Multicultural Books For Children - Expanding Your Child's World Through Reading

We are huge believers in knowing and undestanding one's own cultural. Knowing yourself is the beginning of true wisdom. When you know you and accept you, you can love you and that love can translate to the rest of the world. So we promote multi-cultural understanding and I found a little more info out there to share with you all to that effect. Enjoy.

Reading to our children is a great way to help them develop an understanding of their world. But, do we think about what we are reading to them and with them? Reading books about other cultures and races is a great way to introduce your child to their world.

Not sure how? Here are a few tips. First, select a book that includes images of people unlike your child. Why? Well, we do not live in a colorblind world, and reading books that show other races is one way to help our children respect and value people of all colors.

Second, ask your child questions. For instance, are there similarities between your child and the character in the book? Are there differences? If so, discuss the differences. Is the character's skin tone darker or lighter? If so, explain to your child that there are people of a variety of skin shades all around the world. Pull out a few Crayolas of different hues. Tell your child that he or she will encounter people of all different shades, and that it is important to appreciate and respect differences as well as celebrate similarities.

If you are reading a book that describes the lifestyle and culture of kids from other countries or even other continents, use it as an opportunity to immerse your child in this new culture. Are there certain dishes children eat in this region? Go online and print out a recipe you and your child can enjoy making together. Explain that children from the country described in the book eat meals such as this.

Most importantly, be creative. Children love new experiences, and opening a book is a great way to transport your child to a world unlike her own.

Here are a few great multicultural kids' books to get you started:

Babies (0-3)
Whose Knees are These- by Jabari Asim

Whose Toes are Those- by Jabari Asim

Ages 4-8
Abuelos- by Pat Mora

My Dad and Me- by Alyssa Satin Capucilli

My Black Me: A Beginning Book of Black Poetry- by Arnold Adoff

My Family Lives in America- by Susan Kuklin

Chato's Kitchen- by Gary Soto

Older Kids
Burn My Heart- by Beverley Naidoo

Does My Head Look Big in This? - by Randa Abdel-fattah

When My Name Was Keoko- by Linda Sue Park

Beneath My Mother's Feet- Amjed Qamar

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Shannon_Harmon

Spring Break

Not for Village Works. For the kids in our lives. It's time to take a brief respite from school to sleep late, play outside at all hours of the morning, watch TV and maybe do a few things they don't normally get to do.

My son went to a skateboarding camp for the day. My daughter just found out she's going to get to play soccer. All outdoor activities, but the photo opps are priceless. And after you take those pictures, what are you going to do with them? Wouldn't they make great puzzles?

What are YOUR kids doing/going to do for spring break?

A Business Logo: The Sun in Your Customers Sky

From time to time I will have guest bloggers sharing with you all. Kristine Sheehan, of The Merry Bird Designs graciously agreed to post for me today. If you need a logo, hand-made greeting cards, or book cover art, among other things, Kristine is the one to talk to! For now, she's talking to you about your business logo. Enjoy!

Starting a new business or revitalizing an existing one is an exciting endeavor. And, there are many ways to get noticed to make a mark in the big business world online and off. An entrepreneur may start by having an extraordinary product/service to sell/offer but have no clue how to bring in the market buyers. Although I’m not a marketing expert and can’t advise you in marketing techniques, I can be of service by telling you that you should have a creative logo designed to represent your business. A properly marketed business needs a logo for customer recognition and retention of that business.

A logo in all its integrity is the “sun in your customers sky”, “the star in your customer’s galaxy” or in other words it will make your service/product get noticed and remembered.
A good designer will create a logo that is simply memorable. One view or many a creative logo will create instant recognition. Recognition and admiration is exactly what a business needs!

You may find a designer by recommendation or a search on the web. However you choose to find your designer you should know a few questions to ask her/him before you begin.

