All of this, while incredibly weird for his math-phobic mom, is good news. A new report from Johns Hopkins University links “good number sense” in the early years with math sense all the way up through high school. Oddly enough, knowing how well a high school freshman can estimate the amount of objects in a group gives you a window into how well she’s done in math since she was sitting on a rug with a bunch of blocks all the way back in kindergarten.

In other words, whether your child is destined for a life of breezy math, or a life banging her head against the desk in high school algebra, can be predicted as early as the age of five. It turns out that there may be some genetic component at work when it comes to prowess in the math department…

How the researchers figured this out is pretty interesting. They asked a group of 14-year-olds to look at a bunch of flashing blue and yellow dots on a computer screen, then estimate which type was more numerous. The bulk of kids had no problem when there was a big spread—for example, only 10 blue dots and 25 yellow ones. But once the number of dots in each color set got closer to equal, it was pretty clear that some students had better innate number sense than others. And when researchers looked at the standardized math test scores of those number-sense-savvy kids, not only did they notice a correlation, but they could trace it back all the way to the primary grades.

So what can parents do? For one, try to act enthusiastic when your kid comes home and wants to “play math”. Don’t balk when she asks you, “What’s one plus ten plus five plus six plus fifty-seven…” And definitely don’t say, “I don’t know. Math’s not really my thing.” Instead, get out that pencil and paper and figure it out together. Because if this study is to be believed, our days of helping our kids in math may be numbered…

It was one of those funny moments as a parent when you don't quite know what to say. Do you clue your little guy in to the fact that sharing his favorite stuffed animal is nothing compared to what's waiting just a few years down the road? Do you listen raptly, shaking your head with understanding as he lists all the reasons to be terrified of his "big presentation"?

The whole thing took me by surprise. Up until the moment he dug in his heels and refused to get out of his pajamas, I'd been secretly congratulating myself on an easy-as-pie kindergarten transition. The year so far had gone like clockwork: he'd been a little jittery before the first day but by Day 2, he'd begged to go to school. On Labor Day, he was disappointed when he found out he'd be stuck with me, rather than heading off to kindergarten. I wasn't sure whether to be thrilled or insulted when he whined, "Home is so boring compared to school!"

But back to Share Day. As my son hid under his blanket, mumbling that he'd only come out if I agreed to talk to his teacher and tell her he wasn't going to share, I suddenly realized I was at my first "big kid" moment. "If you don't want to do Share Day, that's up to you. But you need to tell your teacher, not me," I said. "I'll pack your puppy and your police shield just in case you change your mind."

We stared at each other for a minute or two. Then wide eyed, he crept out from under the blanket and reluctantly got dressed. When it came time to go through the school gate, I whispered, "Don't be scared of Share Day" and waved as he walked through the door. Then I watched the second graders, running through the school yard without even a backward glance at their parents who'd dropped them at the curb. That'll be here in a heartbeat, I thought.

When I got home from work I asked, as casually as I could, "What happened today at school?"

"Oh," my son said, in his most mature voice, "Share Day is no big deal."

Back then, video games were a novelty. Today, they're ubiquitous. In the last decade, computer and video game sales have increased by over $5 billion. Not only are video games the norm in American households, but more than 83% of U.S. children between the ages of 8 and 18 have video game players in their bedrooms! Many experts bemoan the fact that all this sitting on the collective childhood duff is leading to increased levels of obesity. But, there's a solution on the horizon, according to an article hot off the presses from the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine: the video games themselves.

Yep. You heard me. Or at least you read me. Some of the most eminent minds in childhood medicine and public health have put their heads together to come up with a fix-all for our growing national weight problem. And not only do they want your child to play video games, they want her to play daily. "Electronic entertainment is not going away," writes Russell R. Pate, Ph.D., of the University of South Carolina School of Public Health, "So if we want to promote physical activity in the context of contemporary society, we will have to fight fire with fire." Society hasn't been all that successful getting kids to get off the couch and into the park for a game of basketball. But Pate's guessing they might be able to convince kids to at least get off the couch and into the center of the living room, joystick at-the-ready.

The trend is called "exergaming" or "exertainment". You've probably seen your share of kids sweating themselves silly to the tunes on Dance Dance Revolution, or practicing their tennis strokes with Nintendo's Wii. What this recent study found was that not all "active" games were equal. For example, a new system, called XaviX, that lets teens powerbox with Jackie Chan or run through the streets of Hong Kong stamping out ninjas, had them burning 451% more calories than a seated video game, while active bowling had them burning just 98% more. It only takes about 150 extra calories a day to cause weight gain, the authors say, so just 35 minutes of daily dose with the XaviX would be enough to battle some bulge.

Still, it's important to realize that despite the advertising claims, not all supposedly active games are enough to keep kids svelte. Experts say that kids should aim for an average of an hour of moderate to vigorous exercise per day. And studies show that no matter how fun the Wii might be, players burn only 2% more calories than players of regular old computer games.

So the next time your kid tries to sell you on a game console with promises that it will help keep him fit, beware: not all games are created equal. The best remedy? Send him outside for a round of tag.

If you're an American college student, even at one of US News and World Report's most selective colleges, chances are you don't know. A non-profit called the Intercollegiate Studies Institute gave a pop quiz on history and civics to over 14,000 freshman and seniors at 50 colleges across the country and even at Harvard, the school that performed the best, the average grade was a D+. As a parent who's been socking away a good chunk of my paycheck each year to send my five-year-old off to university some day, those are some pretty sobering numbers.

So, I got a little cocky. And a little curious. I'm a rabid NPR junkie and I tune in nightly to The Daily Show. I've got an Ivy League education. Surely I could do better. I clicked my way over to www.americancivicliteracy.org and took the test myself, confident that I could outshine those slackers.

I started out strong-- clicking away with a satisfied smile. But my the fourth or fifth question, I was sweating. I was a little more hazy on the War of 1812 than I realized. And the Gulf of Tonkin-- what was that again? Sure, I squeaked out an answer on The New Deal, Roe vs. Wade, and a few other events, but by the time I made it through the last of the sixty questions, I have to say, I was none to confident. And for good reason. I scored a measly 65%. Yikes! How can a brain get so mushy so quickly?

Little comfort, but I'm in good company. It turns out that college seniors across the country produced an average score of just 54%. And not one school--including Harvard, Yale, and Princeton-- could boast students with even a "C" average. Considering that several of the colleges with the lowest scores collect tuition, room and board somewhere above $40,000 a year, you'd think they'd be prepping tomorrow's citizens a little bit better.

But back to us. If you don't know the name of Saddam Hussein's political party or the exact definition of Keynesian economics, don't fret during your next cocktail conversation. More likely than not, neither does your neighbor...

Then again, wouldn't it be great if we could send our kids off into the world with a little more knowledge than we have? My suggestion: take the test. Do it secretly, while your teenager is sleeping. Study what you don't know and then, once you feel your knowledge level is above the threshold of embarrassing, show your kid the test, as if you've just discovered it, and challenge her to match up with you. The site has a nifty little reading list to transform you from Historical Zero to Honkin' History Buff in no time flat. And while not all of it is exactly titillating, some of it is downright interesting. When college finally rolls around, your child will be ready for that pop quiz and who knows, she may be the second student in the study's history to get a perfect score. At the very least, she'll do better than you did.

This is probably a blessing in disguise. The "perfect" teacher is a slippery thing. Sure, you can ask other parents until your phone ear turns blue. But what I've found, although I'm loath to admit it, is that almost every time I've lobbied for a certain teacher, and stressed out over another, based on other parents' opinions, I've been completely wrong about what my kid needed.

In preschool, this didn't really matter-- each class had two teachers. So even though I was thrilled each time with one of the two he'd been assigned, and dubious about the other, it all worked out in the end. The "strict, overbearing one" turned out to be the perfect energy level for my kid his first year of school, while the "mellow, kind one" was a bust; the "experienced one" was a bore, but the "first year teacher who replaced someone great" was a godsend. In short, sometimes what we think our kids need, isn't really what they're hankering for, and sometimes the underdogs surprise us.

Not that I'd know who to lobby for anyway, even if I was feeling pushy... It's a new school and I'll be starting from Square One. I'm starting to have those flashbacks to my own elementary school days, only instead of dreaming about missing the bus or having no one to sit with in the cafeteria, I'm having jitters once-removed. Luckily, my son seems completely oblivious to his mom's imminent mental breakdown.

Until recently, kindergarten seemed like a destination far in the distance. Now, it's only a few days away. It's a year of big change for kids: learning to read, learning to write, learning not to hit the kid next to you with a shovel when she steals your place on the tire swing... But it's a year of big change for parents, too. I fully expect to be a big wet mess approximately 30 seconds after my son runs through the classroom door.

As for who will guide him through this pivitol year? I've got no idea, at least not until 4 o'clock today. I'd pretty much worked myself into a lather about the whole thing, until I talked to my mom the other day. "It's just so important," I moaned, "Whoever he gets for kindergarten will completely determine how he feels about elementary school."

"Do you remember who you had for kindergarten?" my mom asked.

"Well, no."

She smiled. "Well, in my mind, it wasn't a match made in heaven. But you turned out all right."

I'm talking no gaping as Michael Phelps attempts to beat the all-time record for most medals in one Olympic games. No looks of awe as Dara Torres shows what a take-no-prisoners mom can do when someone's watching the kids. No smiles at the stands as China's most famous athlete, Yao Ming, takes to the basketball court. I'm talking no TV, people. Zip. Zilch. Zero.

At least a few newspapers across the country have suggested that Americans do what governments have not-- boycott the games by refusing to watch them. True, the Olympics offer an awesome opportunity to show our kids real heroes. They allow us to point to athletes from across the world, competing on one field. The Olympics are peace in action.

But honestly, hate to be a downer, but do you really think China would have been awarded the games if anyone could have forseen that they'd go back on their promise to give unfettered media access to all of the 20,000 plus journalists descending on Beijing? Would they have gotten the games if the Olympics committee had been able to take a time machine to the future and forseen their human rights record, their role in the crisis in Darfur, or the big black cloud of smog making it hard to take a breath anywhere within the city limits?

Despite the world's supposed outrage at all of this, no major country has pulled their athletes from the games. And when I read about this underground boycott movement, I have to say, I'm torn. As I hear about athletes like Natalie du Toit, the South African swimmer who scored gold five times in the Paralympics and is poised to become the first amputee since 1938 to compete in the Olympic games, I can't imagine not picking up the remote next week and pointing out to my child all there is to admire about the Olympics.

No five-year-old cares about blocked Internet sites or increasing tension in Tibet. In fact, he'll probably be more impressed that Michael Phelps can put his head under water without holding his nose then he will be that Phelps may break the world record for medals. My five-year-old will be wowed by the fanfare and magic of the games-- the Opening Ceremonies, the torch ("Those guys are allowed to play with fire, mommy!") and the crazy look on the weightlifters' faces as they heft those barbells to the sky. He'll drop his jaw at the gymnasts, flipping across the mat, just as I did as a toddler, watching Nadia Comaneci. I may not have known exactly what was going on, but man, that girl could jump!

