Portland Parents

( no school )

The Montessori Institute Northwest is hosting a Parent Education Series
“Positive Parenting: What You Can do as a Parent” presented by Ginni Sackett.
February 13, 20, 27, 2008 from 6:30-8:30pm. Come to one or all.

Visit their website for details or call 503.963.8992.

Gever Tulley, founder of the “tinkerer school,” talks about 5 things you should let your kids do; that allowing kids to explore helps them become more self-reliant, confident and safer overall.

He persuasively argues that allowing your child the freedom to explore will help them learn bigger life lessons than ones “you can learn from Dora the Explorer.” One of his examples is fire; teach your kid to play with fire and actually let them poke around with it. Learning how to control and work with a mysterious and primal force is one of the great things that people learn. It teaches them about intake, combustion, and exhaust, the three crucial pieces of “fire” that you’ll need for a fire.

when we remove every sharp object, every pokey bit from the world, then the next time the child comes into contact with something not made out of round plastic, they’ll hurt themselves with it. We rob our children of valuable opportunities to learn how to interact with the world around them. And despite our best efforts and intentions, kids will always figure out how to do the most dangerous thing they can in whatever environment they’re in.”

The video linked above is somewhat less than 10 minutes and is worth the time spent watching it. He’s very persuasive.

Roger Ebert loved the Golden Compass. He thought it was a great classic kids fantasy movie and that it would be a hit.
He was disappointed by the uproar about the movie, and how many people refused to watch it without even giving it a chance.

People are comparing it to Chronicles of Narnia or Lord of the Rings. As far as the movie production goes, and the fantasy story around it goes, it’s in the same ballpark as those two movies and so a kid who liked those two movies would like the Golden Compass. However, Phillip Pullman wrote his trilogy as pretty much an exact opposite to CS Lewis’s Chronicles, and the film is, according to Ebert ( I haven’t seen the movie but I’ve read the book ), “viciously anti-god.”

That shouldn’t keep you from seeing this movie, however. It’s not an “athiest film” … ask yourself why an atheist would feel the need to “attack god.” In fact, in the end, good overcomes evil, and characters willingly make sacrifices to help one another.

Roger Ebert is a Catholic who has read the Bible cover to cover, and he can’t find anything wrong in this movie. Maybe you should give it a chance too.

Get your kids to eat healthy by sneaking their vegetables into normally innocent-looking foods that they would normally eat without a complaint. For instance, steam and puree cauliflower into their mashed potatoes. Sounds yummy! You can even conceal broccoli in their chicken nuggets!

While I’d prefer to have the kids volunteer to eat their fruits and vetetables, there’s something to be said about “spinach brownies.” Less arguments around the dinner table and more vitamins and fiber in their diet has to be a good thing, right?

All is not butternut squash casserole, however, in the land of the delicious, Missy Chase Lapine claims that Seinfeld’s cookbook is plagarized from her own work in “The Sneaky Chef.” However, the two works do appear to be more different than skin deep, although they of course share a few similarities. For instance, both encourage parents to puree vegetables into mashed ‘taters, but the Lapine book recommends a blend of cauliflower, zucchini and lemon juice and the Seinfeld book recommends just cauliflower.

I suspect that the recipes in the Jessica Seinfeld book ( pictured at right ) will be more simple and easier to follow than the ones in the Lapine book. Your mileage may vary.

Portland Public Schools is having a celebration highlighting more than 100 schools, their staff, students and programs! It’s Feb 2, from 1 to 5 PM and at the Expo Center.

Highlights include: Neighborhood school information and resources, student performances, enrollment, transfer information, the transition years and an art exhibition!

Tri-Met is trying to figure out how to make fareless square work better. On one hand, some people would like to abolish the whole thing. On the other, Tri-Met seems to feel that Fareless Square encourages drug merchants to hang out downtown; all they have to do to relocate is hop a bus.

Fareless Square was a lifesaver for me, when I was a teen. I remember walking home from Washington Park in the middle of the night ( never you mind what I was doing, as a teen, in Washington Park in the night ). When it was raining out, I could get a few blocks’ respite by hopping a bus. It was a lit place I could sit down and not worry about the other predators I was sure were out to get me downtown.

“Before you do away with something that has given our city a great reputation . . . and, in fact, is uniquely Portland-esque, start with the problem — not an arbitrary, idealized, absurd notion that somehow if you just make everyone pay, the system will change,” Uris said.

source

I’m anti-closing the Fareless Square. And the Portland Mercury seems to agree with me. In my humble opinion, fareless square, even during the nighttime hours which don’t necessarily support shopping and touristing, still have benefits that Tri-Met isn’t considering.

Just a quick heads up; trimet has dropped its proposal to “turn off” fareless square at night. Stay tuned for more news.

When your kid’s in elementary school and they’re reading hundreds of books a month, you don’t think you need to worry about this. But you’re wrong.

Eighth graders are a lot more busy than fifth graders. More homework, more rehearsals, more time spent with their friends. And what loses out? Reading, of course. Part of it is, in the words of one teen, “After all those words in my homework, the last thing I want to do is read more.” But students who read on their own become the strongest readers and writers, and they get the most out of our cultural and intellectual atmosphere.

According to the Oregonian ( 2008-1-27,A11), eighth grade “students who never read for fun are a year or more behind the class in reading ability.”

So what’s the deal? How can we help our kids keep reading? The best way may be to restrict them from reading. One sneaky teacher convinces kids to read John Steinbeck by making the kids get parental permission first. Another good way is to read yourself, and to have lots of books around. School librarians have the best chance of being able to match kids and books, but if you spend the time reading a stack of young adult books, you could at least talk with your kids about the books.

It could be your own private book club!