Sunday, April 8, 2012
A little research and planning can save you money on your next family adventure, but be sure to read the fine print.
We finally made it to the Franklin Institute to see the Giant Mysterious Dinosaurs and it was awesome. I just love museums and I love to attend them with my kids and their friends. I still like to learn new stuff. Parents need to stay engaged and open to new experiences. Lots of places like aquariums have cool things to do like wading in and feeding stingrays, or actually touching jellyfish and sea cucumbers. At the Franklin, we went to the roof to check out a sunspot through a giant telescope and learned that sunspots are actually storms on the surface of the sun. Just amazing! Times being what they are, everyone is crunched for money and a family membership to the Franklin costs $120. This includes two parents and up to four children. …
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Lessons learned while dealing with shrubs can help the family.
It's officially spring and everyone has tuned to the great outdoors, specifically their own backyard. I do love the idea of gardening but I have a "black thumb." But when I first moved into our home, I had great plans for the yard. I put in just everything I thought would make the yard beautiful and all those exotic plants and shrubs I adored in everyone else's yard. About four years ago, our American beech tree, almost as big around as a jeep, came uprooted in a windstorm and landed on our home. Wanting to give back to the neighborhood, I planted a tri-color beech on the advice of several well-intentioned, but ill-advised arborists. I later learned that they don't do well in an open space with lots of sun and in this type of soil and, …
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Kids don’t need teachers to be their friends.
One of the things I love about Patch is going from site to site to see what people are talking about in other towns. This week, I came across an interesting piece on the Nazareth Patch. In a nutshell, the question was should teachers and students be friends on Facebook? The story goes that a teacher from Maine accidentally posted a picture of himself naked on Facebook and, since he was “friends” with some of his students, well, there you have it. First off, I’m astounded that so many adults have so much time to be on Facebook. Second, why on earth would anybody post a picture of himself or herself naked anywhere? Why do you have a picture of yourself naked to begin with? All that aside, I cannot fathom why a teacher would “friend” a …
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Adults can complicate things, but to kids, it just makes sense to treat everyone the same.
Like a lot of elementary school kids, my daughter has been spending a lot of time lately studying our presidents. In addition to memorizing all the presidents – there sure are a lot more than when I was in school! – she also was asked to choose one president and do a report. She chose Lincoln and she asked what he “did” as president. We talked about the Civil War and how he was assassinated. We also talked about how he freed the slaves. This led to a lot of questions – who were the slaves? Why were they slaves? How were the slaves treated? All good questions, but not always easy ones. The idea that people were treated like this simply because of the color of their skin clearly had an impact. She’s old enough to understand that being …
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
The meaning and importance of Valentine’s Day changes rapidly between elementary school and middle school.
What does Valentine’s Day mean? Seems it all depends on your perspective … and your age. My daughter is in elementary school, so as far as she’s concerned, Valentine’s Day is another opportunity to decorate the house. She loves putting the red heart-shaped doilies in the window and seeing the Valentine’s Day flag go up in front of the house. Another holiday means another party at school, too. There’s the hunt for the perfect cards to give classmates – mission accomplished with a box of Scooby Doo valentines. Then there’s the anticipation of treats and some games in class. All in all, it’s all about fun. For our middle school son, it’s a different story. He has little interest in decorating the house and no school activities are pegged to …
Sunday, February 5, 2012
How can we help our young people in deciding which careers best fit their interests and abilities?
My son enters high school next year so the question of the hour is, “What do you think you want to be when you grow up?” Since sometimes I’m not sure of the answer to that question at my age, I wonder how hard it must be for the youth of today with all of the choices out there. I began to do some soul searching to help my son. It seems that I have always been a musician. It is my passion. I really wanted to be a conductor. My piano teacher, Ethelyn Stinson, saw this and took me to a rehearsal of the Philadelphia Orchestra. A woman from Russia was the conductor for a few pieces. There was an audible hush over the auditorium when she appeared, with baton in hand. As she walked to the podium, several of the musicians began to pack up their …
Sunday, January 15, 2012
As we prepare for the holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, columnist Ruth Kuchinsky-Smith muses about her dream for humanity and the legacy she hopes to leave for her children.
Do you have a dream? No matter how old you are or what your lot in life is, ya gotta have a dream. And it really matters that you share that with your kids. For the past year, I have had the privilege of serving as a senior choir director. I never actually dreamed something so wonderful would be granted to me. In fact, about a week before I was asked to take the position, my husband asked if I was disappointed in not ever directing the larger choir at church. I actually said that I wasn’t because I truly believe that God has his plans for you and it is best to stay with those plans. As soon as I said that, I was approached. But I have another dream. And this dream worries my husband if and when we ever do win the lottery. I worked at a…
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Apparently, some school boards believe that it’s a good idea to turn our schools into billboards.
Our public schools are a microcosm of the world outside, reflecting the general makeup of our neighborhoods. This happens in regard to race and ethnicity, socioeconomic status and any other variable used to describe the surrounding people in your backyard. In 1954, after the courts settled the Brown vs. the Board of Education issue, that of segregation in our schools, something interesting occurred. Since the issue of segregation could not be solved in our neighborhoods by the government – clearly you cannot force people to purchase or sell their homes to accomplish this - the public school gurus decided that they could do this within our schools. So the task began and before long there was busing and the end of after-school activities …
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Here’s the groundwork for a concept I call Rapid Psychology.
About two weeks ago there was a tragic incident in Montgomery County. An off duty police officer was at home when his son “flipped out” and attacked him with a hunting knife. Unfortunately, he killed his son in “self defense” by shooting him in the chest. What a choice! Life with a dead son or death. So this officer is lying in his hospital bed recovering from knife wounds, knowing full well that he is responsible for his own son’s death. Today, we have one huge problem. Health care is not covering physical ailments that “bleed” so that psychological problems that incapacitate don’t stand a chance at being covered by any kind of insurance. I read later that this young man had been seen at a Horsham clinic several weeks ago. And before …
Lisa Gresley
12:44 pm on Wednesday, February 15, 2012
This is a great article. I am going to lt my High Schooler, Middle Schooler, and Elementary Schooler read the article. Wonderful! more ›