So okay, I have to admit it, I'll be reaching for the remote. And if my kid was a little older, I'd sneak in some talk about the controversy to assuage my guilt, in between all the held breath and guacamole. But at least for these games, my son's first, I'm going to let him watch them in all their wonder, without caveats. Because in my house, Santa still exists.

It's enough to make a girl swear off her iPhone. And I must admit that this week, each time the phone rings, I've been a little more picky about who I'll answer to...

But back to Larry King. Witness #1: Ronald B. Herberman, MD, of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute told King's audience that although the evidence is still controversial, there's enough reason to be worried. The Insititute just issued a serious warning concerning cell phone use, and its potential link to cancer. Witness #2: Epidemiologist Sam Milham, M.D., said on King's show that cell phones may cause an oncoming brain cancer epidemic. Witness #3: Neurologist Chris Newman, M.D. who filed a lawsuit to the tune of $800,000,000 against his cell phone company, declaring that 9 years of cell phone use caused his brain cancer. True, the evidence may not have caught up yet to the accusations, but it's not exactly crackpots who are making the claims. These guys are trained doctors. Some of them study or operate on the brain for a living. With 100 million Americans putting one of these potentially lethal things to their ears on a regular basis, it seems like some study may be in order...

The FDA has tried not to fan the flames, but there are studies trickling in from other countries that link cell phone use to tumors like glioma (a la Senator Edward Kennedy's cancer), acoustic neuroma (a tumor that lives where the ear meets the brain), and cancer of the parotid, which is also near the ear. Researchers say that cell-phone related cancer may have to do with the fact that while the radiation produced by the phones isn't all that strong, it's all focused on the head and neck area. And several studies that point to a link between cell phones and cancer show that tumors tend to occur on the side of the head where the patient holds the phone.

Yikes! Unhand that mobile, people! Just how important is that phone call?

Regardless of whether you think this is all a bunch of bunk, it's something to think about, especially when it comes to kids. The University of Pittsburgh Cancer Center says you shouldn't let children use a cell phone (no matter how much they beg!) except for emergencies. And pregnant ladies should keep those things as far from the fetus as possible. Keep your calls short and pregnant or not, don't carry the phone on your body, and use an earpiece.

And if you can bear it, use that old-fashioned item picking up dust in the kitchen...the wired phone. Sure, wired may be tired. But at least it's not cancer causing.

Reader's Digest just hit the stands with a new article, complete with the best and worst states for teen drivers. They rank every state in the Union on the everything from how hard kids have to hustle in order to get behind the wheel, to whether or not seatbelt laws are enforced. Bad news for parents in Montana, Mississippi, and Arkansas: these states rank amongst the worst, and also make the Top 10 for most teenage driving fatalities. On the flip side, Alaska, California, and Delaware are considered the safest states for teen drivers.

Still sore about the rates you're paying to insure yoru kid? Well, car insurance companies may indeed be evil, but there's some method behind their madness: the crash rate for 16-year-olds is almost double the rate for 19-year-olds.

Only 20% of today's high schools offer Driver's Ed, compared with 90% in the 1980s, which means that the burden of keeping kids safe falls squarely on parents' shoulders, for the most part.  Here are 5 things you should know to keep your kid out of trouble:

1) Teach Them to Slow Down: Easier said than done. But consider this: speeding is a factor in 35% of all car crashes with young drivers.

2) Teach Them to Put Down the Phone: Using a cell phone increases crash risk by 300%. Exactly how important is that phone call? Probably not so important it can't wait for your kid to pull to the side of the road to make it.

3) Turn Down the Volume: 87% of teen deaths involve distracted drivers, wtih radios ranking near the top as distractors.

4) Don't Let Them Carpool: True, it may make you the least cool parent on the block, but adding one passenger to a teen-driven car increases the fatal crash risk by 48% and adding a second friend increases it by 158%.

5) Set a Driving Curfew: Teen drivers are three times more likely to die in a crash at night than they are to die during the day

At the very least, it's something to have in your back pocket when your teen yawns that he’s bored. And who knows, he may just learn something this summer…

www.freshbrain.org





 

Byron Garrett was introduced as head honcho and new CEO at the PTA's 112th Annual National Convention and Exhibition this weekend. For an organization once known as the National Congress of Mothers, it's a big step.  The announcement comes on the heels of a national poll that shows more men are getting involved in their child's education than ever before. In fact, there's been a dramatic shift in PTA membership in just the past five years alone. In 2003, only 3% of members were men. This year, it's up to 10%.

It's been 111 years since the PTA first launched, way back in 1897. Today, the organization has almost 6 million members, down from its heyday in the 1960s, when membership was almost double that number, but still a force to be reckoned with. Still, with more and more parent groups across the country choosing to fly solo, rather than join the ranks of the PTA, the organization faces challenges as to how to get parents whether mom or dad, on board.

Garrett will work hand-in-hand with Chuck Saylors, the PTA's first ever male president-elect, who was picked last year. Two men at the top of the PTA ranks? Who'd have thunk it. We've come a long way since 1897. Here's to hoping that all this male leadership will make more guys feel like you don't need to be a mom to sign up for the PTA...

What’s a liberated lady supposed to think of all this? Is pink really the new black? I have to say, it’s a tough pill to swallow. I grew up in the post-Feminist era, with a mom who told me women could have it all and a dad that threw the football with me religiously each night in the backyard. My parents were hell-bent on teaching my brother and I that gender was irrelevant. They bristled when my elementary school music teacher refused to let me play the drums and forced me to play the flute because it was “more ladylike”. And they rejoiced when I showed an interest in math.

Still, it took having kids to make me realize that there is something to this whole gender debate. Despite my efforts to give my son a bevy of stuffed animals, get him interested in cooking, and engage him in arts and crafts, he still gravitates towards books with text along the lines of “SMASH, CRASH! I love to SMASH!” and sticks the perfect length for sword play, while his female classmates cluster around the dress-up corner and fight over the baby stroller. I hate to admit it, but it’s true.

It’s been more than five years since No Child Left Behind pointed to single-gender classrooms as a possible key to raising student achievement. But public outcry and anti-discrimination laws kept that genie in the bottle until a change in federal regulations in 2006, which gave schools the wink and nudge they needed to start down the road to single-gender classes, as long as they were voluntary and “substantially equal”. Translation: as long as you don’t force single-sex down parents’ throats, you can do what you want.

Still, while gut tells us boys and girls learn differently, the research is slim. Supporters point to studies on cognitive development (for example, the fact that kindergarten boys typically learn to read later). But many activists who’ve lived through the sixties remember all too well how “separate but equal” works in practice, and say that dividing girls and boys will only increase gender stereotypes. In schools where all else has failed, is it wrong to try something new? And if girls do show that they’re more likely to put on a lab coat with no boys around, should we feel guilty about that?

How exactly do we nurture our kids for a co-ed world? Do we fight extra hard to tell our girls they can become statisticians and sign our boys up for drama class? Do we change the lighting and seating schemes in the classroom to account for the way boys’ brains work versus girls? Do we divide and conquer? I’m not sure. For now, I’m tucking books like Leonard Sax’s “Why Gender Matters” and Michael Gurian’s “Boys and Girls Learn Differently!” under my arm, but I’m not running out to sign my kid up for an all-male class. I’m continuing with business as usual-- happy when my son puts his toy puppy to bed and “feeds” him with a bottle, and trying not to grit my teeth too much when he picks up that stick to play “gun”.

As they say, "Change is Good." Well, we hope you'll think so! This month marks our one year anniversary. We've been hustling to put the best education and parenting content information there available, all under one roof. We've formed partnerships with some of the most admired non-profits and universities in the country. We've written thousands of articles from scratch. And we've kept our eye on the ball, always aiming to give parents the tools to spark a lifelong love for learning.

So, with one year come and gone, we'd love to hear how you think we're doing. Do you love a certain feature? Detest another? Let us know! We want this site to be something you depend upon, something that answers your most pressing questions, but also a place that surprises you.

It's been one year. Let us know what you think. And thanks for being a part of something we're incredibly passionate about. We made it to our first birthday!

Problem is, teachers aren't exactly falling in line. In the first nationally representative survey of educators to date about the teaching of evolution, hot off the presses from the journal PLoS Biology, the authors show that one in eight high school biology teachers present creationism as a scientifically valid alternative to Darwin.

Cue public outcry? Not exactly. It turns out that a whopping 38% of Americans would like to dump the teaching of evolution altogether-- they want their kids to learn the Adam and Eve version of things in school.

We're not talking about a lot of time, here. Despite the fact that the National Academy of Sciences considers evolution to be the central concept of biology, the majority of biology teachers spend a mere 3-15 hours on the topic, if they teach it at all. And human evolution? Just 5 hours on average.

The most interesting thing of all is that the teaching (or not teaching) of evolution isn't tied to state standards or regulations. Instead, the authors found it's directly linked to the religious beliefs and education of the individual teachers involved. Less than 1 out of 3 high school biology teachers believe God had no hand in evolution and nearly one-half believe God was involved. Almost 1 in 6 believe God alone created humans in the past 10,000 years and evolution is complete and total bunk.

So where does that leave us? The courts say one thing. The teachers are saying another. Do you know what your child is learning in the classroom?...

You think you feel old? Mrs. Ghaini has been alive and kicking for 134 years, making her the oldest living person on the planet. Unofficially, that is. Born to a nomadic tribe called the Raj Gond community, which didn't keep birth records, she can trace her son's birth to the reign of Queen Durga Devi and Indian officials have declared Mrs. Ghaini born sometime in the 1870's. This makes her quite a bit older than the "official" oldest person on the planet, an American that's a mere 115 years old.

Why am I telling you all of this? Because I found this woman on a website called Story of My Life (www.storyofmylife.com) which allows anyone to enter their life history for free-- to share with everyone, or just family and friends. They've set up a nonprofit entity (in addition to their for-profit arm, which founded the company), to ensure that stories will always remain open to all and cost-free, with the intention that families will write their stories for future generations to view later. Talk about turning that age-old family tree school project on its head! As I read about Mrs. Ghaini I couldn't help but think that this could be a great resource-- not only for kids to read about people across the world and get a glimpse into their lives, but also for them to record the stories of their grandparents, their parents, and themselves-- like an online time capsule of sorts. As of now, writing, pictures, videos, and voice can all be recorded at no charge.

So check it out, and let me know what you think. At the very least, you'll gain a little spring to your step as you read about that 134 year old, in between your loads of laundry...

I'm fresh back from the Seattle International Children's Festival and I'm not sure who had more fun, my son or me. In between the Amazones (master drummers from Guinea), Jo Taira (a puppeteer from Japan), and the craziest circus performers I've ever seen, who managed to squeeze 46 circus acts into a scant 45 minutes, there were clay throwing thespians, Afro-Colombian all stars, flamenco dancers, and a whole crew of amazing performers scrunched into the middle that I didn't even manage to see.

