Serendipity Mommy

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3 Ways to Get Kids Excited About Moving

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Moving is always hard on kids, maybe even harder than it is on mom and dad because they have no life experiences to gauge a move by. The unknown is always a frightening prospect and even teenagers can rebel to leaving family and friends behind. Unfortunately, who can blame them? If you are trying to get your kids at least accepting of the move, if not excited by it, here are a few things you can do to make it a bit easier on all involved.

1) Promise Them Video Chats Frequently

At the moment, you are reading this online. This means you obviously have access to the internet and whether you are here via smartphone or computer, you can still open up some kind of video chat so that your kids can stay in touch with friends back home. In fact, your older kids probably have their own smartphones and laptops or tablets, so remind them that their friends are only one Facetime away. If they are like the average teen in America, they spend upwards of 9 hours a day on social media!

2) Postcards from Your New Neighborhood

Grade school kids are still thrilled about sending and receiving mail via the United States Post Office. Maybe because it’s something tangible that they can hold in their hands, or maybe it’s because they are already burnt out on social media (yes even in third or fourth grade!), but for whatever reason, kids really do like mail! Take your cell phone around the neighborhood to get some pictures of your new area. Turn them into postcards your kids can send to friends back home. They can even be designed on a web server and printed at home on your local printer. To get an idea of the various free templates available, click here.

3) Offer Them One Adventure a Week

While everyone is so busy getting set up in your new location, sometimes it’s easy to forget that your kids are not mobile like you are. They go to school, come home and play with any new friends they might have met at school. If not, television and Facebook become their BFFs and that’s not a good thing at all! What you can do is offer to take them on one adventure a week. Together, look at travel sites because this is where you will find the best listing of “What to Do” and “What to See” in literally any city on earth. From there, you can pick and choose kid-friendly places to explore and that should pique their interest throughout the coming week.

No, moving isn’t easy on the kids but with a little creativity and a lot of compassion, you can get them to accept the move a little more readily. They may not be happy about it but with some extra care and a bit of time on your part, you might even get them excited about moving somewhere they’ve never been. Just remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day. It may take time, but eventually they’ll meet new friends and settle in. It’s just a matter of time.

Pre-Vacation Chores Your Kids Can Help With

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If you’re about to embark on a family vacation, you might feel like you have too much to do before you leave. Don’t worry, that’s normal. You simply need to make a checklist of must-do jobs and then get some help from the family. Here’s a guide on some pre-vacation chores even your kids can help with.

Prepare for Your Absence

Image via Flickr user JeepersMedia

You need to do a few routine tasks before leaving. Make sure your home looks like someone is there as a way to discourage theft. You’ll also want to prepare your HVAC system for your absence.

Set it at a neutral temperature, around 80 degrees in the summer or 60 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter, so you’re not paying to cool or warm more than necessary while you’re away. It’s a good idea to have a professional inspect your HVAC unit to make sure it’s in good working order if you’ll be away for a week or more. This will limit the chance of a breakdown occurring while you’re gone and unexpectedly returning to a sauna in the middle of summer.

Make Laundry a Joint Effort

Clothes are a big part of any vacation. You’ll wear a lot of different items, and you’ll have to pack for various weather conditions. You may need jeans for when the weather gets cold, shorts for sunny days, and maybe even a dressy outfit or two for special events. Plus, a lot of vacationers enjoy swimming or water sports, so you’ll need clean bathing suits, too. Clearly, you need help with your packing!

You don’t want your child to take care of all the laundry, of course. That’s a bad sitcom episode waiting to happen. Still, you can get your kids to help. Ask them to collect all their dirty clothes and put them in the laundry hamper. If they don’t already know how, teach them how to separate colored clothes from white garments.

When you’re ready to begin laundry, check each item before putting it in the machine. That way, you work as the supervisor for when your kids accidentally put some white clothes in the wrong hamper. You’ll have all the clean clothes you need for the trip. Plus, your kids will have a better idea of how laundry works.

