From Green Eggs and Ham to To Kill a Mockingbird, kids seem to pick the classics when it’s time to read, according to a study of 78.5 million books read by more than 3 million children nationwide.

Dr. Seuss’s book was the most popular choice among first graders, Renaissance Learning found. The company, which looked at kids in 9,800 schools for the study, manages a program in which students take computerized reading comprehension quizzes.  Students earn points based on the book’s word difficulty, word length, sentence length, and total number of words.  Many schools even award prizes to students for their efforts in the program. 

Some teachers were pleased with the popularity of To Kill a Mockingbird, which topped the list for ninth-through-12th graders.  Others say the book owes much of its success to the fact that teachers make it a requirement.  (The report doesn’t distinguish between books that were assigned and those students chose.)

Glossary:

Oblivescence:  forgetfulness, forgetting

Keep ‘em Busy

A month into summer now and the kids are getting bored?  Here are two fun activities that can occupy them for more than a day and create memories: 

• Broadway Babies.  Have the kids write, produce and put on a play each month.  Check out library books on plays and theater, and have them encourage friends to join in.  If your kids are tech-savvy, let them create movies.
• Memory Makers.  Start a summer scrapbook.  Let youngsters take photos of anything their hearts desire, using a child’s digital or disposable camera.  Have them work on scrapbooks each week.  By summer’s end, they will have a keepsake.

Keep ‘em Smart

Unless the kids are in year-round school, the long summer break tends to be a time when what they learned in class gets forgotten.  The Brain Quest Workbooks for pre-K to fourth-grade students are a way to help kids maintain their sills and learn new ones.  The cover the three Rs along with science, social studies and other topics like “Time and Money” or “Fun and Games.”

How your child spends his out-of-school hours has a direct impact on his fitness. One way you can encourage him is to set a good example. If you can find physical activities to do together, your child might be more motivated.

Here are some specific steps you can take:

• Limit TV-watching and video game playing—no more than two hours a day—for both kids and adults in the family.
• Give your child “fitness” gifts for birthdays—anything from jump ropes to in-line skates. 
• Make his birthday party something physical. Indoor climbing gyms are popular with the younger set. Older kids might like ice skating, bowling, or facilities with climbing walls, which have become the “in” thing.
• Walk with him instead of driving whenever possible.
• Make family weekends and vacations active ones. Take a bike, ride or swim or go hiking.
• Offer him lessons in tennis, horseback riding, or some other activity he wants to try.
• Get exercise tapes with fun music that kids and adults can do together.

Speaker: Julie Armenta

Register:  949.425.5100

Location:  Crown Valley Park, View Room, Laguna Niguel, CA

Activity # 2013/Sep 25/Thursday/7pm/Free

Julie Armenta, M.A. Educational & Family Specialist, will educate both parents and teens with helpful tips for getting into the college of their choice.  Reduce the anxiety of the application process by being educated.  Julie will guide you through topics such as GPA requirements, test scores, and making your application stand out.  Walk out of this workshop with a clear time-line of where you should be and to help understand the process of college applications.  Due to limited seating, pre-registration is require for this free workshop.

Students of all ages can take advantage of the long summer break to catch up on fun reading that they have missed out on during the school year due to homework and extracurricular activities. Some schools have required summer reading. If your school does not impose such a requirement, there are many resources that can spark your child’s interest in reading and vocabulary.

* Public libraries: For younger children, many libraries offer story hours and summer reading programs, usually built around a theme, that offer incentives and rewards for youngsters to read. The children’s librarian or the reference librarian can offer suggestions about books that are age-appropriate and match your student’s interests. Visit the library with your child frequently so he can browse the bookshelves and look at the latest magazines.

* Recommended reading lists: The American Library Association (ALA) and Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) are both well-known organizations that provide through their respective websites a wealth of specialized reading lists for all age groups and areas of interest. Check out the following links:

 http://www.ilovelibraries.org/booklovers/recreading
 http://www.rif.org/educators/books/book_list_index.mspx

* Freerice.com: This philanthropic and educational website is a fun way for children, teens and adults to test and build their vocabulary knowledge. The website is designed to automatically adjust to the user’s level of vocabulary. It begins by asking you the definition of a word, giving you four answers from which to choose. Based on how you answer a series of such questions, the program will adjust the level of difficulty upward or downward. When you correctly get three words in a row, the level of difficulty automatically increases. Another interesting feature is that when you define a word incorrectly, you will be asked that same word a few turns later in order to “re-test” you. You can also click on an icon to the right of a word to hear how it is pronounced. FreeRice describes itself as a website that is designed to end world hunger. For every correct answer a player gets, 20 grains of rice are donated to the United Nations World Food Program (WPF). Sponsors make all payments to the UN World Food Program directly. Beware: This is an addicting site!

*  The SAT Game for Dummies: From the well-known “For Dummies” series, this trivia-style board game is touted as a fun and interactive way to prepare for the SAT. The game is designed to be played with multiple players who all have incentives to answer each other’s questions so everyone gets involved on every turn. Competition between players mimics the competitive environment of test day and questions are timed.

  
* SAT Vocabulary Novels: These free on-line novels, produced by the folks at SparkNotes, incorporate 1,000 of the most frequently tested vocabulary words and provide definitions. An interesting-dare we say “novel” -alternative to boring old flashcards!