True, it may not be the college pick-up scene you remember (if you remember!) but fest-ing it with the kids can be the highlight of a summer. For those of you who missed the incredible goings-on in Seattle, and the equally impressive Maker's Fair here in the Bay area, here are 7 more festivals to wet your whistle this summer, kids in tow:

Chicago Kidpalooza, Chicago, IL (August 1-3). Rock out to former Jane's Addiction frontman Perry Ferrell or alternative music guru G Love, and let your kids come with you! This festival features Paul Green's School of Rock Workshop-- a perfect summer activity for Jack Black fans, plus songwriting workshops, "Guitar God" training, hip hop dance classes, silkscreen printing stations...even a craft area where kids can make their own recycled instruments. Rock on!

Flint Hills International Children's Festival, St. Paul, MN (May 31-June 1). No need to break the bank here! All tickets are a super-cheap $5. A sweet deal when you consider the quirky lineup. From West African drummers straight from Guinea, to a circus performed completely by marionette puppets, to kid-friendly theater, this is a great way to get kids addicted to the arts, ice cream cone in hand...

International Children's Festival, Somersworth, NH (June 21). The festival runs along the main drag of this small New Hampshire town. With 4 stages for musical acts, multicultural entertainment, crafts galore, a petting zoo, and more activities and vendors than you can shake a stick at (over 250!), it's sure to keep you all nice and busy on a hot summer day.

World's Largest Catsup Bottle Summerfest, Collinsville, IL (July 12-13). Okay, I couldn't help myself. No, I've never been there. But a festival who's sole purpose in life is to honor the 59th birthday of the world's largest catsup bottle? Sign me up! Aside from the nod to the red stuff, this festival boasts a classic car cruise, water balloon toss, hula hoop race, music, crafts, and of course, catsup tasting!

Movie Madness Festival, Las Vegas, NV (June 6-October 11). The city of sin becomes the city of cin...ema. Each summer, they host 8 movies in 8 different community parks. This year, pull out the picnic basket and lounge under the stars for kid-friendly faire like Curious George and Nanny McPhee. With a great lineup and equally excellent organization, this is one gamble sure to pay off.

Orlando Summer Jam Fest, Orlando, FL (June 8). Latin, jazz, soul, rock, country, and whatever else floats your boat, plus carnival rides for the kids. Sponsored by the city of Orlando and capped with an incredible fireworks show at night's end, this is the perfect excuse to leave Disneyworld a little early...

San Francisco Theater Festival, San Francisco, CA (July 27). Yerba Buena Gardens comes alive with theater greats from all across the globe, but the festival has a special component just for kids. This year, listen to junior jazz performers from Singapore, check out a clown conservatory, watch some magic, or take in a shadow puppet show. A quick walk across the street gets you to the Museum of Modern Art, too.

Stop your grumbling...what did I miss? If you've got another festival or summer event to recommend, send it on over!

I admit it, I am one of those kids who grew up on PBS. My family had the whole hippy thing going-- Peter, Paul, and Mary cranked up in the car, books galore in the living room, and education-only programming during the small window we were allowed to watch TV, if at all. The Electric Company was that rare breed of TV birds that mom and kid could agree on-- mom liked the literacy bent, and I was partial to the cool music and the whacky actors running around in gorilla suits.

Now, rumor has it that the show is in for a reboot. PBS is updating the 70's phenomenon for a new generation, and replacing the old Motown with more modern beats. What won't change is the show's commitment to helping America's kids learn to read. And in an age when American Idol and High School Musical reign supreme, they plan to make the show's update a singing and dancing sensation.

The Electric Company update will focus on kids ages 6-9 and be heavy on phonics and vocabulary. But it will do it all underneath a rich overlay of quirky characters, scratching DJs, and superheroes. And just as always... expect some pratfalls. As for the gorillas? Only time will tell...

In America at least, fast food is simply a way of life. It's all around us. It's cheap. And it's...well... fast. Few can resist the siren song of the Frosty or the smell of the freshly tossed deep fryer.

Can fast food be healthy? Probably not. But healthier, according to a new fandangled (and might I mention, free!) invention called the CalorieKing. Think of the king as your caloric Jiminy Cricket, ready to steer you away from evil. Except instead of sitting on your shoulder, he's trapped somewhere in your mobile phone. The king has close to 60,000 fast food and chain restaurant items stored in his little brain. And he call tell you which one is worse: the vanilla milkshake, or the double cheeseburger.

Now I know what you're thinking. Won't a little common sense tell me the same thing? You'd be surprised. For example, let's say you're at Wendy's with your hungry child or teen, looking at the menu. Junior is starved and thinking about either:

Meal #1: A roasted turkey and swiss frescata sandwich, a baked potato with sour cream and chives, and a medium Coke.

OR

Meal #2: A five-piece chicken nuggets, a bowl of chili, and a medium Minute Maid Light Lemonade.

What say you, fair parent? Sure, neither is health food, but which one is worse. If you're thinking it's the fried chicken and chili, think again. While both meals have over 20 grams of fat, Meal #2 rings in at 461 calories, compared to a whopping 1,003 for Meal #1. And can you believe it-- the lemonade has just 11 calories, compared to the Coke at 213.

Conclusion: none of us, however busy, should eat this stuff all the time. But if, like me, you find yourself at the occassional fast food joint, get yourself a free copy of this thing. You need an Internet-enabled mobile or smart phone for it to work. But you just might just teach your kid about making healthier choices. And the fact that you're using your cell to do it, might add a little smidge of cool-factor, too!

http://mobile.calorieking.com

Education.com was featured in a story about the gap year. For the uninitiated, a gap year is a period of time between high school and college in which a student jumps off the educational treadmill and spends a year exploring possibilities. They're quite popular around the world, but are just beginning to gather steam as an option here in the U.S.

Hopefully, this will be the first of multiple appearances for Education.com on The Today Show.  Keep your fingers crossed. Until, then, here's a link to the video. Let us know what you think!

http://www.education.com/magazine/article/mindthegap

For those not quite ready to give up Coldplay or U2,  Barney and The Wiggles, listen up! We've got four artists who give kids' music a good name. These CDs are road trip ready. Strap the kids into their car seats and take a listen. But be careful, this is the good stuff – you may just find yourself singing along at traffic lights.

Every Day Is a Birthday by Brady Rymer (Bumblin' Bee Records). Parents who shop in the alt rock section will feel right at home with Brady Rymer, a former roots-rock musician who's made the switch to children's music. We especially loved the title track, which describes all the kooky ways birthdays are celebrated across the world, and "Keep Up With You," a breakneck tune about a kid who runs his parents ragged. Rymer is the real deal –- he shared the stage with the likes of Bob Dylan and Dave Matthews before parenthood brought him off the road. This CD holds all the wonder of the best children's music, with some of the soul of your favorite pre-parenting favorites.

Catch That Train by Dan Zanes (Festival Five Records). The cat is apparently out of the bag with Dan Zanes. His music is regularly featured on Playhouse Disney, and he was just nominated for a Grammy. For those parents who've yet to be initiated in all things Zane, we suggest this album. Like Brady Rymer, Zanes is a rock band retiree (he used to sing lead for the band The Del Fuegos), and he can jam up a storm on everything from a harmonica to a ukulele. This album makes making music sound like incredible fun and the lyric book even includes the chords for each song, in case you or your kids are inspired to pick up an instrument and play along. Zanes was one of the first to give children's music true cachet, and guest appearances from Natalie Merchant, Nick Cave, and the Blind Boys of Alabama make this CD even better.

Fins and Grins by Johnette Downing (Wiggle Worm Records). Bonnie Raitt, move over! There's a new(er) blues belter in town. And she's easy on the ears. New Orleans singer-songwriter Johnette Downing has a velvet set of pipes, but instead of using them to sing of men who've done her wrong, she's belting out tunes about penguins and stingrays, crawfish and hermit crabs. Still, backed by Jimmy LaRocca of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band on trumpet and Bruce Daigerpont on Cajun accordion, you can almost imagine kicking back for a listen with a bowl of gumbo at a café in the French Quarter. She does Louisiana's long tradition of Creole, Cajun, and Zydeco proud.

Taxi by David Weinstone (www.musicforaardvarks.com). Jon Stewart, Philip Glass, and Helen Hunt have all discovered David Weinstone. So have members of the rock groups Phish, Sonic Youth, and The Beastie Boys. They all took their kids to his "Music for Aardvarks and Other Mammals" classes in New York. Now, even parents who've never walked the red carpet can get a taste of his hipster approach to kiddie music. Forget bunnies, bears, and farms. Weinstone sings about taxis, subways, and bagels. This is music for city kids – hold the sugar. But any kid, urban or suburban, will enjoy the CD's crazy rhymes, irreverent topics, and unexpected melodies. There's no singing down here – to kids or to parents. And if a sense of humor can be taught, this CD should be on every kid's syllabus.

Well, not heathens exactly, but no one who celebrates Passover. My husband is an atheist-- the son of a Chinese mom and a lapsed Baptist dad. There's no way he's eating matzo. And my son is small, so while he'll eat (or not eat) whatever I put in front of him, he's not exactly following the rules from a feeling of duty. The kid can't cook for himself.

So, in the interest of all of you out there from a bi-religious family, destined to plead the case for Passover in the coming week, I offer this: an amazing recipe your kids are sure to gobble up, whether they're Jewish by choice, or not!

Mom's Mandel Bread:

1 1/2 cups sugar, creamed with 1/2 pound of butter

Add 6 eggs, beat well after each addition

Sift together:

2 3/4 cups matzo cake meal

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup potato starch

Fold the above ingredients into egg mixture until combined

Add walnuts or pecans and chocolate chips

Shape into two loaves and bake on a greased cookie sheet at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Sprinkle with cinnamon and powdered sugar. Slice into thin slabs (like biscotti). Enjoy!

They asked how many colleges they were applying to, what worried them most about applying to college, how far from home they were willing to hang their college baseball cap, and a few other doozies.

Most questions were multiple choice, but the survey did contain one fill-in-the-blank: "What 'dream college' do you wish you could attend (or see your child attend) if acceptance or cost weren't issues?"

The answer? Well, from kids, the list was:

1. Harvard


2. Stanford


3. Princeton


4. NYU


5. Yale


6. Brown


7. Columbia


8. Cornell


9. University of Southern California


10. UCLA

For parents, the list read like this:

1. Princeton


2. Stanford


3. Harvard


4. NYU


5. Notre Dame


6. Cornell


7. Duke


8. Yale


9. MIT


10. Brown

Students were more than willing to hightail it out of town. 66% said they'd ideally like to go to school 250 miles away or more. But bad news, guys. More than half their parents said they'd want them closer to home.  And despite the mailbox stalking, only 27% of students said their biggest worry was not getting into the college of their dreams., while 64% were more worried about paying for it.

One thing parents and kids alike could agree on? Stress. Said one parent, "I wouldn't wish these last few weeks on anyone."