Teach Kids to Pack on Their Own

Packing is one of the most grueling parts of vacation preparation. You have to pick enough outfits for several days away from home. Then, you have to add extra clothes for the reasons above. You wind up with three or four extra days of clothing, and it takes a while to pack.

As a parent, you have to repeat these steps for your kid unless they help. Take this opportunity to teach your kids how to pack. Tell them to go to their closet and pick out several of their favorite pieces of clothing. Supervise as they choose various outfits, pointing out what they still need to add. Your kids will learn a life lesson while you’ll spend less time packing.

Vacation packing is rarely fun. Just remember that you have help. Kids are never too young to start learning valuable skills that will help them all the way into adulthood. And you’ll really appreciate the extra help!

Some Of The Nicest Places For A Road Trip

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Road trips are often celebrated in movies and books. They have a nostalgic glow to them. They are not only fun in the moment, because everything is new and exciting, but they are also wonderful to talk about years afterwards.

Road trips build bonds between friends, between couples, and between family members. They also close the generation gap. They are a simple way to escape the ordinary routines of life and embark on a fabulous adventure.

An American Experience

Let’s take a closer look at one of the most famous road trips in the United States—the Pacific Coast Highway.

In California, the Pacific Coast Highway connects San Diego to San Francisco (approximately 130 miles) and then on to the Canadian border, and includes passing through Los Angeles.

Start in San Diego. This city is the home of the Lawrence Welk timeshare, California a fabulous resort complex built by the famous singer. The Lawrence Welk show, featuring the American bandleader and television impresario, was so popular that it ran from 1951 to 1982. San Diego has been called “America’s Finest City ” because of its inexorable miles of white sandy beaches and balmy weather.

From San Diego drive to Los Angeles. This, of course, is the home of Hollywood, famous for its movie stars and studios like Paramount Pictures, Universal and Warner Brothers. L.A. is also well-known for Griffith Observatory and Griffith park; Disneyland; the Getty Center; Santa Monica; the Natural History Museum; and the California Science Center.

After you leave Los Angeles, you have an epic drive ahead of you. You’ll pass many mission towns and view vast stretches of beach that clasp the cliff-hugging highway. You’ll want to drive slowly to take in the sight of the crashing waves, the occasional elephant seals, and the magnificence of Big Sur.

Finally, you’ll arrive at San Francisco, the hilly city that sits on the tip of a peninsula that’s surrounded by the deep blue Pacific Ocean. Take in San Francisco Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge, the cable cars, the impossibly winding roads, and all the brightly colored Victorian houses.

Beyond America

Many people in the United States are under the impression that a road trip is something of a unique American tradition. After all, America was the home of the Model T Ford and developed a vast network of roads to open up the country to its citizens. Moreover, Jack Kerouac’s adventures with Neal Cassady described in his book, On the Road, became a classic novel of freedom. It’s an inspiring story about the search for identity that defined an entire generation of people seeking the authentic life.

However, the road trip is actually popular all over the world. In the UK, a Cornwall road trip is a delightful experience. In Australia, the Sydney to Brisbane Drive is considered a worthy adventure. And in Germany, the Romantic Road is a 220-mile drive past forests and fields, medieval towns, and castles.

Affordability

One reason why fewer people are going on road trips is because of the cost. However, the adventure is more than worth the trouble of saving and planning for a road trip.

Although economic considerations like inflation and the rising cost of living have discouraged enthusiasm for road trips, it hasn’t stopped it altogether. While the price of gas, food, and lodging isn’t as cheap as it used to be in the past, road trips are still possible.

In fact, when you sit down and think about it, there are many ways to reduce the cost. Here, for example, are five suggestions:

  • Plan out your trip ahead of time, deciding exactly where you want to go, instead of just seeing where the road takes you.
  • Use smartphone apps to find the cheapest places to pump gas, eat, and sleep and plan your route accordingly.
  • Work within a budget and plan your trip according to your expense forecast.
  • Break up your adventure into mini-trips, going at different times of the year to your selected locations. In other words, shorter trips to improve cash flow.
  • Prefer the open road, long stretches of highway, instead of smaller, winding roads for better gas mileage.

