Toy Ideas - (a positive radio show)

Sometimes, I hear really useful information on a radio show. Take, for instance, My Great Kid's show dedicated an entire show to talk about toys for children. In addition to interviewing Toy Expert Elizabeth Werner about the hot toys, video games and shopping ideas for the this year's Christmas season, they talked with Chris Matthews co-owner of Razzmatazz Toys.

Watch this web site for podcast info even after the holidays if you're looking for more toy ideas that use the imagination and incorporate active participation.

One toy that Werner described is something I want to look for. I'd like to see it up close. It's by Lego, and it is called Creationary. I found it on the internet here.

Dear Martha, (about your radio station...)

Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.

Dear Martha Stewart,

I was given a limited subscription to SIRIUS radio when we traded automobiles. There are so many stations from which to choose! Some are G rated, wholesome, family appropriate. Some are not. I expected Martha Stewart's channel to be one of the G rated channels. I had no idea that your station would be inappropriate to listen to, especially when my children are in the car with me.

Twice, one of my children and I have gotten into the car in the evening (last night the time was around 5 pm, EST) when your station was on. When I turned on the car, the voices of your hosts came on, too, with vulgarity.

I don't use that kind of slang for body parts and intimacy when I talk with other adults in any of my circles; I certainly don't use those vulgarities in front of my children.

When I listen to Martha Stewart radio, I expect to hear recipes, ideas for crafts, things to help me make warm up my home, create family traditions. I expect clean, wholesome content.

I'm disappointed. And I've learned my lesson. Don't listen to Martha Stewart's radio channel because you can't trust it to be family friendly.

Please remind your hosts that children may be listening in the car with a parent and that your hosts don't have to speak aloud every thought that comes to their minds.

Respectfully,

I wish you could hear what I hear...

I wish you could hear what I hear. I hear the sound of milestones and maybe a discovery.

Big Sis is memorizing lines for her part in a play. She wanted someone to run lines with her. Li'l Bit offered.

Background: Li'l Bit (diagnosed w/ an autism spectrum disorder) hates to try to read, avoids schoolwork with protests and resistance that sometimes head toward meltdowns. All those things create great anxiety for Li'l Bit.

And Li'l Bit offered to help Big Sis run lines.

*gasp*

And she is.

*gasp*

Reading. Aloud. Following the script, reading "her" part, pausing for Big Sis's part.

She's even adding some inflection. You should have heard her say, "They're afraaaaaaaaaid." Her voice is going up at the right part when her character asks a question, too.

She couldn't sound out "appreciate" and Big Sis helped her, and Li'l Bit let her help her, and kept going.

You have *no idea* what a BIG DEAL this is...

PS: Big Sis, amazingly, has her part pretty much memorized.

Related?

Several days ago, the Tennessean featured a story about rising autism rates (and how poorly prepared schools, how poorly trained teachers are, for students on the autism spectrum). According to the article, "The number of children with autism served by Tennessee's public schools more than tripled from 2001 to 2007, rising from 1,293 to 4,019."

This morning, the same newspaper features a story about how Tennessee now leads the nation in vaccinations for kids. "Tennessee has moved from the middle of the pack to the top spot among states for early childhood immunization in the last five years, and children are benefiting." There is no mention of vaccine injury reports, so we don't know if injuries increased. The writer of the article leaves the reader to think that there are only benefits and no risks to vaccines, which is misleading.

Is the rise in autism rates in Tennessee independent from the increase in childhood immunization there? Or are the two related? I suppose the real question is will autism numbers increase as pre-schoolers vaccinated in the past five years enter the public school system. Food for thought.

Wits & Wagers Family from North Star Games, a TOS Crew Review

North Star Games sent me and some of my Crewmates a board game called Wits & Wagers Family.

The age range for Wits & Wagers Family is 8+ and for those of us with more than four in our families, Wits & Wagers is a 3-10 player game (woo hoo!).