Now, I don't usually review things in this column. In fact, I've never reviewed a book here. But I decided to make an exception. Because for parents with a reluctant reader at home, this book might just be the jumpstart you've been  looking for.

The Pocket Guide to Mischief is a page-turner, plain and simple. Even the dedication, "This book is dedicated to my Nemesis. Think of this as a preview of coming attractions" is a hoot. Mischiefmakers can learn the basics-- from putting a sprinkler under someone's chair at a picnic, to how to handle a rubber chicken with ease. They'll learn to trick their family with a glass of secretly frozen juice, play Russian roulette with some seriously sick icecream cones, and host a rubberband chess duel.

But in between all the suggestions for mayhem, there are references to Niccolo Machiavelli and Vlad the Impaler, Ben Jonson and Wlliam Shakespeare. King introduces some pretty hefty vocabulary (in fact he has an entire section on insults inspired by the Oxford English Dictionary) but he does it in a fun way. Kids get a glimpse of familiar historical figures, but from an entirely different angle: King writes about the pranks of former presidents, famous philosophers, and world leaders. For example, Calvin Coolidge liked to ring the front door of the White House and then run and hide when the servants answered it. FDR reportedly made it a regular habit to tell nervous guests, "I murdered my grandmother this morning," in order to put them at ease.

From the Red Scare to the space race, this book is a great, if quirky, way to get kids excited about history, elevate their vocabulary, and get them reading. And it's in a package you won't have to shove down their throats. Just don't be surprised if you have to endure the occasional whoopie cushion at dinner time. It's worth it.

1. Colleges see scores from every single SAT your child takes. The ACT is a “score choice” test, meaning students get to choose which scores to send in.


2. Guessing on the SAT can hurt you. While on the ACT, there are no penalties for wrong answers, the SAT deducts a quarter of a point for every error. Translation: when it comes to the ACT, wild guessing is good. For the SAT, not so much.


3. The ACT rings in at 25 minutes shorter than the SAT: 205 minutes vs. 230.


4. The SAT has 3 sections, each marked on a scale of 200-800, with a total maximum score of 2400. The ACT is scored on a scale of 1-36.


5. The SAT has a mandatory essay. The ACT’s essay portion is officially optional (but some schools require it).

If you were listening to National Public Radio a few days ago, you might.

In a story called "The Family Dinner Deconstructed," Morning Edition proposed the idea that the family dinner can solve many of modern America's woes-- from drugged out teens to asthmatic kindergarteners. I'm sure I wasn't the only parent to grip the steering wheel a little harder, as I listened with rapt attention.

Turns out, this idea of the all-powerful family dinner has been around for awhile now. In fact, research has been pointing to communal mealtime as a cure to what ails us for close to a decade. According to this research, kids who eat nightly with the family read more, smoke less, get better grades, and are less likely to suffer from depression. In fact, the research was so compelling, that families actually got off their duffs and listened. Columbia University's National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse,  one of dinner's major cheerleaders, did a study in 2005 that showed that the number of of parents who made time to eat with their teens shot up by 23% since those studies first appeared in the 1990's.

Okay, so it's old news. Why am I bringing it up? Because new research from a Vanderbilt professor named David Dickinson contends that simply breaking bread with your kids each night isn't enough. You have to talk to them, too. And not just grunts, parents. You have to actually carry on a meaningful conversation "rich with explanation and storytelling."

When kids have a nightly meal with parents who stop mid-conversation to explain vocabulary (for example, they might use the word "ridiculous" and then say, "You know, silly"), kids reaped big rewards. But when they just sat down on a nightly basis but used limited vocabulary and simple conversation, no go.

Ahh, but here's the best part. It turns out that asking your kid to set the table or pour the water helps, too. That's right, chores are actually good for kids. And making sure your spouse gets home in time to sit down for the whole enchilada? Just as important.

Crazily enough, the nightly family dinner had a greater effect on kids' reading than anything else-- even reading to them on a regular basis. So break out the china and pull out those leftovers. Soup's on.

It turns out that explaining the answer to mom not only improved kids' ability to solve similar problems later on, it also helped them figure out tougher problems down the road. Best of all, the moms didn't have to say a word. "We had the children's mothers listen, without providing any assistance. We've found that by simply listening, a mother helps her child learn," lead author Bethany Rittle-Johnson says.

Is it Mama Mojo? Osmosis? Or is there something else at work here? According to Rittle-Johnson the magic lies in the fact that by explaining their reasoning to a parent, kids learn to understand the problem and apply what they have learned to other situations. "We saw that this simple act of listening by mom made a difference in the quality of the child's explanations," she says.  

Whoohoo! I'm essential. What a relief.

The truth is, I've got some mental leverage now. I've got parent power. And I don't even have to know the answers to help. The next time my son moans that he doesn't want to explain how to sound out the word "ball" or add 2 + 2, I can look him in the eye and say, "Are you sure? I'm your ticket to comprehension, kid."

And I know I'm not alone. Come on, admit it. If you're like most Americans, you tend to tune out when you accidentally run into a story on the radio about the intricacies of gene therapy, or a documentary on the details behind the origins of the universe.

Ah, but here's the rub: as parents, we have the unique ability to save our children from a life of scientific apathy, or outright fear. Get them started early enough, and they just might find this stuff fascinating.

That's why NASA is a parent's best friend. The space agency's newest mission will repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope, which in my mind, has brought science to the people, like no other tool in history. Ask me about the Periodic Table or the ins and outs of DNA and you'll get my best blank stare, but show me one of Hubble's amazing pictures of black holes or supernovas and even I, Ms. Science-phobic, can give an appreciative sigh.

And kids are no different. The Hubble is undeniably cool. For heaven's sake-- it orbits the earth in an astonishing 97 minutes flat-- a rate of 5 miles per second. Hubble is, plain and simple, a fantastic way to peak a child's scientific curiosity. And if the images it shoots back to earth aren't enough, NASA's just announced that they'll send a crew of seven astronauts into orbit in August 2008 to fix it-- a complicated and somewhat dicey adventure sure to spark kids' imaginations. The 11-day shuttle mission will feature five spacewalks and the first ever on-orbit repair of Hubble's most-used instrument, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), which failed last January after five years of hefty service. And they're bringing a crew of cameras. Talk about reality TV with an educational twist!

For anyone like me with a kid who dreams of launching into space someday, this is a golden opportunity to fan the fires of curiosity, and actually appear interested at the same time. Each day, Hubble delivers 10-20 gigabytes of breathtaking images to scientists the world over. But you don't need to be an astronomer to marvel at the images the space-based observatory kicks out every day.

Get started at www.hubblesite.org or http://hubble.nasa.gov. Begin talking it up now, well before the August launch, with shots of Mars, or images of neighboring galaxies. Check out a guide to tonight's sky. Or listen to a lecture or podcast with one of NASA's experts. This is riveting stuff, I promise.  No physics degree required.

Sometimes I think that if even one hot-to-trot young entrepreneur took a long hard look at the market and allowed himself to see what's really missing, I'd be able to get a decent omelet around here-- without having to wait in line for over an hour on a Sunday morning. Sure, breakfast may not be the sexiest of business ideas, but there's no denying the numbers. People in search of a good place to eat on the weekends? Many. Places to get such a meal? Few.

Similarly, rather than another hot VC-fundable idea, what this area really needs is a preschool you don't have to sign a child up for while they're still in the womb.  Perhaps that's why I'm so excited that universal preschool is beginning to make its way onto the campaign trail.

Here in California, we've already had a round with Preschool for All. There was a proposition on the ballot several years ago, Prop 82, which would have given every four-year-old in California the right to free preschool. It failed.

But now, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden are all talking about not just expanding Head Start, but also pushing universal preschool. Ultimately, it's a state-by-state decision. But federal funds will certainly have an impact on feasibility.

As 2008 gets underway, I'm sure we'll be seeing all sorts of issues make their way in and out of each candidate's stump speech. Regardless of what you think of any individual issue, education deserves a prominent place at the podium. Here at Education.com, we aim to pin the candidates down, both Democrat and Republican, on their educational views and agendas.

As parents, we all talk about the importance of education. But when elections come around, we need to vote the talk, and walk the walk.  Together, we can make education a key campaign issue in 2008. So send in those comments: what do you want us to ask the candidates? Where do you want to see this country going, when it comes to education? Let's start the debate right here.

"Mom," he asks, "Why did Santa bring me puppets instead of the Cranky the Crane that makes tons of noise?" Or, "Mom, why does Santa bring presents to the kids, but not to the grownups?"  As someone who's pretty new to the whole Santa business (I'm Jewish, it's my husband who celebrates Christmas), I find myself getting exceedingly nervous about slipping up. But more than that, I'm feeling incredibly guilty about flat-out lying to a four-year old.

"Can Santa really stop time, mom? Really?" he asked me yesterday. Or, "Is one second to us really seven seconds to Santa? That's what Dad told me." I nod my head solemnly, "Well, Dad is the Santa expert," I say, "He should know." That seems to satisfy him. But although it stops the questioning, the butterflies keep swimming around in my stomach. I can't help thinking about the fateful day when my son looks at me, betrayed, and says, "You lied about Santa."

As parents, we encourage our kids to tell the truth. We devise all sorts of consequences for untruthful behavior-- be they carrot or stick. Does it strike anyone else as a little odd that as a society, we run around fibbing about a big man in a fuzzy red suit?

Don't get me wrong. It's not that I don't understand the need for a little white lie now and again. It's not that I don't enjoy the cookie baking and the gift anticipation. It's not that my heart doesn't fill to bursting when my son runs in screaming on Christmas morning, screeching, "Santa was here! Santa was here!" But as someone with scant experience with Christmas, I must say that this whole Santa thing seems like a train wreck waiting to happen.

So, worthy readers with older kids, who have managed not to traumatize those kids when The Moment of Truth arrives, I beseech you, send in your words of wisdom. Until then, I'll do my best to keep my cool when my son asks how the Big Guy can carry so many toys in a sleigh the size of a pickup truck. Or when he asks why Santa doesn't visit his Jewish friends on Christmas Eve. "That's an easy one," my colleague told me today, "Just tell him they don't have chimneys".

The Pew Research Center, for those who don't know, routinely takes the pulse of average Americans-- asking them everything from whether it bothers them when store clerks wish them "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays," to whether they think the Attorney General is lying. And this week, they released a roundup of the 15 stories that the public seemed to care about most in 2007, and the 4 seeming biggies that didn't even make them blink.

Some of the usual suspects are there-- Democrats vs. Republicans, fatigue with the Iraq war, worry that "that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer." But there were a few things that sparked my interest. Take this: a major Pew study found that blacks are less upbeat about their place in America and their chances at a bright future than they've been at any time since 1983. Or this: Generation Next (those between the ages of 18 and 25) are the "most tolerant of any generation on such social issues as immigration, race, and homosexuality"-- so much so that their votes could really tilt the country Democratic, if they actually go to the polls come election time. Or this: just 41% of Americans now think that children are "very important" to a marriage, down from 65% in 1990. In fact, given a list of 9 items to rank as important to a successful marriage, kids came in a measly #8, well behind even "sharing household chores."

