Childrens Books!!

July 27th, 2009

Fresh Air Fund Camp

November 11th, 2009

One out of four school children in the U.S. has vision problems, and 86% do not get their vision checked before age 12.

Many Fresh Air children do not have access to affordable vision care. Glasses break, are too expensive to replace, or are never prescribed in the first place. And often as a result, children’s performance in academics, sports and activities suffers.

For the fifth summer in a row, OneSight offered to bring their traveling optical clinic to all five Fresh Air Fund camp.

Together with OneSight’s Vision Vans – and a team of local doctors and volunteers, OneSight provides free eye exams and eyewear to thousands of children in need each year.

This summer at Fresh Air camp, OneSight’s staff screened 3,295 children and counselors, gave 1,757 eye exams, and made 1,629 pairs of glasses, with 1,458 of them on-site and 171 specially driven in. The team stayed at Camp Hayden-Marks for two camp sessions, to make sure every child who needed the gift of sight was screened.

Although you might think some children would be reluctant to be prescribed glasses, most of them are delighted. They’ve been missing out on the world around them for too long. (Being able to pick out their own frames helps, too.)

Our friends at OneSight told us about a boy at Camp Mariah who ran to the Vision Van before the team had even begun setting up in the morning.

“You guys have the van, right,” he said, clapping and jumping up and down. “The one that I can get glasses from?”

We thank OneSight and you, for helping inner-city children receive the services they need.
2009 Summer Facts

  • 2009 Fresh Air camp attendees: 3,000
  • 2009 Friendly Town participants: nearly 5,000
  • Children who participate in our year-round programming: 2,000
  • Percent of children who are invited back to their Friendly Town families: 65%
  • Friendly Town state volunteer coordinators: 500

You can give a child the experience of a lifetime with your gift to The Fresh Air Fund!

Every year, The Fresh Air Fund gives thousands of inner-city children the priceless gift of fun – and opens the door to a lifetime of opportunities.

Whether it’s a two-week trip to visit a volunteer host family, or a fun-filled and educational stay at one of our camps, our programs make for unforgettable memories – and open a world of new friendships and fresh possibilities.

We are a not-for-profit agency and depend on tax-deductible donations from people like you to keep our vital programs flourishing

Fresh Air Fund Host Families

February 4th, 2010

Coloring books and their colorful history

March 12th, 2010

Coloring books – we all taken them for granted – but have you ever stopped to think about how they first came about?

Coloring books first come out in the United States as part of the “democratization of art” process, inspired by a convention which included a series of lectures by a UK artist called Joshua Reynolds and the works of Swiss educator Johann Pestalozzi.

At this convention, the many educators present concluded that all students, regardless of their background, stood to benefit from art education as “a means of enhancing their conceptual understanding of the tangible, developing their cognitive abilities and improving skills that would be useful in finding a profession, as well as for the children’s spiritual edification.”

The McLoughlin Brothers are credited as the inventors of the coloring book, when, in the early 1880s they produced The Little Folks’ Painting Book, in collaboration with English children’s book illustrator and writer Kate Greenaway. They continued to publish coloring books until the 1920s, when the McLoughlin Brothers became part of the Milton Bradley Company. Another coloring book pioneer was Richard F. Outcault. In 1907 he authored Buster’s Paint Book, featuring the character of Buster Brown, which he had invented in 1902.

In the early 1900s anew trend then began to emerge and coloring books were circulated to advertise a wide variety of products, including coffee, chocolate and even pianos.

As a mainly non-verbal medium, coloring books have seen wide application in education. Coloring books are said to help motivate students’ understanding of concepts that they would otherwise find ‘boring’ or be uninterested in. Since the 1980s, several publishers have also produced educational coloring books intended for studying graduate-level topics such as anatomy and physiology, where color-coding of many detailed medical diagrams are used as a learning aid.

Coloring books have also health and therapeutic uses, for example, one nurse, trying to limit the trauma of child surgery, described in an academic publication how the use of a coloring book “might help [the child] to understand what was going to happen to him.” According to writer Carolyn Harris, author of ‘Tonsil Season’, featured in The American Journal of Nursing, a coloring book proved useful in helping children deal with hospitalization and tonsillectomy.

Coloring books are often used in rehabilitation of accident victims to aid recovery of hand-eye coordination too and they are used with autistic children both for entertainment and for their soothing affect. It should be noted however that some autistic children will react strongly to bright colors, and that the use of paint and paint-brushes can lead to accidents that may greatly upset the child. For this reason a software based coloring book may be a better option.

There are now many websites that offer free, printable coloring pages of everything from Princesses to Pokemon. These pages can easily be printed individually and stapled into a personalised coloring book. For example at sites like Spiderman Coloring you’ll find many Spiderman coloring pictures while little girls would perhaps enjoy the Hello Kitty coloring sheets at Hello Kitty Coloring Pages.

Coloring books teach children fine motor skills, early math skills, early reading skills and the basics of art theory. By observing a child coloring one can also determine that child’s handwriting readiness. Things to look for to help determine a child’s handwriting readiness are “Attention, crayon grip, posture/strength/endurance, and the use of the helping hand (the hand that holds the paper).”

Not only are coloring books fun, but they can also be used to help those with communication disabilities and speech-language disorders.

Prescription Sunglasses – Worth The Money?

March 12th, 2010

Sunglasses work mainly as protective items and only secondly as decorations. There are however people who cannot buy a pair of sunglasses and enjoy them because they have special eye conditions. This is the case with anyone who suffers from myopia, astigmatism or hyperopia. The solution for such cases is to be found in prescription sunglasses designed to match exactly the same features of the regular glasses but with ultraviolet protection. On the one hand the UVA rays get absorbed in the body through the eye lens, and on the other, the UVB rays cause skin burn.