1. Does the designer work by contract? What the customer and designer expect and will ultimately receive at the end of the design job depends on the contract! Read fine print, ask about deadlines, ask about final cost, and revise where necessary. Agree, Sign off and begin!
2. How will I receive my design? File formats to ask for are .ai, pdf, eps, jpg, png. Know that you need a file that is 72dpi for online viewing and a file that is a minimum of 300dpi for printing purposes. Be sure the format you receive can be utilized in different ways. For example, can the logo design be reduced to fit on a keychain or enlarged to fit a billboard?
3. Does the designer need specific pantone colors or will you leave it up to the designer to choose them for you? Ultimately the designer should provide you with a logo design that can be converted from color to black and white. No matter what the color of the logo is, it should keep its strength and integrity for online view and in print format.

These few tips from The Merry Bird Designs should get you started with your research for a business logo design. Remember, for customer recognition and retention of your product and/or services be sure the Logo is Simply Memorable, the Logo can be converted to Black and White and the designer provided the Logo in a File Format that can be enlarged/reduced for future printing.

The sun in your customers sky is shining already!

Kristine Sheehan

TheMerryBird Designs

http://www.themerrybird.com

info@themerrybird.com

203-551-1155

Getting Back RSVPs

Planning a birthday party for your child, inviting their class and then waiting for RSVPs can be more stressful than awaiting test results. It’s like a personal round of American Idol. Will the children like your child enough to bug their parents to respond to the invite? How will it affect your child’s self-esteem if only a few come back or worse, none? I think the main thing is to make sure school is not the center of your child's social life. Church, the neighborhood, activities and of course your own family and children of friends will help make them well rounded in the social arena. But beyond that, I think this is a question for the psychologists out there. (Feel free to chime in!) My focus today is getting back those darned RSVPs!

Personally, I hate the whole process. I do it, however, for my kids. Do we invite the whole class knowing darned well we don’t want them all there? Can’t we just invite his or her friends? But if you do that, you can't send the invites in to school with them, lest someone see it and get their feelings hurt, like this Swedish parent some time back:

An eight-year-old boy has sparked an unlikely outcry in Sweden after failing to invite two of his classmates to his birthday party.

The boy's school says he has violated the children's rights and has complained to the Swedish Parliament.

The school, in Lund, southern Sweden, argues that if invitations are handed out on school premises then it must ensure there is no discrimination.

The boy's father has lodged a complaint with the parliamentary ombudsman.

He says the two children were left out because one did not invite his son to his own party and he had fallen out with the other one.

The boy handed out his birthday invitations during class-time and when the teacher spotted that two children had not received one the invitations were confiscated.

"My son has taken it pretty hard," the boy's father told the newspaper Sydsvenskan.

"No one has the right to confiscate someone's property in this way, it's like taking someone's post," he added.

A verdict on the matter is likely to be reached in September, in time for the next school year.

BBC News

Crazy.

My younger daughter, on the other hand, is still culling her little group. Problem is she is friends with EVERYONE. She’s a pied piper making friends everywhere she goes. Inviting the class isn’t far-fetched in her case, but I’m not down with paying for them all.

Still, we sent the invites and hoped we wouldn’t get them all back. We got a couple of calls instead and I prepared her the whole time for the possibility of no one showing because she has the misfortune (hate calling it that) of being born around Halloween. “We’ll have fun no matter what!” One school friend came. She still had fun.

Back to the RSVPs. I still don’t know how to get them back, at least most of them, every time. Why don’t people return them? My guess is we are living in an age of info overload and people are basically procrastinating coach potatoes. “Later” is the mantra of our society, really, so when you give them a date, they take all that time and sometimes more.

So to improve your chances, you need all possible ways to contact people – phone numbers, email addresses, street addresses if you can get them. One parent in my daughter’s class sent the invite once then a follow-up one the week of the event, which was smart because I hold on to the invites but don’t always remember to call. I’m sorry. It’s not intentional. It’s just that’s sometimes it’s hard to know if the scheduling will work or even if we’ll have money for someone else’s birthday gift that week if other stuff is going on.