The game is easy to learn, easy to set up, does not require a lot of reading and studying the rules before you begin. In a nutshell, you draw a card, read a question from the card, each player makes a guess at an answer, players compare answers, vote on the answer each player (or team) thinks is best using one or two Meeples, check the back of the question card for the correct answer, score.

We learned a lot of history and trivia when we played this game. There are 150 question cards; each card contains two questions (yes, that's a total of 300 questions). Each question is read aloud; each player or team of players guesses the answer (the answer is always a number, how much, how many, how long, how fast, what percent, etc) and then players vote (wager) on which answer is closest to the correct answer without going over.

Right off the bat, we were stumped - the first question we read was about Fruit Loops cereal. I don't buy Fruit Loops because one of my children can't have them (Fruit Loops are not gluten free). Didn't matter that we were stumped, because Wits & Wagers is a guessing game, and we were able to guess, and ultimately score our answers.

My homeschooler and I had fun naming all of the Disney Princessess as we tried to guess how many there are; there is lots of Disney trivia here.

On the answer side of each card, Wits & Wagers Family gives us additional info about something in the question. (Did you know that Joe Jonas auditioned for a part on Wizards of Waverly Place? I didn't, until we got to that card.)

I like the way the game uses kid-friendly questions. I like the fact that we can play a really short game for a child with a short attention span. I like the way the questions are worded, and we talked through the answers aloud, some together (yes, I know that is not the intent of the game, but the questions are worded for "we-go" and collaborating, too, and we are working on that at my house in our autism intervention, and this game is a wonderful activity for that).

We get to work on "guestimating" in a fun way, where we can not be close to the correct answer and still earn points (by voting for an answer we believe is better). Players gain practice and experience making appraisals in Wits & Wagers Family, too. Because a lot of the answers are impossible to know, there's a lot of guessing without pressure in a game, which leads to laughter, when you realize how far over or under your answer is.

I think that we may try to write some of our own questions for the game. Might be fun to measure people or items in our home in feet or inches and make up a question for "our" version of the game.

My teenager wants to play this game with a group of friends in teams. She says that will be "sooo much fun!"

Wits & Wagers Family is a keeper at our house.

Wits & Wagers Family retails for $19.99 and is available at major retailers in stores and online.

North Star Games has a facebook page here.

Read my Crewmates' experiences with Wits & Wagers Family HERE.

North Star Games sent me a Wits & Wagers Family game in exchange for my review and opinion about it. I was not paid for this review and am not obligated to provide a positive review.

Learning About The Elements

Sometimes, a book is gorgeous enough that you want to share the title with others. I would have loved this book in high school (many moons ago) when I was studying the periodic chart.

I went to my first-ever Scholastic Book Warehouse Sale today. One of the item on my wish list was the book pictured to the left, "The Elements, A Visual Exporation of Every Known Atom in the Universe".

Weeks ago, I saw it in a Scholastic sale flyer that one of my middle schoolers brought home from school. I considered buying it then, and decided to wait.

I bought it today.

The warehouse sale price is $15. (The flyer price was $20.)

The photographs are *stunning*. They make a person want to look at the pages, read about each element.

Jill.

Almost 13.5 years ago, in the middle of the night, while I was awake with a newborn, as I surfed the web, I stumbled across an internet group for moms. I lurked for a while, and then I joined the chatting.

Over the years, many of the group have met one another in person, for some grand weekends of laughter, food, and fun.

The group has become tight-knit. We protect one another. We help one another. We have shared everything from recipes to tears. We have supported one another through cross-country moves, divorce, marriage, a whole lotta pregnancies, the first grandchild, miscarriage, two sets of twins, autism, job loss, death of a parent, death of a husband, the unthinkable, unbearable deaths of two babies, one a child, one a grandchild. And we've supported one another through the "c" word. Cancer.

We experienced an awful first today. We lost one of us.

We lost Jill today. She was a great person. Smart. Funny. Gracious. Blunt. Down to earth. An incredible writer. She hated the pink campaign for breast cancer, the disease that she fought so couragously. (I always think of Jill when I see a pink anything.) She loved her husband, her precious son, her family. She fought hard. I did not have the privilege to meet her in person on this side of heaven. I'm privileged to have known her as a cyber-friend for many years.

