Stay at Home Mom

In the recent State of the Union address President Obama outlined his plan for the solution to our education problems. It was my take from his speech that the solution was simply preschool education.  After several interesting conversations with fellow Stay at Home Moms we received this message in the email by our very passionate friend Bev Smith.  She is a staunch supporter of the family in Canada and around the world.  We are happy to reprint her response and discussion about this issue.  We would love to hear from you.  What are your thoughts and how can we best strengthen the family while providing the best for our children. Response to David Brooks- New York Times Feb 14. 2013 "When families fail" response by Beverley Smith women's and children's rights activist             David Brooks, renowned journalist, author and social policy pundit has taken a stance for formal early childhood education. He says that Head Start's 'dismal'

It has been said "What's in a name? A Rose by any other name would smell as sweet".  This is a line from the Shakespeare play "Romeo and Juliet" when the two teens are lamenting about the fact that their last names are keeping them from being together. Names are important to our children especially when they are first learning to talk and then when they are learning to identify their place in the world. When our child first says the words Mama or Dada we are thrilled and delighted.  From that point on we begin a fantastic journey of identifying things by their name.  Ball - Car - Dog - and on and on. Stay at Home Mom Fun Project  What's in a Name Here is a fun project to do on one of those rainy days. This same project can be customized to your child's age and attention span. Supplies Needed: a piece of blank paper, crayons or colored pencils, dictionary (optional) Preschool / pre writing: 1. Take a piece of paper and write ou

Guest Post by Matt Heston , video game expert Kids can play videogames for hours on end, but fifteen minutes of cleaning can be met with some serious resistance. In my case, that was doubly true for laundry. I was never more cunning nor more creative when I was a kid than when I needed to get out of laundry duty. My pokemon needed leveling up far more than I needed fresh socks. There were more than a few examples why this was patently untrue (don’t ask), but with gamification, we can look at the underlying reasons why these games can engage us for hours and how the mechanics of games can be applied to other, perhaps even productive, activities. Gamification is applying gamelike elements and thinking to non-game activities, in order to make those activities more engaging. Now, while this seems like a fairly straightforward concept, it’s actually a quite deep field of study. There are people researching it and criticizing it and writing books about how to apply gamification

Watching the nightly news can be confusing, boring, and sometimes even scary for our kids.  Presidents day is a great day to talk about some of our amazing US Leaders of the past and begin to help our kids develop a curiosity for history and politics. My daughter has taken an interest in learning about the first ladies and the impact they have had on american politics.  One of her most recent interests was reading about Abigail Adams.  She loved reading some of the letters that Abigail wrote with her husband John Adams and finding out about the kind of influence Abigail's words had on shaping the future of the country. Here are a couple of pictures for Presidents Day that my kids have enjoyed coloring in - while they color we talk about the picture and how it relates to our life today (in a totally age appropriate way).  If the picture reminds them of a frog then we talk about frogs but at least there will be that connection and perhaps someday it will even click.