So let’s start with the basics. For those who don’t know and don’t want to admit they don’t know, RSVP means Respondez S'il Vous Plait. Translation – respond please! A brief history, according to How Stuff Works:

An Italian diplomat, Conte Baldassare Castiglione, wrote the first book about proper behavior among nobility in the 16th century. Many of the practices of Western etiquette, however, came from the French court of King Louis XIV in the late 17th and early 18th c­enturies. At Versailles, his palace, Louis XIV had the rules for court behavior written on what the French referred to as "tic­kets," or "étiquette." The tickets either were signs posted at Versailles or were the invitations issued to court events with the rules of behavior printed on the back; experts give different versions of the origin. And French was the language of refinement and high society through the 19th century in the United States. Judith Martin, the author of etiquette books and a syndicated newspaper columnist known as "Miss Manners," thinks that "R.S.V.P." came about as a polite way of reminding people of something that they should already know: If you receive an invitation, you should reply.

How do you get those replies? I found a few ways you can try:

If you ask guests to RSVP by a specific date, most parents will call! For the rest, you will need to get on the phone to find out who is coming. Just because a parent hasn’t responded, don’t assume their child isn’t coming to your party! And you really do need a head count for planning purposes, because you want to have enough food and party favors for every child who attends the party.

When making the call, you can say something like “Hello, this is Maggie Jones. Will your son Kevin be able to join us for the birthday party this weekend?” To keep track of responses as you speak to the parents, print a copy of our guest list sheet and keep it near the phone.

You should also be prepared to answer a common question from other parents, which is "what gift would your child like?" Responding with "it doesn't matter" won't help the other parent, so be ready with a few ideas. You can say something like "Thank you for asking. Jack really loves Legos, dinosaurs, and books about cars."

Birthday in a Box

Here’s a nifty tip from Diane Pollitt, Party Guide at PartyMerchant.com via About.com:

Mail your invitations on a Wednesday! Why Wednesday you ask? If an invitation is mailed on Wednesday it is more likely to arrive at its destination on Friday or Saturday, this is the objective. Receiving the invitation on the weekend, instead of a weekday, will give your guest time to read and return your RSVP more promptly….Your party-goers will have just a little more time to deal with their social calendar, coordinate dates, travel, babysitters and other incidental details. It becomes a coordinated effort on your part that your guests will appreciate.

So what do you think? Why don’t people RSVP and what can a party-planning parent do about it?

REMEMBER: Mother's Day is coming and our early bird special is ending this Saturday. And if you haven't entered our Jigsaw Puzzle Memory Contest, why the heck not?! It's a free puzzle people. Who doesn't like free? Read all about it just one post down. :-D

The Contest & The Early Bird Special

The Contest
We want to hear your jigsaw puzzle memories! Everyone has them - or at least I know that is true for those of us who didn't grow up with computers and Playstations at our disposal. So tell us your jigsaw puzzle memory here in this REALLY simple form and the best one wins a FREE 11x17 Custom
Jigsaw Puzzle. You send us the image and pick the piece count - 48 or 99 pieces.

And please feel free to pass this on. The more, the merrier!

Contest ends April 30, 2010. So get your jigsaw puzzle memory entry in today!

The Special

Easter has come and gone, so you know Mother's Day is not that far behind. It's the last week to get $4 off a special puzzle bouquet for the mother in your life. These are flowers you can give that will last a lifetime! Order our standard Mother's day Bouquet or customize one of our bouquets in your own unique way.

Get an 8x10 6-piece puzzle for $15.95 (regular price - $19.95) or 30-piece puzzle for $17.95 (regular price - $21.95).

Sale ends THIS SATURDAY, APRIL 10TH, so pick 'em while you can!

Holy Day Break

It is Friday. There would normally be a business-related blog post here. But it is not just any Friday. It is Good Friday. And so we pause to remember whose we are - children of God - and why this time is so important - the gift of eternal salvation was offered to us at this time. So bask in glory of knowing that God loves you so much, He made the ultimate sacrifice. We'll see you next week.