Dark lens design and prescription lens structure represent a medical solution to create a product of sun protection eyewear type. Prescription sunglasses use different types of lenses, and here we can count polarized lenses, anti-reflective lenses, blue blockers, photochromic lenses and gradient lenses. It is important to mention here, before going on with the description of prescription sunglasses, that you can only order this kind of eyewear based on an ophthalmologist’s recommendation and after careful medical examination. Total protection against the UVAs and the UVBs should be covered at optimal parameters, due to the fact that people with eye surgery should not be exposed to powerful radiation.

Some prescription sunglasses rely on a wraparound design that prevents the UV rays from entering from the sides. Here, the choice of the frame is everything because it should be large enough to allow for such protection. As for the anti-reflective properties, not only prescription sunglasses but most sunglasses in general have a special anti-reflective coating that ensures superior reflexion of the light. The amount of light that enters the eyes could also be limited by using mirror-coated lenses. The stage of the eye condition will also have an influence on the design of the prescription sunglasses.

For instance, people who suffer from advanced myopia may require very thick lenses, which could be incompatible with most of the frames. The presence of two or more health problems at the same time could also become an obstacle for the design of prescription sunglasses. The doctor should be able to recommend an adequate course of action, with the mention that the design of highly specialized prescription sunglasses is more difficult. Moreover, price awareness is another important element given the fact that prescription sunglasses will always be more expensive, as the number of specialists who can design them is smaller too.

——————————–
When the author isn’t wearing her prescription sunglasses, she’s a fan of best psychics, the Seattle HCG diet, and the Cadillac Allante windscreen windblocker wind deflector.

Sleep Throughout CHILDHOOD.

March 12th, 2010

Up towards the third or fourth yr the kid should be permitted to sleep for an hour or so prior to its dinner. Following this time it might progressively be discontinued; however it should be recollected, that throughout the whole period of childhood more rest is needed than in adult grow older. The child, therefore, ought to be put to sleep every night between seven and eight; and if it be in wellness it’ll rest soundly till the following morning hours. No definite rule, nevertheless, can be laid down in reference towards the amount of hours of rest to be allowed; for one will need much more or less than another.Regularity as to the time of planning to rest may be the chief point to attend to; permit nothing to interfere with it, and then only allow the child sleep without disturbance, till it awakes of its personal accord on the next morning, and it will have had enough sleep.

The quantity of sleep necessary to preserve health varies according towards the state of the physique, and also the habits from the personal. Infants pass much the greater piece of their time in sleep. Children rest twelve or fourteen several hours. The schoolboy generally ten. In youth, a third component from the twenty-four hours is invested in sleep. Whilst, in superior age, many don’t invest more than four, 5, or six hours in sleep.

It is a cruel point for a mother to sacrifice her child’s health that she may indulge her own vanity, and yet how often is this carried out in reference to rest. An night party would be to assemble, and also the little kid is kept up for hours beyond its stated time for retiring to sleep, that it might be exhibited, fondled, and admired. Its usual portion of rest is therefore abridged, and, from the previous excitement, what little he does obtain, is broken and unrefreshing, and he rises about the morrow wearied and exhausted.

When awake, it ought to not be permitted to lie more time in bed, but ought to be encouraged to arise immediately. This is the method to provide concerning the behavior of early rising, which prevents numerous serious evils to which mother and father are not sufficiently alive, promotes each mental and corporeal health, and of all routines is stated to become one of the most conducive to longevity.

A kid should never be all of a sudden aroused from sleep; it excites the brain, quickens the motion of the heart, and, if frequently repeated, serious consequences would outcome. The change of sleeping to waking should usually be gradual.

The bed or bunk bed on which the child now sleeps ought to be a mattress: at this age a feather mattress is usually injurious to children; for that body, sinking deep into the bed or bunk bed, is totally buried in feathers, and the unnatural degree of warmth therefore created relaxes and weakens the system, especially the skin, and renders the kid unusually susceptible to the impressions of cold. Then, rather than the bed or bunk bed getting made up within the morning hours as soon as vacated, and while still saturated using the nocturnal exhalations from the physique, the bed-clothes should be thrown over the backs of chairs, the mattress shaken well up, and also the window thrown open for many hours, so that the apartment shall be thoroughly ventilated. It is also indispensably requisite not to allow the kid to sleep with persons in bad wellness, or who are far superior in existence; if possible, it ought to sleep alone.

No Child Left Behind

March 12th, 2010

What exactly does No Child Left Behind really mean?  Does that mean that a school bus driver agrees not to leave my child at school, or does it have a deeper meaning for parents to look into?  What it really means, is that schools are forced to link the money they receive from the federal government in direct connection to how well students perform academically.Looking at the sheer facts of life, schools must have money in order to educate students. Yet with the need for money in the schools rising steadily there needed to be a solution to ensure that students were, being taught the skills they needed in order to be successful adults who are capable of securing a job.  Many students have graduated from high school in the last several years without the ability to complete many basic tasks such as reading, writing, and elementary level arithmetic. 

After experiencing this phenomenon for several years, President Bush stepped up to the plate and proposed tying the results of students to the financial assistance that schools received as an incentive for schools to perform better.A grade was also assigned to schools each year based upon the standardized test scores that would tell parents, educators and the country as a whole how well the schools in a district were performing. If a school performs badly, parents and students are given the option to transfer to another school that received a better grade; this directly affects the amount of money each school is capable of receiving.This puts a great pressure on schools to perform better.Schools are forced to start taking note, and answering questions in regard to why students are not performing on an acceptable academic level when the report cards come out.  Each school has the ability to improve their grades and scores simply by teaching students the information needed.

Many people loves fishing charter auckland including serious lawyer Auckland. To make an order, you can refer to http://contactlensonline.co.nz