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Poems, Froot Loops and Dinosaurs: 3 Ways a Child and Caregiver Can Celebrate National Poetry Month

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Happy National Poetry Month! Grownups, how would you like to participate in the #nationalpoetrymonth discussion on Twitter? Share what works and what doesn’t with your young poetry readers.

Photo Credit: Kids’ Stage via Pinterest Katie Milne-Feldt



Did you know the “beginning reader” and “early reader” books vary by publisher? This means that one pre-1st level book by one publishing house can be much more difficult than another pre-1st level book by another publisher. Just ask a youth librarian. I did last week at the beginning of National Poetry Month, April! 

Compare for yourself. Contrast Random House Kids with Chronicle Books.

Does that mean that caregivers must pick poems at random and just hope that the selected poem pleases a young reader? Nah.

Though taste is subjective, it’s possible to raise your success rate of finding poems that will win over the child. Poetry is not meant to be taken like an unpleasant but good-for-you vitamin. Instead, it is meant to be a joy and a fresh way to use words.


Here’s a set of Thought-starters:


Doug Macleod wrote “Ode to an Extinct Dinosaur”. His poem in an anthology called Dragons Dinosaurs Monster Poems collected by John Foster and Korky Paul.


1. Go for the easiest bridge. Does your young reader have an interest in dinosaurs? Look for poetry that bridges his/her interest.

Photo Credit: Scholastic Lesson Plans Bridges



2. Reward the reader for identifying one part of speech. Most kids like to be told they are right. Why not give him/her a sticker or a Froot Loop for every noun found? For instance, “Ode to an Extinct Dinosaur” has more than a handful of easy-to-spot persons, places or things in its two stanzas. This means that nouns such as nails, scales, jaws and claws can be worth a small prize!

Photo Credit: My Sister’s Suitcase Cereal Necklace



3. Switch roles. Once he/she feels a sense of accomplishment, why not have the young reader take the spotlight. The grown-up becomes the audience and listens while the child recites/reads. Poems like Shakespeare’s plays are meant to be spoken aloud. For a dinosaur poetry book, wouldn’t it be fitting to add sound effects?


7 Children’s Education Books for Your Summer Back Pack

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Photo Credit: Amazon.com The Cuddle Book

You may have heard of the bad news of “brain drain” during the three summer months that your children have for vacation from Parents magazine. As a former classroom teacher, literacy tutor and library-trained storyteller for children I can tell you that you do not need to panic.


Disclosure: I have not received compensation of any kind to promote a company, brand, product or blog. 

Like my Anthropology Professor said, “You have all the right ingredients to be a teacher.” Most likely your children are learning from you already.

How? They observe how you take care of your responsibilities, groom, eat, keep fit, recreate and make decisions.

If you would like to be more deliberate in the lessons you impart here are 3 Easy Ways to Lead children or adults:

1. Inspire a Vision & Recruit
2. Clarify the Steps
3. Celebrate Milestones

These leadership concepts are adapted from Leadership Challenge by Kouzes. It has proven useful to me during and after business school, at the office and when “edutaining” children.

Photo Credit: Amazon.com Career Ideas for Kids Who Like Art

You may have heard the self-help idea of visualizing your destination and working backwards to take action daily to reach that goal. Similarly, you can create a summer objective and co-opt your children to join the “cause”.

I’ve observed that children are surprisingly altruistic. Parents magazine confirms this also in the July issue.

Some kids will go out of their way to soothe a crying peer. Likewise, you can create a vision of summer as making a positive impact on your neighborhood.

How can learning to prevent summer brain drain benefit others? By applying what your children learn in volunteer projects that benefit your local community, church or nonprofit organization.

Photo Credit: SmartyGirlHome Renee Marchol Bouncy Ball Prize 

Be the first reader to contact me with your summer project based on this article and receive a mega-sized bouncy ball valued at $5.

Of course, this will need to be something within your budget, fits your work schedule and is dear to your own heart. Will the vision to be to attract wildlife native to your neighborhood such as butterflies and birds to your backyard? Will it be to model how to use wisdom to make friends and care about your neighbor? Will your vision be to observe the science of plants growing in your local state parks?

A vision is different from a mission statement. I recommend that you ditch the rigid idea of a summer mission statement because it is likely to be stifling to kids. A mission statement, as defined by business school  must include S.M.A.R.T. It is a written goal that is simple, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. I don’t think that fun learning can thrive in such rigid confines.

Instead, expect your child to engage with you and participate with ideas of his/her own. Encourage what ifs.

My husband is a children’s toy marketer and I am a former pro bono consultant for an educational children’s book publisher so our apartment often has juvenile library books and chidren’s educational toys for our research.