As for stories that seemed huge, but didn't pick up steam? The Pew people point to gun control, which despite the worst school shooting in U.S. history (Virginia Tech), barely made a blip. Compare this to the shootings at Columbine High School, which launched a huge push of gun control and a "Million Mom March" that aimed to get stiffer gun laws on the books. Only days after Virginia Tech, when asked their views on handguns, only 37% of Americans wanted stricter sales laws, down 10 points from 2000.

And then there's global warming. Sure, Al won a Nobel for bringing the problem to the masses, but less than half of Americans view it as a "very serious" problem. They could all agree it was inconvenient, they just couldn't agree on the "truth" part.

And education? Not even on the list. Here's to hoping that when we're reading the sum-up a year from now, education will at least be on the radar.

Well, there's at least one thing you don't need to worry about, according to a new study from the Educational Testing Service: despite media moans that teacher quality in America stinks compared to the days of yore, teacher quality is actually getting better, not worse. The reason? Strangely enough, part of it has to do with the No Child Left Behind Act.

When most parents (me included) hear the words "No Child Left Behind", they think of standardized testing and curriculum requirements. But NCLB has not only meant more testing of students, it's meant more testing of teachers. And since 1998, both states and teachers' colleges have been required to report how their teachers (or soon-to-be graduates) have done on the Praxis test.

First, a caveat. The Praxis test is used by a variety of states as part of their teacher certification process. And it's designed by the Educational Testing Service, who put out the study. That said, the study points to an intriguing trend: when the results from 153,000 people in 20 states and the District of Columbia were compared, new teachers (credential-ed in 2002-2005) gave their predecessors (1994-1997) a run for their money. They beat them by 13 points in their verbal SAT scores and 17 points with their math scores. And the percentage of candidates with GPAs of 3.5 GPA or higher rose from 27% to 40%.

Sure, every school differs. But with the recent news that America was lagging far behind most other industrialized nations in math and science on an international test, the media's been in a frenzy about all that our teachers are doing wrong. It's nice to know that not everything is going to hell in a hand basket.

So take a deep breath and stop thinking about at least one item on your worry list... It's time to start focusing on those teacher gifts you haven't bought yet!

Dr. Richard Tunney of the University of Nottingham’s School of Psychology set out to find just what makes people happy. He studied the “happiness levels” of British lottery winners, compared to the levels of a control group, using something called the “Satisfaction with Life” scale, developed by the University of Illinois.  What he found was that it wasn’t the flashy jewelry or the hot new cars that upped lottery winner’s levels of euphoria, it was the little things: reading a book, listening to music, or scarfing down a chocolate bar.

Filthy rich or flat broke, the research found that happy people—whether lottery winners or not—gravitated towards frequent free treats like playing games, soaking in a long bath, taking a mid-day nap, or going for a walk. In contrast, the less happy people rewarded themselves by buying a lot of meaningless junk—CDs, DVDs, and inexpensive meals out.

A similar study several years ago by the University of Colorado at Boulder found that the happiest people were the ones that invested their extra income in life experiences, rather than material possessions. And Adrian White of the University of Leicester found, after looking at over 100 studies and 80,000 responses from people the world over, that happiness isn’t as elusive as you might think—and that it has even more to do with health and well-being as it does with money. His “World Map of Happiness” dubbed Denmark the happiest nation in the World. Switzerland, Austria, Iceland, and The Bahamas also scored in the top five, with the U.S. ringing in at #23.

So when it comes to giving your kids the best in life, put down your wallet for a minute and put on your sneakers. Take your kids for a hike. Run them a hot bath. Or break out a pint of ice cream. Sure, it may not look as sparkly this time of year as a brand new iPod, but it just might lead to them fulfilling your biggest dream for their future… happiness.

Maybe it's a tiny bit manipulative, but I'm using my son's anticipation to my advantage-- to practice a little bit of math. Getting a kid to count isn't always easy, but when it comes to counting down to gift time? No problem.

I didn't grow up celebrating Christmas. But once I walked down the aisle, it became part of my holiday repertoire. We spin our dreidels, light our menorah, string the twinkling lights, and set a tree in the living room. And along with inheriting all those Christmas ornaments that used to be in my Mother-in-Law's attic, I also inherited the concept of the advent calendar.

I freely admit that what initially won me over was the chocolate. A little shot of sugar every day from December 1st through Christmas? Count me in! But since becoming a mom, I've realized that advents also provide a great opportunity for little kids to try out their subtraction and counting skills, by figuring out how many days have passed, and how many are left to go.

Regardless of whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or something else entirely, you can weave this concept into your holiday routine.  You don't need to buy an advent off the shelf, you can make your own countdown calendar pretty easily. Take a pillbox, a jewelry organizer, or anything that has a set of boxes or pockets for storage. Heck, you could even string a set of socks along a clothesline in your living room (new ones, preferably!), painting a number on each one with a regular old paint pen.

Then create your own surprises. You can fill the compartments with little toys from the party store, with treats, or with notes that promise special activities – a cookie-making session, a family bike ride, a movie night...

Hanukkah is coming up fast, but there's still a bit over a week to count down. For Christmas and Kwanzaa, you'll probably want to start your experiment the first week of December. Whatever holiday your family celebrates, here's to a little addition and subtraction practice, with a minimal amount of whining. And for this mom at least, a little bit of chocolate!

Then again, don't underestimate your little guys. This week I almost fell out of my chair when my husband asked my 4-year-old what he was thankful for and he lifted his milk cup and said, "Mom. Because she's got the biggest brain!"

Being the greedy soul that I am, I'm contemplating how I can get a little more bang out of this Thanksgiving buck. And I've settled on a project which I'll dub, A Hat Full of Thankful. Assuming that there are other parents, like me, who are either hoping to get a little pat on the back this holiday season, or at least interested in what makes their kids tick, I've decided to share.

Think of the hat as a thought-collector of sorts. Here’s how it works. Find your stiffest head topper – bowler, cowboy, top hat – any hat will do as long as it’s not too soft. Place it upside-down on a table in the entryway of your home and surround it with a stack of index cards and a cluster of colored pens. As each guest arrives, take their coats and point them towards the hat. Ask them to write down at least one thing for which they’re thankful. Younger kids may need a little bit of help, but anyone is old enough to know what makes them happy. And if you don't ask kids to give their names, they'll probably be more forthright.

Once everyone has finished, collect the hat. Then at some point during dinner, pass it around the table and have each person reach in for a card and read it aloud.

I like this exercise because it helps kids practice reading and writing. I like it because it gets them to think. But most of all, I'll admit it, I like it because I like surprises. And Thanksgiving is the perfect excuse to drop your jaw, as you listen to what your kids have to say.

We spent weeks watching ants crawl through ant farms, and hour upon hour reading books to kids. We hauled telescopes out at midnight to make sure they were kid-friendly, and sent fuel cell cars into classrooms to test the fun-factor.

As a parent, I've often seen a little gold "seal of approval" on something in the store, but I'd never stopped too long to think about how it got there. I never asked if the company paid for their product to be considered, or if marketing had a hand in what editorial reviewed.

I don't know about you, but I'm busy. The holidays are coming, whether I'm ready or not. As you look through our gift guide, I hope it will spark some ideas about what to wrap up for the holidays. This loot is fun, no doubt about it. But every single item has educational value, and every one is there completely on its own merit, and not because someone slipped us a check. There's a lot here, but for every toy you see on our list, three were tossed onto the reject pile.

As we clear out the toys in our office and wrap things up to give to a local shelter, I must admit I'm relieved. It feels good to give back this season. And it feels good to know I'm done with my holiday brainstorming. I won't miss that cheesy holiday music and mall-time madness, I can tell you that. I've got my eye on that Canon Rebel and I'm going to drop some major hints. As for my son? I'm putting in an online order for a Super Fort. Shhh. Don't tell.

To check out our gift guide click here:

For the past 10 years, I've been interviewing perspective students for my alma mater, an institution that's been around longer than the U.S. has been a country. And this year, like all the years before it, I got a fat envelope in the mail reminding me that we're just about to head into interview season. 

When I first started volunteering as an interviewer, I was fresh out of college, and eager to evangelize. I prided myself on being a young graduate, who, unlike the older alums, could tell high schoolers just what it was like to attend my school in the "modern age". These days, I'm a mom with a kid just a scant thirteen years from his first college interview. I'm trying my best not to obsess about whether or not my son will eventually get into the school of his choice, and I'm trying even harder not to think about how I'm going to pay for it.

Luckily, here at Education.com, all sorts of news crosses our desk. For parents like me, staying up all night worrying about the paltry sums in their kids' college fund, take heart! Even if your kid doesn't score a perfect 2400 on their SAT, or find the cure for cancer, they just might still nab a scholarship. Here are five offers of free money that have nothing to do with skill or academic prowess:

1) Got a son who's tall, dark, and handsome? Well, the last two qualities won't matter much, but the "tall" just might score him some cash. Tall Clubs International gives out $1,000 scholarships to students who measure up. To be eligible, high school students must be at least 5'10" (for women) or 6'2" (for men).  Go to www.tall.org for more info.

2) Strapless or halter... no matter! As long as it's made of duct tape, your child's prom attire might help them win a $3,000 scholarship for themselves, $3,000 for their date, and $3,000 for their school. Duck Tape brand duct tape wants to see the most uniquely sticky and fashionable ensemble, and they'll pay good money for the winner. (www.ducktapeclub.com)

3) If your son or daughter is obsessed with skateboarding, you could be in luck. A group of moms has gotten together to create a scholarship specifically for "skateboard activists", named after Patrick Kerr, an honors student who spent a good deal of time convincing people to create skateboard parks. Top prize is $5,000, but there are several $1,000 scholarships as well.

4) This Thanksgiving, give the young chef under your roof the turkey leftovers. The Culinary Institute of America is giving up to $15,000 for the best recipe made from post-Thanksgiving bird. This is arguably the best culinary school in the country and the Top Turkey Scholarship Contest is one of many recipe awards given to perspective students.

5) Beef can be good for you. At the very least, financially. If your son or daughter has the gift of gab, they might want to enter this scholarship contest, given by the American National Cattlewomen. This is a public speaking competition for kids between the ages of 16 and 19, meant to promote the glories of beef. Top prize is $2,500.

So parents, when it comes to college, try to take a deep breath. The term "merit scholarship" might not be exactly what you thought. As for me, I'm thinking of talking up Tupperware, just to cover my bases. Word is, they've got a scholarship for dealers and their dependents. Mixing bowl, anyone?

