Puppet play

A while back, I read in Bright From the Start that puppet play is a good attention builder for young children. Since then, I've been looking for a puppet for Nora.

We've seen a few, but none seemed soft enough, cute enough, expressive enough ... until today at Borders where I found a Folkmanis baby dutch rabbit puppet. Rob and I named her "Dutch" because she's a dutch rabbit. Yes, I know "Dutch" is a boy's name, but the rabbit looks like a girl and we thought "Duchess" would be too hard to say, so "Dutch" it is.

Maddie really likes her. I think she thinks Dutch is a puppy or something because Maddie sniffed her, then nuzzled her, then gave her kisses. Rob thought that Dutch might look a little too much like a dog toy, though, so now she lives in Nora's room, three shelves up and well out of Maddie's reach.

Mandarin Chinese Committee

Today I went to my first meeting with the Mandarin Chinese Committee. It turns out that they did get the grant money, but weren't able to find a teacher in time for Fall semester. They would still like to start in January - either as a before/after school program or as part of the regular curriculum. We are all tasked with looking for potential instructors and will reconvene next month.

If we aren't able to find a Mandarin instructor, they will probably pursue some other language or culture program. The grant money won't apply, but the district, it seems, is committed to "global literacy". I left feeling pretty good about Nora's future school.

Has anyone read Languages and Children: Making the Match: Foregin Language Instruction for an Early Start Grades K-8 by Helena Curtain and Carol Ann Dahlberg? What about anything by Stephen Krashen? I think I need to do some background reading and these all came up in this afternoon's meeting.

Ni hao! Yo! ¡Hola!

So I'm a little bit behind in newspaper reading - I'm reading yesterday's Star Tribune - and noticed a great article about diversity in children's television programming. This was also mentioned in yesterday's transracial parenting workshop, but of course I forgot about it until I saw it again in the paper this morning.

It talks about how much more common diversity is in children's programs than it is in adult prime time television. "Sesame Street" included people of color from the beginning. I remember that from my own childhood. "Zoom" too - remember "Zoom"? Morgan Freeman was the Easy Reader. Yet prime time tv only has four shows that feature people of color in lead roles.

The other great thing about the new kid's shows like "Dora the Explorer", "Go Diego, Go!" and "Ni Hao, Kai-lan" is that they make multi-lingualism cool. How great is that?!

You can read the whole article here (click on the word here). You can also learn more about "Ni Hao, Kai-lan" on Nick Jr's website at http://www.nickjr.com/shows/ni-hao-kai-lan/index.jhtml

Playing with your food

I've been reading that Bright From the Start book and one of the activities the author suggests is playing with these kinds of interactive food books to help a child build focus. According to the book, this kind of activity helps develop connections to the frontal lobes of the brain. When we saw the books at the store this morning I knew that we had to get them for Nora. There are also M&M books, but as much as I love M&Ms I would feel better about feeding my child Cheerios.

Still hoping to be the change

Last Spring I was very interested in getting a Mandarin language program in our local grade schools. I wrote about it here and here. For a while things were looking promising - I'd volunteered to be on the task force and everything. Then... nothing happened.

I'm not really sure where this stands anymore. Maybe our district didn't get the grant for the investigation or maybe it got put on hold over the Summer and not picked up right away in the Fall. Or maybe something happened and they forgot to include me.

Last week, the district learning services director contacted me again, though, and said that she wanted to schedule a meeting. Today I received another message saying that the meeting will be next Wednesday. I'm going to clear my calendar at work so I can leave a little early and make it back home (i.e. our town) for a 4:00 meeting. We are apparently going to "discuss progress thus far and ideas for future implementation". That sounds pretty good to me. I'm excited again. I'll let you know how it goes!

Baby care basics

I think I mentioned once before that Rob and I are signed up for an infant CPR class in a couple of weeks. I'm really glad for that, by the way; it is something that we need to know. As I was thinking about the class, though, I realized that I've never had a baby wholly in my care for more than a few hours. Gulp. I'm scared.

I thought that there were some baby care classes available through our hospital, but I can't seem to find any information about that on their website. I'm going to have to keep looking I think. In the meantime, I'm reading this book.

I bought it because it was the most complete reference I saw at the store. It's got some mixed reviews on Amazon, but I'm learning a lot from it (and actually don't find it to be preachy as some of the reviewers complained). I think it will be good to have on hand.

I also wrote down the names of a couple of other books that I thought looked interesting and checked them out from the library so that I could spend some more time looking at them. These are the two that I have now.