Here are 7 books that I enjoyed last month:

1. Mexican Folk Tales by Juliet Piggott. If your family has recently moved to Los Angeles, your child might be delighted to learn about non-European fairy tales. He or she is likely to hear the Spanish language spoken and might want to learn more about the heritage of his or her bilingual peers.

2. Career Ideas for Kids Who Like Art by Diane Lindsey Reeves. If your child is a fan of math and science, you can introduce him or her to more abstract thinking.

Your child will be more emotionally resilient as an adult if he or she can imagine. Professor John Boe, my children’s literature professor researched the healing effects of storytelling for traumatized children. He volunteered at a psychiatric children’s hospital for young victims of violent crime.

Art can restore wellness. Art can also encourage compassion and understanding in children who may be too literal.

3.The Cuddle Book by Guido Van Genechten. For crabs cuddling can be tricky but your cuddlebug will enjoy imagining how “kid” animals hug their parents.

Photo Credit: Amazon.com How a Book is Made

4. How a Book is Made by Aliki. Your child is likely to enjoy the drawings of cats as proofreaders.

5. Your Child at Play: Three to Five Years by Marilyn Segal, Ph.D. This is a nonfiction book meant for parents not as a read-aloud to children.

6. Mrs. Fields Best Ever Cookie Book. If your child has an aptitude for business, such as running a lemonade stand and closing sales he or she might be interested in this book for two reasons.

She can study why Mrs. Fields’ business suffered bankruptcy and how her recipes can be updated for the 2012 diet. For instance, what recipes can be revamped and made organic, vegan, diabetic and gluten-free.

Photo Credit: Amazon.comToys! Amazing Stories Behind Some Great Inventions

7. Toys! Amazing Stories Behind Some Great Inventions by Don Wulffson. Did you know that the bouncy ball helped name the Super Bowl? Fun facts and great stories of persistent inventors.

Imagine how you and your child can apply such learning to improve your community.

  • What if you and your child were to adapt Mrs. Fields’s recipes for a vegan bake sale? 
  • What if you made finger puppets together so that your child could do a storytelling performance with her slumber party guests? 
  • What if your son were to learn one Mexican folktale that he and his friends could write into a play?

Such experiences create lasting learning.

Happy Summer with Your Kids!

Mother’s Day Party Tips: Avoid these 3 Mistakes with Toddler Guests

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My husband and I are Dual Income No Kids (DINKs). We love entertaining families with children at our home. Our friends are great parents and we enjoy having them in our lives. Disclosure: I have not been paid to endorse any blog, company, brand, or product.

Photo Credit: Amazon.com Capsela Science Construction Toy System

Hubby Nik is a children’s toy marketing professional so educational toys such as preschool electronic readers, construction toys that are submergible, and 3D collectible card games for kids up to 8-years-old fill our apartment. I’m also a consumer behavior marketer. I am a former classroom teacher and library storyteller.

I have experience teaching composition to junior high and high schoolers. I’ve been trained to entertain audiences over age 3. However, I have limited experience with people under age 3. That’s why I am trying to make up for this weakness by following writers of articles such as “Why Being a Toddler is Hard” on Babble.com.

If you are thinking about giving the best mother’s day gifts to your buddies with children, I recommend a visit on such a parenting site or the top parenting blogs to find out what parents want most. I like the parenting blog Girl’s Gone Child because it’s so raw and funny. Blogger of The Girl Who insists that the best mother’s day present would be to sleep in rather than be attacked by a tray of breakfast in bed.

In a recent survey, my girlfriend answered that she feels refreshed when the takes time out of her day to be reminded of her identity separate from being a mom. When she returns, after taking “me” time, she has more energy and motivation to care for her kids. As mothers, who are reading this, please contact me if you feel the same way.


Screening questions for buying the best gift for a friend who is also a mom:

  • Does this gift remind her of her identity apart from her role as mom?
  • Does the gift make reference to some of her hobbies or interests when she was single and without children?
  • Does the gift make it easy for her to return to activities that made her happy in the past? Does it make her look forward to the future?
Maybe your girlfriend gave up her motorcycle, horseback riding competitions or historical gun collection in order to create a safer lifestyle as a parent. What are some mother’s day gifts you can give her to touch upon these hobbies she cares about but in a way that gives consideration to her children? 
Photo Credit: Amazon.com The Indian Motorcycle by Todd  Rafferty
In another example, I have a girlfriend who is a fan of cooking using the AllRecipes site. She also follows Real Simple and Better Homes an Gardens for home decor. What would be a good gift for her? 