An international coalition of consumer organizations, spearheaded by the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest and the International Association of Consumer Food Organizations, says soda is making kids fat. No big news there. But they've thrown down the gauntlet-- aiming the glove directly at Coca-Cola and PepsiCo-- and are demanding that the government force the corporate giants to stop all advertising to kids under 16, replace all sugary drinks from school vending machines with drinks like seltzer, and pay a tax on every soda sold to pay for nutrition and fitness awareness programs and subsidize the cost of fruits and vegetables.

Now, I'm no soda fan myself. But I am a realist. And I think that getting my kid to drink seltzer is about as likely as getting him to clean his room in a purple gorilla suit sewn by piglets. It's virtually impossible as a parent to shield a child from junk food advertising. Even if you turn off the TV, there's no bubble you can put kids in that prevents them from seeing fizzy drinks and golden arches everywhere they go.

But, schools should be free of that. I agree with the assessment that giving kids soft drinks in school pretty much guarantees that they'll be too sugared up to concentrate on anything.

That's why I like the idea of a nutrition tax, just as I like that cigarette companies are forced to pay for anti-smoking campaigns. True, it's a tough pill to swallow for soda giants. I'm sure they don't relish the thought of paying for my son's bananas, but that's poetic justice in its finest form. I'm all for convenience food, but not to the tune of an entire generation of little kids suffering from type 2 diabetes.

It's time to take to the streets. Or at least take to the phones. It's time to call your Congressperson if you want soda off school grounds. And perhaps it's time for we parents to pick up a picket sign and start promoting that seltzer...

Like many parents, I've got a fail safe Before Bed ritual that my son and I have been doing each night since he was an infant. It's gotten a bit more intricate over the years, morphing from just a story and a kiss, to include everything from an intricate Abbott and Costello-like routine called "Two Things", to swatting the bad dreams from underneath the rainbow tent  before I turn out the light. The story thing has been the one shining light of consistency. Until last night, when it got usurped by Lego.

Now, I'm the first one to admit that I love Lego. Fine motor skills practice, creativity without the pressure to color between the lines, learning how to think in three dimensions... I know all this. But it didn't make me feel any better when my son tried to trade in his usually coveted story-time chip for a few more minutes of plastic.

That's because the research has spoken. And to put it plainly, stories matter. Maybe not as much as food and shelter, mind you, but they're right up there near the top of the list. Studies show that reading to children for at least fifteen minutes a day is more than just bonding time. It actually triggers their brain cells and forms new ones. Consistent early reading experiences are directly linked to later reading success. In fact, reading is so important that a few years ago, the President of the American Academy of Pediatrics came out with a statement recommending that pediatricians prescribe daily reading when kids came in for well-child visits.

October is National Book Month. And I'm taking it as a reminder to stay vigilant. No matter how busy the day gets, there's always time for fifteen minutes of reading. Even if it means your staller scores a few more minutes before bed. Why not sneak in an extra fifteen minutes after work, just in case. I for one, will be pulling out a copy of "My Father's Dragon"-- an oldie, but a goodie.

Here's to making every month book month, October or not.

Parents rarely feel the freedom to air their most private desires. I mean, of course we want our children to be healthy. But we also dream that they'll save the world, win an Oscar, discover the cure for cancer, win a Nobel Prize... And we dream they'll do it with the support of their loving family and a gaggle of fantastic friends at their side.

The problem is, as parents, we have little impact on the friend part. Sure, we can model friendship by showing our kids how we interact with our own buddies. We can guide them as tots, by teaching them that smacking their friend in the head with a shovel when they don't want to share probably isn't the best way to ensure an ongoing relationship. But in the end, we can't really help them form that portion of their social safety net. It's up to them.

As an adult, I've always been jealous of those people who have friends they've known since kindergarten-- friends who have seen them through not only a divorce or a major life event with aplomb, but who guided them through the pain of braces, or the trials and tribulations of first grade. I find myself thinking sometimes about my son's friends, wondering if any of them will still be in his life when he heads off to elementary school, let alone college.

His "best friend", a boy with whom he was completely inseparable for over a year, is now a persona non grata at our house. "I don't want to play with him anymore," my son says. And he's been saying it for months now.  When I ask my son the reason behind this soul mate split, he says, "Because he put my shoe in the garbage."

Said garbage was empty. Said shoe was reclaimed. But the friendship, despite parental intervention, was over.

As a mom, I want to teach my child the importance of friendship. I want to teach him that it takes kindness, it takes forgiveness, it takes work. But I also want to teach him resiliency. I want to teach him to stand up for himself and be his own man. Heaven knows there are plenty of examples in my own life where I held on to a friendship long after it had gone stale-- to people who made me feel worse about myself, rather than better.

So this week, when my son said he's done with this friend for the umpteenth time, I decided to let it go. Maybe he's on to something. Maybe the breakup had nothing to do with the incident itself, it was just an excuse to move on. Sometimes, we focus so much on the things we want to teach our preschoolers, that we forget to learn from them.

We all want friends for our kids who nourish them, who make them laugh, who treat them with respect. But we also want to raise children who can recognize their own worth. Who can call it quits when someone consistently fails to treat them right. That's just simple self respect.

And so when they come to us and say it's over, we need to trust their judgment. We need to show we understand. We need to  shake our heads sympathetically and say, "They put your shoe in the garbage."

That's what I'm beginning to call myself, anyway. In the past year or so, I have suddenly become a Sugar Fascist-- attempting to refuse my son all forms of glucose-inducing pleasure. Flavored yogurt was a health food when I was a kid. Now, it has become my Public Enemy Number 1.

This sugar stinginess is difficult at the best of times. But with Halloween just around the corner, it's become next to impossible. Candy corn looms at every checkout stand. Big plastic bags chock full of Reese's Cups and Milky Ways, lurk at the head of every grocery aisle. I've become slightly obsessed, I must admit, practically apoplectic as I scan the ingredients of cereals and crackers. "Sugar, sugar, and more sugar..." I moan. Meanwhile, my son plans his Trick or Treat route, his eyes glowing in anticipation.

It's not that I want to deny him the joy of an overflowing plastic pumpkin. But I've become increasingly aware that sugar has wormed its way into every product in the American pantry. Today's children are swimming in it. In 1967, according to U.S. News and World Report, sugar consumption was at 114 pounds per person, almost all of it raw or refined. In 2003, it hit 142 pounds per person-- and 61 of those pounds were made up of high-fructose corn syrup.

But wait, you're thinking. All that sugar must have been counteracted by some good old fashioned greens, right? Not exactly. In that same year, the average American ate a measly 8.3 pounds of broccoli.

And so, like I said, I've become a sugar Grinch-- refusing to bow to the pressure of cookies in the lunch box and dessert each night after dinner.

It will probably backfire. Like those adults you see, absolutely addicted to TV because they weren't allowed to watch as children, my son will likely become a sugar fiend when he grows up. But as for now, I'm the boss. And this boss is going to Just Say No to that most enticing drug of all, despite my own sweet tooth. 

As for Halloween? I guess we can afford 24 hours of tooth decay once a year. I'm not that mean.

The object of his desire? Three plastic cars. Not just any cars, mind you. Lightening McQueen and his Pixar cohorts. "Mom--meeee," he whined, "I want those vehicles." We had, of course, the discussion every parent has at the store. "Today is not a buying day", "You can ask for it for Christmas", "You just got a new toy x days ago" ... and so on. But in the end, when that didn't work, I pulled out my trump card: "I'm not buying you that today," I said, "But if you really want it, you can use your own money. You can use your allowance."

Now, part of what convinced me to start him on an allowance in the first place, was the anticipation of moments like this one. We've interviewed many experts on Education.com and the reigning thought from the financial gurus is that giving kids an allowance teaches them early to make good decisions about money. It teaches them to budget, to wait patiently to accumulate enough for a possession they really care about, to save for upcoming family occasions, and to consider those less fortunate by putting aside a portion for "sharing".

They also say it teaches kids how to learn from their mistakes.

So when my son blew it all in one go, on a trio of plastic cars, I held my tongue. When he asked why he couldn't get a small wood dinosaur, I pointed to the empty coffee can. 

My son is an allowance magician. But I've got a few tricks up my sleeve as well. Because like his money, all the whining has miraculously disappeared.

No, I'm recovering, because the night brought up a topic that I realized I have deep-seated anxiety about-- in short, how early kids should be introduced to academics. 

You've read the news. Kindergarten is the new first grade. First grade is the new second grade. And so on... So where does that leave preschoolers? If kids entering kindergarten are expected to leave their game face at the door, sit down on the colored rug and read, what does that mean for preschool? In other words, if most of the play has leaked out of the kindergarten balloon, should preschool teachers be sharpening kids' pencils and sitting them down to write? Should pretend play be ditched in favor of teaching kids to count to 100? Should circle time make way for phonics?

When our preschool director stood before us last night, she made her case. "We all know that things are pushing down," she said, "And there's a lot of pressure to bring more academics to preschool. Our feeling is, kids have a whole lifetime of school pressure ahead of them. Shouldn't they have at least a few years of play? At least a few years where they delight in coming to school? We believe strongly that children learn through play. And if we can teach them to love school now, we hope that we're laying the groundwork for them to love school forever."

My husband and I nodded enthusiastically. We'd chosen this preschool particularly for its play-based approach. And despite the fact that I've been hearing the grumbles on the playground from parents who took a similar tact, and felt jolted by the kindergarten wakeup call, I do think we're making the right decision. And the studies bear that out. No Child Left Behind may be forcing schools to push academics onto ever younger plates, but researchers have found that while kids from academic preschools might do better in the short term, when you look out to third or fourth grade, kids from play-based preschool programs have better academic performance across the board, in all subject areas.

My kid can play "post office" for forty five minutes, put fires out anywhere in the state when he gets a call from his trusty dispatcher, or extol the virtues of share day. Can he count to 100? Not quite.

But I'm betting on the fact that by nurturing his creativity and uncapping his imagination, we're setting the stage for school success. We're not teaching him what to think yet, but we're teaching him how.

"Do you know Mr. Messy? Are you familiar with Little Miss Bossy? Come on over to the story time area, and find out about this series, which is little known in the U.S."

Little known in the U.S? Maybe. But when the bookstore employee asked for a show of hands as to who had read any of the books in the series before, four kids (out of twenty) raised their hands.  Considering that they've sold over 100 million copies of these things since the books were introduced in the early '70s, and that creator Roger Hargreaves is Britain's third bestselling author, according to Wikipedia, four isn't all that many. Still, the books, until recently, have been somewhat elusive.

I know because I'm a die-hard fan. I gobbled them up when I was a kid, and as a parent, I was eager to introduce my child to Mr. Noisy, Mr. Grumpy, Little Miss Trouble, and all their hastily scribbled friends. I remembered trading them with schoolmates, signing my name at the bottom of a very long waiting list for them at the library, and sneaking them under the covers with a flashlight for a late-night read.

When my room got messy, my mom said, "Watch out-- you might be in for a visit from Mr. Neat and Mr. Tidy!" When I felt particularly bummed out, Mr. Grumpy always cheered me up. The books talked about rudeness and bossiness, loud voices and incessant troublemakers, but they did it in a fun and non-preachy way.