I'm not wild about the first one (The Wonder Years), but Bright from the Start is fantastic. We've already bought our own copy (I had a 30% coupon from Borders). It describes all kinds of fun activities that you can do with your baby that, in addition to being a great way to connect, will also help with neural development.

One other thing that has been clear from my reading is that TV should be off-limits at least until age 2. This will be challenging. I think we probably need to start weaning ourselves now - maybe down to a couple of favorite shows that we can record and watch after Nora goes to sleep, assuming we can actually outlast her. One shocking bit from the book - 25% of 2-year-olds have a tv in their room. I found that amazing - no wonder kids are so sedentary.

Be the change

Do you remember my lamenting the lack of Mandarin Chinese in our school district? Well I did email the district learning services director asking about foreign language programming at the elementary level. She responded and said that currently our district offers Spanish and German for grade 7 and above, but that their Long Range and Strategic Planning committee was looking into the need for language and cultural awareness at a much earlier age. She said that she would mention my interest at their next meeting and suggested that I share my thoughts with some of the school board members.

That message came last week on the day that we left for the North Shore, so I hadn't responded to it yet, although I've been thinking about it a lot. First I had a big reaction to German being one of the two selected languages, but then decided that it was probably a regional thing. Refocusing on my main objective of getting foreign language in the elementary schools, the next thing to do seemed to be get a list of the school board members and start calling them.

Then today I got a phone call, a voice mail message really, from the learning services director. She said that she has applied for a state grant to investigate offering Mandarin Chinese in the elementary schools and was wondering if I would like to be on the exploratory committee with her. Hmm, let me think about that.... YES!!!!

Mad, mad, mad - I'm mad.

Great news - Chinese immersion schools have come to our area!! Bad news - we live across a state line from these programs, so Nora won't be eligible to attend. Not even if we pay tuition. I know. I asked. This STINKS.

I've also learned from a friend that our local school district does not offer any foreign language programming at the elementary level. This REALLY STINKS, not just for Nora, but for all the kids in our community.

Those of you who know us know that moving to the other state is not an option. Long story. Project house.

So I figure that there are two options. Right now I'm pursuing both:

(1) Convince the immersion school in the neighboring state - where we both work, by the way - to let our kids attend if we pay tuition. For the record, Chuck in my van pool suggested that I get a P.O. box in the other state and "fudge" our way in and I deemed this unethical. One karma point for me.

(2) Devote my time and energy to bringing language programming to our up-and-coming school district. I just sent an email to my unwitting victim the district learning services director, offering my assistance in the matter.

Thankfully, I have a little time. I figure that Nora will be able to attend Chinese daycare for 4-5 years until I can impose my will on the world figure things out.

For anyone facing the same problem, here are a couple of resources:

NACELL

Nanduti

and, of course, there's always my favorite book.

The "dance" of attachment

Yesterday Rob and I attended a very good seminar about attachment. The speaker was Holly Van Gulden, an author and family counselor who grew up in a family formed through transracial adoption (four brothers I think she said - and this was back in the day when transracial adoption was much more unusual than it is now) and who is an adoptive parent herself.

We learned a lot and came away with some good information about transitioning Nora into our family and promoting attachment and also about talking to our families and daycare providers about attachment issues and what we need them to do to help Nora. I should have bought Holly's book, but foolishly assumed that I could get it on Amazon. Turns out the only way I've found to order it is through Crossroads Adoption (where the co-author Charlotte Vick works). Here's a link to a review on the Adoptive Families website and to the order form on Crossroads Adoption's website.

If you ever have a chance to hear Ms Van Gulden speak, take it! She's outstanding.

A picture (book) is worth a thousand well-pruned synapses

A couple of times I've mentioned a book that I've been reading called, Raise a Smarter Child by Kindergarten. It was written by a neurologist and has taught me a lot about brain development and the importance of early experiences.

Because we will have missed roughly the first year of Nora's life, I want to be sure that in addition to our boundless love we also give her the right kind of stimulation while she's still very young. It really matters; developing the right neural pathways early on affects your ability to learn and process information throughout your life.

One of the first sections I read was about books (you know how much I love books) and it said that there are two kinds of children's books - picture books and storybooks - and every child's library should have both. Now, Nora's got a nice, growing book collection (you can see the current list by clicking on the "Nora's Library" link under the site navigation section on the right), but I realized that she mostly has storybooks and very few picture books. Since that's obviously going to have to change, I bought a nice picture book when I was at Target.

I think that, in addition to teaching some words, it will also help her to learn colors. Hopefully she will also develop a love of books and reading.

Sometime I'll show you her puzzles...