Indian Oasis News

Though many schools promote programs devoted to accelerate reading levels and bump up test scores, don’t let your child’s math skills slip! Parents can help students apply math facts, regardless of the task at hand! Here are some things you can do every day at home to help your child flex his/her math muscle.

• Ask your child how long she thinks it takes to brush her teeth—in both minutes and seconds—then, time her. Not only will she learn the relationship between minutes and seconds, but she will reap the dental health benefits too.
• Count and sort things around the house. Be creative! Catalog DVDs by genre. Organize shoes by type. Sort clothes by season or according to whom each item belongs. The possibilities are endless!
• Practice skip-counting when walking to the car or while grocery shopping. Skip-counting is counting by 2s, 5s, 10s, etc. Young children love it. They can even skip-count the peas on their plates at dinner. It may even make it more fun for them to eat those pesky vegetables.
• Present your child with simple mathematical challenges. As he helps set the dinner table ask him how many more forks you need if you already have four, and there are six people eating. Making the situation as natural as possible allows children to see that we use math facts in the course of everyday life.
• When all else fails, online games can add an element of fun to your child’s studies. Primary Games, FunBrain, and Math Playground are great educational resources.

Overall it is important not to overdo it. Provide opportunities to practice math facts as they come naturally. Children often resist persistent drilling of flash cards; however, with clever tact, you can provide the supplemental practice your child needs to make his/her math grades soar!

We can all marvel over technological advancements made over the last decade. Parents love being able to “check-in” on their teens as they are out and about. Now, a newly licensed driver can discretely text a parent or guardian upon his arrival at his destination and likewise, send another to let them know he’s on his way home. The birth of social media has provided us the ability to stay in touch, rekindle old relationships, participate in world-wide discussions, research like never before, plan events like a pro, and yes, even track our children.

While these advances are great, with the good also comes the potential for harm. There is a real psychology behind using social media to build relationships. How real are they? What can we, as parents, teachers, and mentors, do to help encourage our children to put human interactions first? With a little knowledge, we can equip ourselves to help steer our children and ourselves in the right direction. There is a plethora of ever-changing information available on this topic and links to suggested reading are available below followed by some tips to manage friendships in the “plugged-in” world.

Suggested Videos/Articles:

• TED Talk “Sherry Turkle: Connected, but alone?”
• Kaplan Test Prep Survey Finds That College Admissions Officers’ Discovery of Online Material Damaging to Applicants Nearly Triples in a Year

Plugged-In Tips:

• If you can talk in person vs. texting, please do!
• Use private settings wherever possible
• Post knowing your information, even if private, is stored on a computer somewhere and may be accessible to strangers (even images used via the new, popular app called “snapchat”).  Did you know that anyone can view your tweets, no subscription needed?
• Encourage positive posting; avoid publicly sharing personal or negative thoughts. If you wouldn’t say it to someone in person, please do not post it.
• Stay tuned-in to your children’s social accounts. Yes, mandate friendship within Facebook, subscribe to their tweets, Instagrams, Vines, etc. Even the ones they probably don’t think you know about such as “Tumblr.”
• Stay informed by subscribing to a twitter feed about cyber safety, such as @GetCyberSafe.
• Encourage get-togethers vs. “couch potato texting.”
• Save a little cellular battery time, and hand write a note to a friend. They’ll love it!