When my son started ordering his friends around like a three-foot dictator, I thought Little Miss Bossy would be just the ticket. I went to six local libraries and no one on staff had ever heard of the books. Ditto from the local bookstores. I bemoaned the fact, of course. But I found other books for my son to fall in love with.

The whole experience did make me think, though. I remember a childhood of tea in flavors I had never heard of brought from a British friend and foreign books brought to me along with stories of the cities they came from. So when my son came home with a Book Fair catalog last year that had the Mr. Men books in it, with the line, "Straight from England!", I admit that my heart raced, but I was a wee bit disappointed. In this wired, ultra-connected world, was there still such a thing as "you can only get this in Japan" or "you can only find this in Kathmandu"? Perhaps the Mr. Men books would have been even more special if we'd discovered them in a small shop in London.

I was thinking similar thoughts as we sat, at the book reading, and I listened to the woman read Mr. Tickle. My son giggled as the winding yellow arm wreaked havoc across town, and I giggled with him. The story hour went quickly and it was finally time for the last book.

The woman reading cleared her throat, "For those of you who love these Mr. Men books, I have a special treat," she said, "Mr. Jelly!" The kids stared at her wide-eyed. "Now, Mr. Jelly is only available in England," she said, "You can't get it here in the States."

Now I stared at her wide-eyed. Could it be? A book unavailable to all but a lucky few? A book that required some more in-depth finagling than the touch of a few keystrokes? My mind began to race. England... England. I knew people in England.  And I smiled. Because a wired world is a wonderful thing. But a little bit of unusual is never a bad thing.

Why is the sky blue? How is a car made? What is the exact meaning of infinity? I have no idea. I do, however, have the vague recollection that I once knew the answer to these and many other questions. After all, I studied like a banshee in school, didn't I?

A recent study by Doug Rohrer, a psychologist at the University of South Florida, and Hal Pashler of the University of California San Diego reports this stunning news: it was the studying itself that did me in. Rohrer and Pashler tested a group of students by dividing them into two groups. The first group were given a set of new vocabulary words and went through them five times. The other group was given the same list, but they kept practicing-- ten times in total. The results? While the study-maniacs did better when tested a week later, by four weeks later, all benefit was lost. In short, the "over-studying" wasn't worth it.

Interestingly, Rohrer and Pashler found that if students took a break between study sessions and went back to the material at least a month later, rather than cramming it all into one drawn-out study session, they did much better. Translation? In terms of longterm retention, cramming doesn't work.

That's a big deal, considering that hundreds of thousands of students across the country learn things week-by-week, whether it be that week's list of vocabulary words for the Friday test, or that week's list of problem sets for the upcoming math quiz.

Here's what you, as a parent, can do. When it comes to helping your kids in school, encourage them to study multiple concepts across the course of the school year, rather than over study a handful for that week's test. They'll remember more next year.

As for me? I think I'm destined to keep using the same old trusty phrase when my son hits me with his next zinger, "Interesting question, honey. Let's go to the library and see if we can find a book all about that!"

This Sunday is National Grandparents Day. And it turns out that it wasn't manufactured by our friends at Hallmark or American Greetings at all. It was created by a West Virginia housewife named Marian McQuade, who thought it was high time that America set aside at least one day a year to honor the eldest members of the family set. Miss Marian is no stranger to the importance of family-- she and her husband Joe have 15 children, 40 grandchildren, and 8 great-grandchildren. Needless to say, she'll be getting quite a bit of loot this weekend...

In 1978, the U.S. Congress officially declared the first Sunday after Labor Day to be National Grandparents Day. They chose September to signify "the autumn years" of life, according to the holiday's official website. Now, I don't know about you, but the grandparents in my son's life are not exactly playing cards on the porch with a tall glass of lemonade. His grandparents are waking up at 7 AM to do Pilate's, or flying across the country for a string of business meetings, digging up their backyard to build a Japanese tea house, running marathons, teaching special needs kids to cook, or working full-time on sailboats. Not a bad life, eh? And not exactly the "autumn" slow down the Congress had in mind.

When I was a kid, only two of my grandparents were still around. And they were retired. They went to the Brighton Beach for a game of Shuffleboard and flew down to Florida so they wouldn't be too cold in the New York winter. My son may get to know his grandparents far better than I did. With people living to be ever older, his grandparents will be around to see his college graduation and watch him buy his first house.

At least I hope so.

The bad news? With today's grandparents so active, who has time to babysit?

I guess that's just the price we pay to have these summer years with them. And it seems well worth it to me.

I hope not. As school looms on the horizon, so do inoculations. And if my son is anything like his father, he's in trouble.

This is not to say that my spouse does not perform some key, and traditionally manly functions around the house: he is mosquito ninja, handler of all things spider, and the remover of garbage cans, in addition to being an adept fix it man.

But despite the testosterone coursing through his veins, he's a wimp when it comes to shots. The week before we left (pre-kid) for a backpacking trip through India, we went to get our arms pricked with six or seven necessities meant to keep us healthy, and the poor man passed out. Not just once, but several times. He was in that doctor's office so long, he almost moved in.

So I ask you, is Fear of Shots inherited, like big feet or square fingernails?

As a parent, I find it endlessly fascinating to try to figure out how our son got his love for reading or his love of learning. I'm a little less willing to admit it when I suspect my genes may have contributed to some less attractive qualities.

As the Chicken Pox poke inches ever closer, here's to hoping that our children absorb only the best of our DNA, and that when it comes to facing down the needle, genes have nothing to do with it.

As parents, we love to think that the options are endless, especially for our children. But is all this choice a good thing? What happened to waiting with the other kids on the block for the school bus to come surging around the corner? What happened to knowing everyone in the neighborhood and knocking on their doors for a game of impromptu tag? As my son gets closer to another school year, as he creeps toward kindergarten, I'm beginning to realize that he may never know the kids on his block the way that I did.

According to my mother, when I was four, she let me walk to my best friend's house by myself. Granted, it was only five houses away, but still, I would never dream of letting my son do that. For one, we have no sidewalks where I live. But also, I'll admit it, I'm paranoid. It just doesn't seems as safe to be a kid as it did when I was growing up.

And with all those options, all those choices available to families these days, no one's exactly sitting on the stoop with a tall pitcher of iced tea. They're driving their kids to soccer practice, or music lessons, or Mandarin immersion class. No one's home to "keep an eye out". Kids available for a last minute bike ride or game of hopscotch are few and far between.

Don't get me wrong. I'm thrilled at all the options my son has to choose between-- all the rec programs and after school classes, all the make-your-own-ceramics birthday parties and coordinated playgroups. I'm lucky. But it sometimes seems to me that there's little room for kids these days to play without a play date. I don't remember my mom and all her friends keeping a calendar for me when I was four. Why should our kids be any different?

As parents, I think we need to plan some unplanned time. If it means scribbling it onto the calendar, so be it. We need to teach our kids more than math and reading, more than yodeling or yoga. We need to teach them that they can round up the troupes on their own, that they don't need us to chart their lives for them.

True, he's only in preschool now, but someday, my son will leave the nest. And I believe that the tag will help him. The unstructured time will matter at least as much as the orchestrated hours. And knocking on the neighbors' doors for a game of mud will pave the way for knocking on a dorm room door for advice, or knocking on a colleague's door for an impromptu brainstorming session. Removing some options now, will multiply them for later.

As a kid, my answer tended to look almost exactly the same from year to year... in a word: camp. But as the years have progressed, my dream vacation morphed, from summer camp, to summer stock, to summer backpacking on $20 a day across the world. Now that I'm a parent, my ideal vacation has become less about a bungalow on a deserted beach in Thailand, and more about the luxury of reading a chapter a day of a good book undisturbed.

As I write this, I am on my summer vacation. Five years ago, pre-child, that would have meant a trip to an exotic destination. Instead, I am at my in-laws, with 18 other members of the extended family, for a reunion of sorts. Last night, instead of a quiet meal in a tropical destination, I spent my evening cleaning and de-boning 110 pieces of salmon over a double sink with my husband's first cousin. Work done, we sat outside, with a guitar, a blazing fire, "homemade mud", and enough food to feed a small army, and stayed up until the wee hours of the night .

If you'd have told me five years ago that this would be my new sense of vacation nirvana, I'd have called you crazy. But there's nothing like family to keep a child entertained-- especially older cousins. So here we are. Trips to Cambodia have been crossed off the dream list in favor of trips to the aunt and uncle's house. Trips to Vietnam are being replaced with trips to a regular old campground. And my trusty backpack is gathering dust in the closet. It's funny how being a parent completely changes your perspective on everything... even vacations.

Then again, it's not all that different. As I type, my cousins are shouting down from the lawn for me to put down the laptop and come down for roasted marshmallows and s'mores around the fire pit. Sounds a little bit like summer camp all over again. So I guess things have come full circle from those old school essays.

"Here's how I spent my summer vacation..."

I remember the shock I went through when I slept over a friend's place and her mom "made us breakfast" by popping two cherry tarts in the toaster. In my house, there was a hard and fast rule: no food allowed in the grocery cart unless sugar was the third ingredient or less.

That was then, this is now. These days, it's next to impossible to find cereals that fit this rule. Aside from oatmeal (assuming you don't go for the Maple Brown Sugar variety), Grape Nuts, and Corn Flakes, good luck finding many choices in the cereal aisle where sugar hasn't elbowed it's way to the top of the ingredient list.

Those of us who find ourselves outraged each and every time we check a nutrition label, got some good news. This month, at an event hosted by the Council of Better Business Bureaus, some of the biggest offenders out there announced that they're pulling the plug on advertising junk to young kids. 

General Mills pledged to stop hawking products with 12 grams of sugar or more per serving during shows where more than 35% of the audience is 12 and under. And McDonald's and Coca Cola, who together are responsible for a whopping 2/3 of all ads aimed at kids (according to the Better Business Bureau's calculations in 2004), pledged to follow suit.

Is it the death of the morning sugar rush? The end to whining and begging in the supermarket? Not quite.

Sure, everyone's hailing the new "healthy" direction of the cereal giants and fast food kings. But let me just point out that there are plenty of sugar bombs that will still be acceptable game for kiddie shows.  Although they're a far cry from spa cuisine, Cocoa Puffs, Reese's Puffs, Cookie Crisps, and others don't have 12 grams of sugar per serving.

My advice? Stick to an old favorite... Cheerios. Sure, they're not as trendy as some of the neighbors in the cereal aisle. But rather than think of them as boring, think of Cheerios as a little black dress or worn in pair of jeans-- not exactly surprising, but always dependable.

Besides, at 1 gram of sugar per serving, Cheerios is still the most popular cereal on the General Mills roster. Just more proof that even without the sugar rush, your kids might still be able to make it to the bus on time.

