?  Do boys ever "catch up"?

A disappointment, not really worth your time.  I liked the title but was not inspired with the "motivation" part.

Loved this one, although it is geared more for junior high/high school boys.  But I could already see some of my boys weak areas in it and we made some positive changes after I read it.

Honestly, this was probably the best book I read.  It's a children's picture book, but it sort of summed up boys behavior (and our reaction to it) perfectly.  At first, everything Edwardo does is "horrible", like when he pours water on the dog and makes him muddy.  But then when he is seen from a different perspective (thanks for helping wash the dog!) he shines.