Photo Credit: Amazon.com Westminster Mr. Bacon Walking Pigs With Sound

Only this past Halloween, did I get to interact with those under 3-years-old at a church carnival in Los Angeles. I managed a pig racing booth for a Harvest festival. I helped the young competitors send their battery-operated, neon pigs down the chute to the finish line.The toy pigs would stop to snort or wiggle their tails at random.The festival organizer was Matt Kleinhans of Cornerstone West LA Baptist Church in Santa Monica.

Photo Credit: Target Toy Sale Lego Emma’s Friends

Twice a month, Nik asks me to come along on his toy marketing research field trips to the Target toy aisle as pro bono consultant.

We take joy in cheering on our friends with toddlers and older kids. Because of our common interest in marketing to parents, Nik and I study how moms and dads make decisions.

We learned through trial and error to avoid these 3 mistakes when having a dinner party with very young guests:

  1. Showing off toys that young guest aren’t permitted to touch
  2. Letting a smile disappear for more than 15 minutes
  3. Neglecting to read about child development milestones

I am grateful, that even before I graduated with my MBA, I had pioneering girlfriends who are awesome moms. I keep in touch with those, out of the area, through Facebook and watching the clips of their kids that they post on Youtube. 


The clips of my friend’s two-year-old son rocking out to Old McDonald on an iPhone and another friend’s seven-month-old daughter bobbing her head to Lady Antebellum’s “Need You Now”.


Staying in touch with girlfriends with children gave me an opportunity to observe tips for a healthy marriage and tricks moms us to bond with their kids.

Photo Credit: IMdb.com Toy Story 3

My husband and I are still learning to be better hosts to our junior guests. When he teaches financial literacy in elementary school classrooms and when I visit daycare centers to do puppet storytelling, I know we are not getting the full-picture of kid-life.

Watching Toy Story 3 helped us learn the contrast between age appropriate toys for one group of kids and ones who are slightly older.

For example, our friends M. and her husband came for enchiladas at our apartment one night. My husband was chatting with the dad and I was talking with my girlfriend M. who was holding her 2-year-old on her lap as she was eating.

Suddenly, her son threw a wadded paper napkin at Nik’s head then bawled.

His parents apologized and we laughed about it. It might have been then we were using our serious grown-up voices and did not smile for little while. The little boy might have thought he was being scolded by us.

We tried to show ourselves attentive to our younger guest by switching to family games after dinner.

M. demonstrated how their little boy liked to watch his small metal cars collide. The mom and I retrieved the green and blue metal cars as they rolled across our hardwood floor and under our beige couch.

Photo Credit: Amazon.com Air Hogs Spin Master RC Havoc Heli Metallic Red

So that inspired Nik and I to bring out our durable, indoor helicopter. It was red and black and great at hovering. We thought, “If he likes action toys like cars, he might like flying toys.”

When we accidently steered  the copter into a bookcase, the blades stopped and the plane fell from a height, tears flowed from the little one.

He understood that the metal car did not have passengers because he had inspected them. However, he cried because he was compassionate. He worried that people were injured inside. What a dear heart! We four tried to reassure him that it was a replica, not the real thing and no people were hurt.

Throughout the rest of the night, the sweet boy’s tears dried but he asked softly, “Helicopter” in his toddler pronunciation. Nik and I believe it was to check, “Really, no one was hurt? Are you sure?” 

Unfortunately, we could not give the toy to the 2-year-old to examine, for himself,  that it was unmanned because it was a teen toy, too fragile for toddlers and costly. It was our fault, our guest was distressed. We were very sorry. We learned our lesson.

After that I borrowed a child development and psychology book from the library. Our youngest guest was right on target, in social development. In what what? Two-year-olds become empathetic and aware of others’ hurts.

I believe birthdays also shape personality. My husband and I have autumn birthdays. I know I felt like a turkey. Our youngest party guest was born on Valentine’s day. 

Visit SmartyGirlHome again for an educational article, “7 Parenting Tips from Wives and Mothers” for Mother’s Day.  


Happy Hosting!

How to Set a Daddy Daughter Date This Summer

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Q: What impact does a Daddy Daughter date have on a woman?


A: Competitive play and quality time with dad helps women form healthy relationships at the work place, at home and in the dating world.


Some parents are single dads with daughters. Did you know that one of the most influential relationships that a woman has is the one she has with her father? This affects her interactions with male coworkers, subordinates and supervisors.

If you want a good laugh to drive home the point, take a look at a clip from Nickelodeon’s Hey Arnold where Helga as “quantity time” instead of quality time with her dad.