In short, he's been terrified of almost every movie we've ever shown to him, no matter the G rating. I should start by saying that we've shown him a grand total of three movies in his lifetime: CARS, CHARLOTTE'S WEB, and now RATATOUILLE. He absolutely begs to go to the "big kids" movie theater and each time, despite our reservations, we've decided that "maybe now he's ready". But I have to tell you, it takes sitting in a darkened room with a four year old in your lap to realize just how scary these flicks can be.

For CARS, his first movie in the theater ever, he lasted only 30 minutes, then asked to leave. But afterwards, he told us it was "great!". He did make it through all of CHARLOTTE'S WEB, which I must say, was the best of the bunch. During our last endeavor, he got so frightened by the suspense music I could feel his little heart beating from a seat away. My husband took him into the lobby for awhile.

Recently, when we were in the video store, my son pointed to the cover of TOY STORY and said, "That TOY STORY is a very scary movie, isn't it?" My husband asked me that night if I thought we were raising a chicken.

In some ways, I guess we are. But with all the talk about how desensitized kids are these days to violence, this is one mom who's going to keep her kid out of the movie theater for awhile. If he's scared of cartoon rats, that's okay by me.

Tonight we have tickets to see a play in the park. It will be broad daylight and there won't be any scary theme music.

Who knows, if I play my cards right, I might finally have a male in the house willing to go with me to the theatre. The live kind.

This past week I decided to take my four year old golfing. This is a kid who has trouble sitting through a full round of Chutes and Ladders, so I was a little apprehensive about his penchant for patience. But I figured, ah, well, we'll spend half-an-hour or so in the sun, chasing after the few balls he manages to make contact with, and we'll call it a day.

Was I ever surprised. Not only did he manage to be patient enough to make it through the first few holes, he actually made it through all eighteen.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should probably tell you that this particular course had its share of windmills. And swinging objects. And bumpers. All right, I admit it. It was miniature golf. But still, the kid managed to hit most of the balls into the holes in 4 strokes or less. Which was significantly better than his hole-in-eight mama. So considering the genetic hand he's been dealt, we could be talking Jack Nicklaus here.

I know what you're thinking. Miniature golf is not the same thing as an afternoon spent on the green. But file this one under clueless parent, because if we're supposed to know our kids better than anyone else on earth, my son's in trouble. I didn't think he'd make it past the third hole.

After spending just one season at the edge of the soccer field clenching my teeth as a clump of parents screamed like crazy at their preschoolers, I've already decided I'm not a soccer mom. So I guess it's time to lace up those golf shoes. Tiger, watch out!

This is a relatively new phenomenon and I am still adjusting to my newfound capacities. I did not, after all grow up with the ability to turn red lights green or to stop stomach aches with the touch of my hand. It all came to me recently.

But I digress. Let me start with a little insight into the ever increasing nightmare otherwise known as my son's bedtime routine. My child, I regret to admit, is quite the staller. He will do anything and everything to resist going to sleep at night. And so we've tried to keep his bedtime ritual as detailed and consistent as possible.

In addition to capping the night off with our regular tradition of three books (no more), five hugs and a kiss, "two things" in which we each share the best things that happened to us that day, and an increasingly intricate list of I Love You's ("as high as the sky", "as deep as the sea", "to infinity and beyond", "the reddest", "the purplest", "the rainbowest", "to galaxies that haven't even been discovered yet"...), we have recently added another tradition to the list: my son coming out of his room with one excuse after another. First he needs a drink of water. Next he has to go to the bathroom. Then he wants one more kiss goodnight. And finally, the newest member of his stalling toolbox, "I had a bad dream."

Now, I'm as sympathetic as the next mom. But let's get real. You can't have a bad dream until you're sleeping.

At first, I tried to communicate this idea and explain that it was impossible for him to have a nightmare when he was wide awake. When that didn't work, I put my foot down, and told him he needed to stay in bed. But finally, at my wits end and several days into his increasingly sleepless nights I was at my wits end. I walked into his room and stood over his bed, ducking under his rainbow tent. "I'm going to have to use my magic," I said.

"Your magic?"

I nodded solemnly. "I hereby declare that no bad dreams can penetrate this tent. Be gone!" I intoned, "You have been warned."

He lay there with his mouth open, not sure what to say.

"It's done. They can't get through now," I said.

"Really?"

"Absolutely."

He lay back on his pillow, a smile on his face. And when I checked on him five minutes later, he was fast asleep.

The company was funded back in October and we started with three of us in a tiny attic, bursting with ideas. Today, for the first time, education.com is finally an official reality.

It's a little strange to release it out into the world. I feel somewhat like I did on my son's first day of preschool--proud of all I'd done for him, but aware that he'd grow even more with the help of others. As they say in parenting, "It takes a village" and I feel the same about this site. I'm surrounded by an incredible staff of educators, psychologists, and parents and we've been pouring our passion into education.com, in the hopes of what it could be, for the past 8 months. But as proud as we are of what we've done, it's time to wave from the gate and let this fledgling fly.

I hope you'll help us. I hope that you will find what you're looking for, and that if you don't, you'll let us know. And I hope that you'll contribute your ideas by building groups and adding to discussions, so that we can make this site everything we all dream it could be. Education is a huge topic to tackle. And a small group of people can't do it alone. But together, we can make something incredible.

True, it takes a village. But if the web can get people to talk about everything from widgets to hotel rooms, the origins of names to the history of marshmallows, it can certainly help us talk about the important things. And there's nothing more important than this.

So, won't you be my neighbor?

The man was playing flute, as he always does in the late afternoons, and we walked over to listen. "Why is he wearing a plastic bag as a coat?" my son whispered. "To keep him warm," I said. "Oh," he nodded.

The man stopped his playing to talk to my son. He asked him what books he was reading. My son was dressed from head to toe in red, and the man told him, "I see you like red, too." And after they'd talked for a few minutes, or as much as a four-year-old can talk, he thanked my son for stopping by.

"Why is he always on the lawn outside the library?" he asked as we got into the car. "He lives there," I said. "On the lawn?" He seemed strangely fascinated. "Yes."

My son nodded. He thought for a moment. "What does he eat?" he asked. I told him about the time I'd brought the homeless man a muffin and he told me, "Next time, I'd prefer dried fruit." He smiled a lopsided smile.

We went home. Read some books. Cooked dinner. I gave him a bath. "We should get some dried fruit," he suddenly announced, "For my new friend." I started to explain why that might not be a good idea, but I stopped myself. "And we should bring my friend some money," he said. I took a breath, about to explain that it was better to give to a homeless organization, or volunteer at a soup kitchen, than it was to give donations to a single man on the street. But then I swallowed my words.

We dream of raising thoughtful, caring children. We hope to guide them to think of more than just their rampant desires for lollipops and toys. For once, it was my son guiding me, stretching my boundaries. Here he was, flinging his love into the air, holding out his piggy bank and asking, with a very serious look on his face, "Will they give me change for the dried fruit?"

I put him to bed, after he'd set the money aside and I told him how proud I was of him. "Thanks mom," he said, and he drifted off into a smiling sleep.

We teach our children so much. But we can learn too, if we just stop talking, long enough to listen. 

1)  I do not mind if you wear the same clothes several times in a row as long as they don’t smell overly offensive.  But if you do do the laundry.  Do not put it in the washing machine and then leave it there until a fungal colony takes up residence.

2)  Your curfew is 12 am.  If you will be later than 12 am, make sure you call me.  And please don’t turn on the light in the living room when you’re sneaking by to get to your room.  

3)  Dating is all right, but use the Talk Show Test: do not bring home to mother anyone who would feel at home on Jerry Springer.  

4)  The only smoking I approve of is that pertaining to fish.  Lox good; Camel Lights bad.

5)  Do not drink and drive.  Ever.  That said, I will pick you up anytime anywhere if you call me.  And I won’t ground you until it’s time to pick up your first Social Security check.

6)  No matter how appealing they make it look in the commercials, cleaning up after yourself is not fun. But as the Nike people say, Just do it.  Someday you’ll look back at these years and realize you had it pretty easy.  Until then, pick up those socks!

That kid in the park who clocks the boy next to him when he takes his toy? Mine. The child who bites his friend when he won’t listen to what he says? Been there. The kid that won’t eat a single bite of green food? He’s sitting at my dinner table right now, with a plate of untouched broccoli and a bowl of completely savaged macaroni and cheese. 

College may have prepared me for the rigors of all-nighters and the intricacies of time-management, but it didn’t prepare me for the high level negotiations required to get my son to wash his favorite blanket or get dressed before the next solar eclipse. 

I don’t mean to say that he’s a terror. Far from it. But I also wouldn’t describe him as particularly interested in reason—unless it is the reason why that backhoe can lift up so much dirt.  

For me, parenting, more than anything else I have ever attempted, has been a lesson in humility. Kids don’t care about an Ivy League education or a solid resume, they care about whether you know how rainbows are made or why trains don’t run on steam anymore. My son could care less that I have, upon occasion, been called smart. He’s basing his decision as to my intellectual capacities on the fact that I can barely build a LEGO skyscraper and my sandbox skills leave something to be desired. 

When it comes time to travel with the family, I have the kid who insists on listening to the control tower on the pair of free headphones, the kid who smushes up the cheese crackers to make orange snow, the kid who’s so excited for takeoff that he repeatedly kicks your seat.  

When you turn around, a look of indignation on your face, I’ll apologize. I may even give you one of those free drink coupons the airline always sends me. But in the end, I’m only so sympathetic. He’s a kid, after all. He’s learning his place in the world—testing the boundaries and discovering the rules. Can’t you understand that? Maybe not.

But if you're really lucky, someday you might. May the Karma Be With You.

I'm only half kidding. Camp was that formative an experience. My mother dropped me off at my bunk at the ripe old age of five, I chose a cubby, and neither of us looked back for a minute. 

Now, before you go calling Child Services, it should be said that she didn't go all that far away—she worked there, and my brother and I reaped the benefits. For the next twelve years, long after my mom had gone, we counted the days until June, dreaming of bug juice and baseball, lanyard key chains and Capture the Flag. 

Camp was where I learned to kick a ball, where I learned to do a judo flip, where I learned to sweep a floor, and where I learned that even vegetables can taste good when they're stewed over a campfire. At home, my mom did my laundry, but at camp, I sorted my own whites and colors. I made my own bed and I budgeted my own canteen quarters. It was my first taste of real responsibility and my first taste of independence. 

School, especially these days, is all about preparation and evaluation. With all the pressure to make sure that No Child is Left Behind, there's little time for kids to pause for a dabble, little time for the "unartistic" to pick up a paintbrush, or the brown-thumbed to plant a seed. There are few places left where doors remain unlocked and solo stargazing is worry free. 

As parents, we want to give our children everything, and struggle not to give them too much. With summer approaching, think about the ultimate gift of childhood. Think about the gift of Nothing. No homework. No nagging. No over scheduling. Just a canoe, drifting in the middle of a lake. A kickball. Institutionalized food and a paper plate chore wheel.

Summer's not over yet. There's still time to give your kids s'mores. To give them the chance to figure out who they are, and who they want to be. That's what camp is all about.