4 Tips for Making Large Lectures Engaging for College Students

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What is the ideal college class size? Many professors would probably say somewhere between 20 and 30 students—it’s large enough to have dynamic discussions yet small enough to learn everyone’s name. However, many teachers in higher education find themselves staring down classes with ten times as many students or more! It’s no secret that colleges are increasingly turning toward the large lecture format in response to budget cuts and growing enrollment.

As NBC reported back in 2007, the University of Colorado offered one chemistry class so large that the final exam took place in the basketball arena. The same school had 33 courses with 400 students or more. And this is by no means an isolated phenomenon. When it comes to general education classes and core classes, large lectures are a way of life at universities across the country.

As a professor, you can only do so much to dictate class size. But you can optimize your lectures to be as engaging as possible, whether you’re teaching ancient British literature to a class of 100 students or Psychology 101 to a crowd of 1,000. Here are four helpful tips:

Break Up the Lecture

You may be eager to pack in as much information as possible, but charging full steam ahead means you risk losing your students along the way. Inserting a picture, video clip, critical thinking question or even a one-minute break every 15 minutes can help your students stay on track.

Expressiveness is Key

As the Center for Teaching and Learning at Stanford University cites, students only manage to get 20 to 40 percent of a lecture’s main ideas in their notes. Part of this may be due to the sheer volume of information and the fact that humans can only write or type so fast.

But it may also mean that your key points are getting lost in the shuffle. The same source suggests that expressiveness can be important in attracting and keeping students’ interest over time.

Next time you’re at the front of the room, make an effort to exhibit high levels of expressiveness. Wave your arms. Raise your voice to denote important information. Move around the room, drawing students’ eyes to you as you go. Gesture as you would during a passionate conversation as a friend. The options are limitless!

Promote Active Learning

Passive learning is the kiss of death for large lectures. It’s too easy for students to blend in with the crowd and lose focus. As the professor, it’s up to you to engage your students with activities that force them to do more than sit back, relax and enjoy the show. The Cornell University Center for Teaching Excellence offers a host of great ideas to promote active learning in group settings:

-Poll your class using classroom response technology to get useful feedback and keep your students involved in the lecture.

-Ask students to respond in writing to a question for one full minute at the beginning of class to get their creative juices flowing.

-Ask students to answer “why or why not?” questions with a partner or small group.

-Show a video clip and pause it halfway through. Ask students to make predictions before showing the end.

Make Yourself Available

Let’s face it, students may be intimidated by large class sizes and an instructor that seems so distant. Students are more likely to engage if they can connect to you—and the class—on a personal level.

Make an effort to learn all the names that you can. Arrive fifteen minutes before class and strike up conversations with the students near the front. Stick around after class or tell your students where they can meet you for office hours or to chat over coffee. Create an online space for your class to meet, swap questions and contact study partners. It’s important not to underestimate the social power of engagement when it comes to daunting class sizes.

Above all, try to make your large lecture feel familiar and tailored to your students’ needs. If they don’t feel like just a face in the crowd, they’ll likely perform better in your class and get more value from the time they invest. Simple improvements like asking them for input and lecturing passionately can boost engagement.

Pool Safety for Kids 2017 – Infographic

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May is National Water Safety Month! Swimming pools may seem like innocent fun, but they can be dangerous for little ones. Parents are often shocked to learn that drowning is the number one cause of accidental death for children under age five. Thankfully drowning is preventable with a water safety plan that includes layers of protection such as adult supervision and pool fencing. As the industry leader in glass pool fencing, Aquaview merges safety with style. Check out their infographic below to learn the facts on child drowning and simple tips to keep your family safe this summer.

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