On the home front, her relationship with her father will affect her dating life and her marriage with her husband. You can read more about this in How Can I Be Sure by Bob Philips. This is especially timely consider the popularity of weddings in summer months. You might be the Father-of-the-Bride. For more reading on parenting as a single dad, take a look at a blog post called 50 Rules for Dads.

How can others in your circle fill in the gap of a mother in your daughter’s life?

What are 3 Things you can do for a Daddy Daughter Date this Mother’s Day if your daughter is without a mom-figure?

These are 3 Tips for Single Dads with Daughters:

1. Befriend a couple without children. Dual Income No Kids (DINKs) can be great allies in parenting. You can find DINKs through sites such as DINKlife.
2. Allow the couple to host daddy daughter dates, boardgame nights and dinner parties. Accept their invite and mingle with other single dads. The New York Times reports that more dads are becoming leaders at their local Parent Teacher Associations (PTA).
3. Compete with your daughter in a playful way.

Disclosure: I have not received payment to endorse any of these games, products, companies, blogs or brands. Also my husband is not currently employed by the makers of any of these games. 

For instance, my husband and I are DINKS. We love hosting dinner parties for parents with young children. My husband is even more amazing with dads and daughters because he hosted Star Wars Miniatures Tournaments for pre-teens to adults at Black Diamond Games in Concord. My husband Nik is now a children’s toy marketer. I am a former classroom teacher, kids’ camp counselor and mentor to girls.

Photo Credit: Amazon.com Hey! That’s My Fish! Deluxe by Mayfair Games
Photo Credit: Amazon.com Apples to Apples by Mattel

Our small apartment shelves are crowded with toy prototypes,dissected robots and analyzed games such as: Redakai, Heroscape, Hey! That’s My Fish!, Apples to Apples and Wasabi.

I’m also a children’s girl toy collector because I find it useful in analyzing consumer behavior of successful business women who are also raising daughters. So Nik bought me Mattel’s Monster High Ghoulia Yelps at last year’s Comicon when he was on assignment for Spinmaster toys.

How to screen DINKs. Make sure both of the individuals have been screened by LiveScan before being allowed to work with youth. If he or she has worked as a school teacher, library volunteer, youth counselor or franchise tutor they will have been screened by the police for any offenses against children.

Ask around and snoop a bit on their online profiles. Do you approve of their character and activities? Have they mentored children before with parental supervision? What do others say about them? Have an initial meeting with the couple, in a public place, and do not leave your child alone with them during the visit.

Go on a day outing with the couple and your daughter. Listen to how they speak to your child. Observe how they treat each other. Do they have a healthy relationship? Are they respectful to each other? Do they show a sincere interest in the well-being of your child?

Take your child’s feelings to heart. If she is uncomfortable with the couple for any reason, do not proceed. Continue your search in the community. You may find a mentoring couple through a church or other nonprofit. Always trust your gut. Do not rely on the reputation or fame of an organization.

Socializing with Your Daughter. When you are on a daddy daughter date at your friends’ home, jump at the opportunity to play against your friends on your daughter’s team when it’s party game time. Also let your daughter compete against you. Why? This will condition your daughter to play fair with someone she loves and respects. This will translate into amiable, respectful disagreement when she is in business meetings in the future. The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt has interesting dialogue between dad and daughter. The Wall Street Journal reported how adult women seek out their father’s softer side too.

Also it will create life-long memories. My dad has been dead for almost four years yet I remember playing Battleship with him when I was an 8-year-old.

Yes, take the opportunity to meet other single parents but when you are on a daddy daughter date, give your child your undivided attention. You can always exchange numbers and ask an adult out on a date at another time. This is your time to bond with your kid and show her that she is a priority to you.

Daddy’s Girls grow up with a sense of confidence that will help them make good judgment about life partners and assimilate them into the working world mostly dominated by males. I played basketball in elementary school and went to business school because my dad taught me that it was okay to compete against the guys.

What are some fast-playing games for pre-teens?

Photo Credit: Amazon.com Wasabi! by Z-Man Games
  • Bang! Dodge City Wild West
  • Redakai
  • Hey! That’s My Fish!
  • Wasabi

What are some more time-intensive games to play with your teen daughter? These games are androgynous or masculine so dads are likely to feel comfortable with the themes.

Photo Credit: Amazon.com Star Munchkin by Steve Jackson Games
  • Heroscape
  • Lord of the Rings
  • Gettysburg
  • Star Munchkin
  • Star Wars Minis
These are games that my husband and I have game-tested from 2006-2012. 
Happy Daddy Daughter Day for Mother’s Day!