Los Nios News

April 2014

Spring!
Spring is here and we are really enjoying being out in the yard ! I have a very cool little rototiller and we have a small garden area behind the Play Yard Room.checkitout! Abigales Mom Dad, Mike and Alena are going to get things ready and we are very fortunate that Alena Jean (340 Purissima St) has offered to give us a head start with some of her seedlings! Soon our children can help plant, care for and watch as our garden grows. This summer we will be enjoying fresh vegetables for snack. We invite you to take a look and feel free to, weed, help or simply run your hands through the soil like Per Hansa ("Giants In The Earth", Rolvaag) as we cultivate our own garden as in the great picaresque novel "Candide" (Voltaire).
******

Im Sorry
Apologies are frequently too ambiguous and only more so in the news today. Often we would like to hear more, e.g., are you sorry you hurt someone, are you sorry you got caught doing something you already knew was wrong, are you sorry you were misunderstood or that by your actions someone else was harmed? At Los Nios we do expect sincere expressions of apology, but we are cautious about the reflexive say youre sorry or other forced words of contrition. Children are expected to show compassion and consolation when one of their friends is hurt. One of the curricular reasons I bought the new refrigerator is that the freezer is lower and the children can reach the ice to comfort a hurt friend. We are all very sorry when children do something hurtful. We make it very clear that children and adults are responsible for their actions and that we all must behave in ways that are kind and considerate of others. I encourage you to share our approach to Im sorry.

was apprehension expressed by some of the children. Perhaps some of them have been given too much information and responsibility. We like to assure the children that in these matters...Your teachers will take care of you! Please, lets not burden our young children with fears and responsibilities. Our advise to parents of young children regarding emergencies and current events (like war!)...fire, child abduction, earthquake, flood etc. is to give useful, age appropriate information and then let your children know: Mommy and Daddy will take care of you. Please be very careful about what your children are exposed to in the media. Let your childrens concerns be limited to what cereal for breakfast, which sox to wear, when do I go to nursery school?, which story to read at bedtime. Lets let our children befor a while children. ******

SomeSomeSummertime ! Speaking of Transitions...mark

your calendars, our graduation will be July 25 this year. More on the gala event in Summer editions of the News. I'm sure that everyone knows that Los Nios is a year 'round school closed only for the month of August. We want everyone to plan on staying with us all summer. Our summers are fun, with more outside time, walks, gardening and field trips!

Oh, Tom, Why All This Talk About Social Skills?

Well because of Nobel prize winners Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt, and Adam G. Riess astrophysicists from three different academic institutions who have each acknowledged that without collaboration and social interaction their discoveries about the expanding universe and subsequent Nobel awards would not have occurred.

****** Reassurance!

****** Play Again!

We had our fire drills again recently and we noticed that there

Some quotes from: wired.com: the advantage of play is that its often deeply serious the best

Los Nios News

April 2014
way to get kids to focus, to exercise those attentional circuits, is to let them have fun. And I especially like this from Nietzsche: The struggle of maturity is to recover the seriousness of the child at play.

I have often featured stories in the News about the importance of speaking with your children. Here is a remarkable series of headlines (with synopses) that I found in current research to further back that up:

*And here is a newsflash!

Building Language Skills More Critical for Boys Than Girls, Research Suggests

Talking seriously with children is good for their language proficiency

Adults who address children as fully-fledged conversation partners lay an early basis for the development of 'academic language According to Dutch researcher Lotte Henrichs.

******

Conversing Helps Language Development More Than Reading Alone

Adult-child conversations have a more significant impact on language development than exposing children to language through one-on-one reading alone, according to a new study in the current issue of Pediatric.

Developing language skills appears to be more important for boys than girls in helping them to develop self-control and, ultimately, succeed in school, according to a study led by a Michigan State University researcher. While girls overall seemed to have a more natural ability to control themselves and focus, boys with a strong vocabulary showed a dramatic increase in this ability to self-regulate -even doing as well in this regard as girls with a strong vocabulary. You GO Boys!

And where, you ask, might some of these conversations take place?...

Family Dinners? Yes!

From Kelly Musick of Cornell in the Journal of Marriage and Family: Adolescents who share meals with their parents score better on a range of wellbeing indicators. Her study found a direct link between family dinners and adolescents who scored far higher on well being indicators like mental health, substance use, and delinquency. Bon Appetit! ******

Preparing Your Taxes?

Dont forget the federal Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit is for families that pay for child care when they go to work. This credit is worth up to $2,100. Checkitout! And:

Our tax ID#90-0141223

Los Nios News

April 2014

*For those of us who have worked with young children and or have boys of our own this article seems extraordinarily obvious. But it was very sweet of Michigan State to do the research and I love the positive finding at the end!