Jill, we miss you.

Good deals at the Borders store closing

Eldest and I share a love for books.

We headed over to one of our local Borders stores. It is closing. All books were 30% off; all bargain books were 40% off; and toys and games were 40% off.

I walked around the store like a deer in the headlights while my daughter focused on her favorite section.

This book caught my eye, and at 30% off, I bought it. It's good enough to share with my readers. No more searching for game ideas on the internet, looking for games that incorporate perspective taking, attention sharing, or some other social or relationship piece.

I already have an idea or two from it...

Activity Idea - Tis The Season To Wrap Presents

For families intervening with Relationship Development Intervention or Communicating Partners, finding just right activities to use as background activities for relationship and partner practice is sometimes challenging.

I always seemed to be thinking too big, too difficult. (Sometimes I still struggle with that.)

Sometimes, the just right activity was right under my nose, like gift wrapping in December.

Think about it. You can easily set up two distinct roles. Here's a very basic version: Parent is the wrapper/paper folder. Child is the taper.

For the child who needs practice sharing attention and joining (and honoring limits by staying with the adult while giving up some control to the adult), the parent will probably want to make the process as simple as possible. Measure your wrapping paper against your gifts and cut your pieces ahead of time. Tear off a bunch of short strips of tape and line them up on the edge of a dining room chair or a big book so that the child's job is to lift the tape from that line-up and press it onto the paper you folded. Have your gift tag made ahead of time, so that all that is left to do is affix it with tape to the wrapped gift. Have bows nearby, ready to affix to packages. Put away any unnecessary objects (scissors, pen, extra gift tags, etc). Have your child join you and wrap, using as few words as possible, but using rich, animated non-verbal communication.

Gift-wrapping is an activity that encompasses a really wide variety of non-verbal, foundational, developmental objectives. Gaze shifting. Attention sharing. Coordinating actions. Sharing control. Perspctive taking. I could write a very long list.

Here's an excerpt from my journal from three years ago that illuminates my daughter's ability to assume different roles (don't fret if you're not there yet, you will get there):

She sat across the wrapping paper from me. Sometimes I cut the paper, sometimes she did, sometimes I cut it halfway and handed her the scissors to finish where I had trouble reaching.

She was in charge of the tape, and I kept getting my fingers in her way -- accidently -- and she navigated the challenge. (I wish I had thought to put my fingers in her way...!!! LOL!) Sometimes she missed the seam and had to re-tape--she was so resilient there. We were wrapping by the light of the Christmas tree, and we really didn't have enough light to see what we were doing, and yet she was really competent! We wrapped some oddly shaped gifts, and she co-regulated and coordinated beautifully--I gave her very little direction, even non-verbally. She just jumped in and did whatever supported me as I led. Just beautiful!

We talked briefly about different wrapping paper, that Nana likes birds and one sheet had cardinals on it. Poppa has a golf cart (but does not play golf) and we had one sheet printed with pics of Santa playing golf with a golf cart all lit up in Christmas lights in the background, so we wrapped my dad's present in that paper. We talked about her cousins as we wrapped their presents. She's ask, "Is that my cousin?" She's barely met them at all--she doesn't know them, really, but is trying to place the people we're wrapping for. She is really starting to ask thoughtful, curious questions. I can tell she is connecting dots more often.

A quiet room illuminated by the lights of the CHRISTmas tree, a slow pace, few words and little "talk", lots of "non-verbaling", some gifts, wrapping paper, tape, etc, provide a wonderful background for some practice in relationship development and communicating partners.

Debate: Do Vaccines Cause Autism?

"December 13, 2010 at 8 PM CST Do vaccines cause autism? Jay Wile, PhD and Boyd Haley, PhD will debate live. The debate is on, and is available to you and without cost. Information will be updated here as the specifics of the debate unfold. You can sign up now for free, at the link below."

http://www.vaccinationcouncil.org/2010/12/04/debate-on-vaccination/